Writing a Novel Together Was Never the Plan. Then Came COVID — And a Dare (Exclusive Essay)

“Mocking each other’s writing tics became part of the fun, just as challenging each other to go darker and twistier was part of the adventure,” the spouses write

It was never in our marriage plan to write a book together. 

For one thing, the whole idea was too obvious. We were both writers. Most of our friends were writers. We even met at a literary award ceremony! 

We’d also seen A Star is Born, the endlessly remade movie about the dangers of marrying a creative in the same field. According to Hollywood logic, a shared life of artistic ups and downs leads to rivalry, jealousy and walking into the ocean. (As James Mason did in the 1954 version.) 

But real people love it when their spouses find riches and fame, right? For one thing, you get half the riches! And yet, on the day we married, we agreed never to collaborate. We didn’t want our beautiful partnership to wind up in a car crash. (Like Kris Kristofferson, in the 1976 version.) 

We did, however, take the risk of writing in the same room, spending our first 20 years together as each other’s in-house editors. We workshopped plots and critiqued first drafts, learning that it’s helpful to argue — even vociferously! Disagreements aren’t battles, they’re ways of building trust and finding shared truth. It’s okay to lose, as long as the story wins.

As a result, we got to know each other’s jokes, stories and writing tics by heart. When one of us was overwhelmed with a tight deadline, the other could step in and impersonate them in a written interview.  

Then COVID happened. Suddenly there was lots of time to kill — together. 

Instead of making sourdough, Justine started doing vintage cosplay, recreating famous fashion photos. Appalled by her haphazard selfies, Scott took over with the camera. Somehow this led to co-writing a romcom screenplay, then a children’s picture book and it all went so well that these two writers — after publishing more than 40 novels separately — did the risky thing. 

Rest easy, though. This story does not end in a garage. (Bradley Cooper, 2018.) 

The Mortons began life as a solo project of Justine’s. It’s about an ancient, sprawling crime family who raise their children to be loyal, self-sufficient, stone-cold killers. The opening chapter, in which Jessica Morton carries out her first murder (grandmother’s orders) got early readers excited. 

But Justine could never quite make the novel click. 

This promising-but-flawed first draft spent three years in a drawer, until Scott found himself stalled on his next novel, and Justine dared him to rewrite hers. 

As a science fiction writer, Scott went straight to world-building. He moved that first chapter to an ivy-covered eastern college with dark traditions and added three more ancient crime families. How dare he!? But somehow these changes made The Mortons better, deeper, richer. With two writers, the novel had more layers, more lore. The chapters started flying back and forth, each of us editing and refining the other’s work. There isn’t a sentence that doesn’t have our collective fingerprints all over it. But we weren’t just changing The Mortons; we were changing how we both write. 

This new version had way more twists and turns than our previous books, because it was a conversation. We kept our most devious ideas hidden until they hit the page, hoping to astonish each other. We kept upping the ante, trying to make the other laugh, or cry or scream, “Oh, no. You didn’t!” 

Turns out, you can still surprise someone after 20-odd years. 

You can even surprise yourself. Co-writing a novel is like climbing a mountain with a trusted friend. You go higher and see more, because you’re urging each other forward. You take bigger risks, because someone’s there to catch you when you fall. 

Alas, you also find out things about yourself that you didn’t want to know. We both had “darlings” to address. A darling is a passage that you adore, that shows off your writerly skills, but doesn’t advance the plot. There’s a saying among writers: “Kill your darlings,” because a novel isn’t a collection of fabulous sentences, it’s a story. The focus should be on the characters, not you.

Killing your own darlings is slow and painful. But killing your spouse’s darlings? Quick, easy, and hilarious. 

Scott can barely write a paragraph without using a simile; he’s as predictable as the tides. Justine loves lists — but do we need to know every item in a character’s closet, toolbox, backpack, fridge, cedar chest, or pocket? 

Mocking each other’s writing tics became part of the fun, just as challenging each other to go darker and twistier was part of the adventure. There were arguments and moments of incomprehension, but also the pleasure of finishing each other’s sentences — and paragraphs, and chapters — with just the right words. Out of this joyful friction a new writing style emerged, more daring and more disciplined than either of us has ever managed alone. 

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We both began to realize (at the same time, luckily!) that The Mortons is the best novel either of us has written. Even so, there are parts that reflect us as individuals. 

Justine loves vintage, so the Mortons always look amazing, in clothing passed from generation to generation and kept in immaculate repair. Scott spent his COVID learning mixology, and gave Jessica Morton a taste for oddly bitter cocktails with obscure ingredients. 

Because Justine has written thrillers with psychopathic characters, the ways the Mortons raise their kids — with absolute loyalty and zero empathy — were designed by her. Scott went to an eastern college with ivied walls, thus the dark history and weird rituals of Helshire College were his creation. (Ahem, he just stole them from his alma mater.) 

It’s not about who owns what, though. It’s about the satisfaction of combining two heads, two egos, two hearts and finding something stronger, weirder, darker and funnier: a book about family and murder, a gift from our family to yours. 

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The Mortons goes on sale July 21 and is available now for preorder, wherever books are sold.

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