So you wanna be partners?

Recently Joanna and I did a podcast for our friend Kris Wimberly where we offered sage advice on how to get hired as a writer (smell good), what it's like to be story editors (emails 4 dayz), and what it's like to be writing partners (amazeballs). But there's only so much time in a podcast, and we spent a lot of it joking around and having staring contests, so we thought we'd take a sec to write a little bit more on some subjects. First up - being partners!

Let's start with the poop part so we can end on sunshine and rainbows. Number one con: you split a salary. Everything down the middle. So if you eat caviar for breakfast or have your heart set on swimming in money Scrooge McDuck style, a partnership is not for you.

This is not safe!

You will have fights. A partnership is a relationship. Some would argue that it goes even deeper than a relationship because you gotta be friends and business partners and intellectual lovers. So in order to make the 40+ hours you spend together every week enjoyable and productive, you have to be able to hash it out and (almost more importantly) be okay to move on like 5 minutes later.

Pretty much how we duke it out but with 98% less muscles.

You're the Olsen Twins. A fun 90's-reference way of saying you become one half of a whole. The people you meet will remember you as a team, and you'll never be "just" you. And if you are you, you're you in relation to your partner. Kinda like how you remember Mary Kate and Ashley as the Goth one or the one that's engaged to a giant (J/K BOTH EXAMPLES ARE MARY KATE). This is not necessarily a bad thing! It's actually pretty great, as long as you love who your partner is. You could what we do and craft your joint-identity together. Or you could be complete opposites and that can be your "thing."

Moving onto the pros! Number one pro: work is fun. Having someone to laugh with and bounce ideas off of is pretty amazing. When you write alone, you find yourself in your own head a lot and questioning whether or not this joke is funny or if Zombie Ben Franklin would say that to Vampire John Wilkes Booth. When you have a partner, work = laughter, and the more laughter you have, the more confidence you have in your script.

HAHAHA drinking melted Jell-o is the BAHST!

You get to keep your sanity. There are times when it's a lot, and it's really great to have someone you can split the load with. Or even just to have someone you can unload with at the end of a stressful day who knows exactly where you're coming from. Because everyone needs a good cathartic yell-fest once in awhile, amirite??

You get stuff DONE. This means two things, actually. 1 - you have motivation to work because someone else's livelihood and nail polish addiction is depending on you. 2 - you get things done faster because two people are like one person, but double. PEOPLE MATH.

Basically us. One of us is her nails, the other one is her hair.

The unknown is less scary. If you're like me, you're easily daunted by things like a Big Meeting, a Corporate Mixer, and a Fancy Restroom With Futuristic Toilets. Not the case when you have a partner! Now you get to have your buddy at your side for the big Important Thing, for better or for worse. Even if things go downhill, at least you can laugh about it together afterwards. It's basically like having Liam Neeson on your team in a hostage situation.

We could go on and on about the benefits to having a partner. You have someone to challenge you, someone who laughs at your weird jokes, and someone to share your dreams and appetizers with. Most importantly, you have someone to carpool with to meetings on the west side! Obviously for us, the pros outweigh the cons, but everyone is a snowflake. A partnership might not be for you.

But I mean, it's like really really fun.