The restart: 6 things to check when you resume a book collaboration after a pause

Stuff changes when you’re not looking.

If you are collaborating on a book, sometimes it’s necessary to take a month or more off. People take vacations. They have life events that demand their time. They change jobs. They have realizations about who they are and what they want to do.

People who collaborate — coauthors; ghostwriters and clients; writers and editors — usually can’t just “resume where we left off.” Before you leap headlong back into the project, take some time with your collaborators to identify if any of the key elements of the project have shifted (or lurched) in a new direction. Ask yourselves if any of the following has changed:

• Your relationship and your roles. Do you still feel the same way about each other? Are your roles changing? Verify your understanding of who’s researching, who’s writing, who’s editing, and who’s dealing with the publisher.
• Your objective. You (hopefully) started the book with a clear understanding of what you were trying to accomplish. Is that goal still the same? Or did something shift in your idea of what you’re hoping to do? Shifts in your objective aren’t unusual, but you can’t make changes in this key motivator without clarifying it with your collaborator.
• The schedule. You lost a few months there. Is the final deadline still the same? Whether it has or it hasn’t, you’ll need to revisit your plan.
• The world. If a new president is elected, or new research gets published, or AI develops new capabilities, that may change what you need to write. Events in the world didn’t stand still while you were off doing other things.
• What you already wrote. It’s fine if you, consciously or unconsciously, are now writing Chapter 5 with a new understanding of how you feel about things. But at some point, you’re going to have to revisit Chapter 1, because it no longer seems to match the way your understanding has evolved. One quick tip: Recheck your subtitle. It may no longer fit the way it used to.
• Your contract. Contracts between collaborators that seemed ideal when they were agreed to may no longer fit the circumstances after a restart. Consider negotiating a contract amendment that reflects your new understanding.

Even if the book is already at the publisher, you may need rethink your strategy

Writing isn’t the only thing that changes after a pause. Promotion does, too.

I’ve had ghostwriting clients leave their companies while the book was being published (twice). I saw one client’s priorities shift based on national politics.

Things change. Take a moment to address those changes before you once again leap into the fray.