Mars and Venus Writing Together

Today I welcome Alicia and Roy Street to Terry’s Place. Alicia and Roy collaborate writing rom-com mysteries as well as romantic comedy. In 2009 they won a Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense.

And while Alicia and Roy are here at Terry's Place, I'm at Sarah Butland's blog. Hope you'll visit me there.

Do men and women approach work differently? Some studies say men approach work as they would a competitive sport and their sense of competency (i.e. ego) is always an issue. Then again, today’s women aren’t exactly pushovers. It’s a jungle out there and the female lioness is a formidable hunter. So then just how do the two sexes work things out when moving in for the kill on a project that entails loads of creative energy and specific decision making scene-by-scene and word-by-word?

When people find out we are a husband wife team writing together they often cringe, saying, “I could NEVER write a book with my spouse. We’d be divorced before we got to the second draft.”

So, here’s a short quiz to see if you could write a book with your significant other. Are you ready?

You have a deadline, and the two of you have been working for hours in your home office. You encounter the following situations . . .

1. You’ve motored through all the snacks in the house and there’s only one piece of chocolate left. You say:

a. Go ahead, sweetie. Enjoy.

b. What say we split it?

c. Yo! That’s got my name on it. Touch it and I’ll break your fingers.

2. You’ve been focused on the same difficult scene for so long, Partner A keeps drifting into idle chatter about diverse subjects. You say:

a. You have such a fascinating array of knowledge. It’s one reason I love being around you.

b. Interesting info, honey. How about we save it for break.

c. Back on task, Bonzo. Like I give a rat’s buttocks about your new electronic golf ball retriever.

3. For obvious reasons, writers run the risk of becoming sedentary creatures. So when it’s time to work out, you say:

a. Gee, I love training side by side with you. Couples who sweat together, stick together.

b. Guess we better hit the gym.

c. Tennis time, Fatty. Twenty bucks says I can whip your sorry butt.

4. The section you’ve been working on all week has to be totally revised. You say:

a. Not a problem. We can do it, thanks to our being able to work so efficiently in a state of complete and unspoiled harmonious unity.

b. So we goofed. We’ll hit it out of the park next time at bat.

c. Don’t look at me, Slobbo. That dumbass part was your bogus idea.

No need to tabulate your score since everybody knows there are no answers.

But we’ll be wrestling with some more gender related topics regularly on our blog at http://aliciastreet-roystreet.com/ 

For more about Alicia and Roy, check out Aphrodisiac, their wacky, gritty, award winning rom-com mystery about a paranormal perfume, and Kiss Me, Dancer, the first book in our Dance ‘n’ Luv series.

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