Stereo-typing, by Veronica Zundel

I'm sure she thought she was helping me. Or perhaps helping herself. Or both. My dearest friend from

Image: Pixabay

church, who had a screenplay to work on herself, suggested that we should spend a morning together writing on our respective laptops/tablets and thus disciplining one another to get down to writing.

It was a good idea, but the trouble is, I really didn't want to do it. I work best on my desktop, and I didn't as yet have a word processing app on my new tablet, let alone the memoir I've been working on for about ten years but which is only on my desktop. The whole thing felt too technically complicated, and much as I wanted to go to her house, which I hadn't been to yet, I dreaded it. Even worse when I realized that she had actually envisaged a whole day writing together. I don't even spend more than a couple of hours writing at home each day!

However, the day came, and I arrived at her house with tablet loaded with word processor (courtesy of my tech-savvy son) and memoir, and shared a cuppa with her before getting down to business. I found using my new, unfamiliar word processor difficult, with only a tiny window of text between the virtual keyboard below and the huge toolbar above (which I didn't know how to edit); I have a 'real' keyboard for this tablet but realized it took a different charger, which I didn't have, from the tablet itself. In the end we only wrote for an hour (her working on a nativity play for church, not her screenplay at all) before retiring to the sunny garden where she planted some cyclamens in hanging baskets before we went off to see a film I was reviewing (https://tinyurl.com/24u2eznv). 

Image: iStock

Now she wants to repeat the experiment some other time. How do I tell her? The fact is, I can't really write with someone else there; and though after the isolation of writing I do like to be part of a team sometimes, I'd rather do that in my voluntary job at the local Oxfam bookshop, where I don't have to be creative, just accept or reject donations and wipe off dirty books with a baby wipe (no, not that sort of dirty book...). 

How about you? Do you like working with a 'writing partner' present? Or would you rather just have a writing buddy at a distance, with whom you can share moans and groans and the occasional success? Can you write in a noisy café like J K Rowling, on a fancy laptop, or do you need to be at a desk in a quiet dedicated space?

Writing is a very personal, even intimate activity, and some of us just don't want to be doing it with someone else watching, even if they're also writing themself. So if you've thought of inviting a friend to a 'write-in', think first: are you sure they really want to do it? In fact, ask them -- it's the safest way.