Interview on Collaboration with Melissa Flores Anderson and Nina Miller

Sometimes the hardest part of collaborating is getting started. Here are some tips from creators that have collaborated — sometimes with an absolute stranger — and made something wonderful!

Did you know your partner in collaboration beforehand? Explain how you got together. 

Nina:

We met via Twitter; now X. We learned more about each other when Melissa was an editor on my Roi Fainéant Literary Press pieces. I was incredibly honored when she asked me to join her for the Icebreakers Lit sub call. I have read many of her publications over the past few years and knew our styles would work well together. I also knew her to be a positive and supportive cheerleader online, so this would be a fantastic experience.

Melissa:

As Nina said, we met on social media. I had read some of Nina’s pieces through Roi Fainéant and other publications, and liked her writing. She seemed to be a versatile writer and open to a lot of different styles and genres so thought it would be fun to write something with her. And she also is a champion of other writers online, which I admire. 

How did you collaborate? What was your process?

Nina:

It started with a concept, in this case, of sharing a bed with someone else. Once we agreed on an idea, the next part was to craft pieces we could meld together. I think of the process as making a gingerbread house. Once we knew we wanted to make a house, the individual vignettes like walls/doors/roofs could then be shaped into one solid structure. It did help in this particular piece that we are at different times in our lives, so we could reflect on the past and imagine futures as we read each other's pieces. A shared Google document helped make this process easier as we could rework and comment back and forth. Once we had something complete and unified, it could then be submitted.

Melissa:

I didn’t really have an idea when I asked Nina if she wanted to write something together. Initially, I thought we might do some quirky medical horror or something because I’d just read a darker piece of hers. But then Nina suggested the idea of sharing a bed with someone else and making it CNF, and the idea took off from there. It’s such a universal experience that we both had more vignettes than we could fit into the word limit! My collaboration with Nina was different from what I’ve done in the past for my Icebreakers Lit pieces, where someone started the story and we just passed a document back and forth until we had a cohesive piece that we then edited.

Nina and I both wrote our personal stories separately and then we worked on a Google doc to figure out how to mesh them together with some bridges between each mini story. I came up with the idea of making it kinda meta, like an imaginary sleep over where we both recount the vignettes and it helped to tie it all together.

What were some challenges you faced during the collaborative process, and what did you learn?

Nina:

I discovered a profound joy in melding two different voices. The process allowed me to appreciate the similarities and differences in both our experiences and our prose. I relished the art of blending the two. In this case, it is very clear how the CNF is braided together through our discourse sprinkled throughout. I found it challenging to make it feel cohesive, and that's where Melissa's guidance with the idea of the song was invaluable. I am sure it must be much more difficult if we wanted to make it feel like one solid voice. That would be the next challenge for me, how to write one piece in an entirely new voice for both individuals.

Melissa:

One of the things I realized in working with Nina is that she has a much more thorough editing and revision process than I do. She has the benefit of a writing circle that gives her critical and helpful feedback. I sometimes share pieces with close writing friends for feedback, but a lot of my pieces I just edit and revise on my own before I send them out. I’m much more fly-by-the-seat of my pants and it was good to work with someone who made me take a step back and revise a bit more than I might have done otherwise. The piece is better for the extra time and care.

Any final words of advice for future collaborators?

Nina:

My advice for future collaborators is to take the chance and do it! It's an opportunity to be pushed to new limits, to experience a concept through someone else's eyes, and, ultimately, to potentially solidify a friendship that can last a lifetime.

Melissa:

My main advice would be to set some expectations with your writing partner on how you want to work together for the writing and revision before you start. That can help with just the logistics such as passing a Word doc or using Google doc to write simulataneously, or if one collaborator has limited time.

I would also add that every time I have collaborated with another writer, I’ve ended up with some interesting and unique pieces that I never would have come up with on my own. It really is a chance to push your boundaries as a writer and to practice revision and editing with someone else. I’ve written six collaborative pieces (four for Icebreakers Lit with this one) and it is always fun and challenging.

Read Melissa Flores Anderson & Nina Miller’s piece, “Roll Over and Over and Over Two Writers Share Their Beds”

Melissa Flores Anderson is a Latinx writer whose creative work has been featured in swamp pink, Rejection Letters and The Write Launch. She is a reader/editor with Roi Fainéant Press. She has co-authored a novelette, “Roadkill,” (ELJ Editions) and a chapbook “A Body in Motion,” (JAKE). Follow her on Twitter and Bluesky @melissacuisine or IG/Threads @theirishmonths. Read her work at melissafloresandersonwrites.com.

Nina Miller is an Indian-American physician, epee fencer, and creative. She loves writing competitions and nursing cups of chai. Find her work within Cutbow Quarterly, Raw Lit, Jake, Bright Flash, SciFi Shorts, Five South, Roi Fainéant, Five Minutes, and more. Find her on X @NinaMD1 or http://ninamillerwrites.com.