John: This is an email that Stefania sent to her friend and colleague Robert. He had a stop-over or something in Rome, maybe a Conference – he’s always jetting around the world.  He only had a couple of hours, so Stefania offered to do him an itinerary so he could have a really nice walk round Rome.  He’s been to Rome before so he’s seen the main tourist places like the Colosseum.  So we had a discussion about it over tea and we decided on the basic itinerary.  I guess that’s the start of the collaborative process – you have to think about who the itinerary is for, what they might like etc. We settled – I’m not sure how - on a walk that we do every time we go to Rome.  I don’t feel like I’m in Rome til we’ve done it.  It’s my ant-track, if you like.  We agreed that this was the kind of itinerary we would go for.

It’s an email, so it’s not really supposed to be read out, but it’s an authentic written piece that she sent to someone. It might not sound great read out.  We’ve recited it in manner that maybe seems to suggest who contributed what, but actually that’s not necessarily true – we’re playing with the notion of authorship in the creative process. Sounds very poncey! It really was collaborative, though – and hugely enjoyable.  In the end I think we were doing it for ourselves rather than for Robert.  I’m a bit surprised that Stefania sent it! 

Stefania is super-organised and I’m not.  So she sits down and calls me in to start the email.  Robert is a nice guy. And curious about things, so I think he’ll have liked looking for the references. He works with Stefania, so he’s a colleague and a friend.  I’m like an acquired friend, so obviously Stefania and I have different relationships with him which was always going to impinge on the creative process.  She started typing.  I’m standing behind her interjecting.  Mostly facetiously.  I thought the itinerary needed livening up -  I mean, who wants to read lots of ‘turn left, then turn right, x church is on your right’?  - and so started throwing in silly jokes.  I was like ‘no, you’ve GOT to put that in’ – sometimes Stefania accepted them, sometimes she didn’t.  But she was controlling the keyboard, so…. I think S felt some of the jokes were too silly (they were!) and some she felt ridiculed her hometown, but once we’d started on this track, it was difficult to get off it.  We had a real laugh and it all got a bit rollicking as we got more and more Carry On, to be honest.  But she STILL had control of that keyboard…!!

This was basically two completely different styles meshed together.  I had one idea of what I thought would be good – something entertaining – and her idea was more practical – something useful.  I’m sure that we spent a lot longer on it than she wanted to.  But I think it came out ok.

It’s always interesting working on something together, because obviously we have very different styles, but we’re both quite bossy about the process and what we want. We always end up looking loads of stuff up – history etc – which I love. It’s always very interesting  – Stefania is super-creative and very clever, so I always learn lots.  I’m more chaotic.

Stefania also gets a bit mad because I get picky about phrasing/typing/spelling.  She writes English much better than I do, and she doesn’t like it when I seem to be correcting her.  I’m not – I’m just editing on the run.  It’s just what I do myself when I’m writing my own stuff -   I’m ultra-picky with my own writing and constantly changing things.  But she’s on the keyboard, so… At the end, we went through it again and tied it up and edited it.   We’re both very fussy about reading things over a million times, but I could carry on doing that forever, whereas Stefania decides ‘that’s it’ and wants it finished.

I had a really great time.  It was so much fun! I don’t know what Robert thought about it, though….

Stefania: So John wanted me to do the typing ‘because I’m quicker’, but there was definitely a mismatch in terms of taking the lead – he made many more decisions than me and was having a whale of a time while I was getting mildly grumpy. There were more laughs than clashes, though! The fact is, Rome is ‘my’ Rome and John is allowed to slag it off (in terms of customs and cultural aspects) only to a certain extent. While collaborating on this I realised that my claimed ownership of the place is more totalising than I thought and my emotional investment in this spatiotemporal existential dimension has grown over time. I’m sure that Brexit has a lot to do with this (my psychological distancing from increasingly unfriendly Britain?), but I’m rather surprised at my (undeniably!) annoyed reaction at John’s wanting to take the mickey out of nearly everything. The other aspect that I’m really aware of is that his mental mapping of the city is (inevitably) different from mine – to me his representation of the walk looks rather linear whereas I perceive Rome as an assemblage of rounded spatial shapes that overlap and merge if I try to visualise specific spots that are particularly meaningful to my life and relations there. So while negotiating a fairly linear walkscape (a British approach?), I kept thinking of spatial digressions and opportunities to go off the main trajectory.

In terms of the collaboration, I’m exhausted but quite happy about the result - after constant negotiation about content and tone, and after constantly trying to curb John’s flood of witty remarks, I think we have a reasonably useful itinerary that allows for changes, de-tours and repetitions, depending on taste and on-the-spot decisions.

PS Having just seen what John wrote, his self-deprecating narrative is so so British – and I disagree! John was so strict when I was writing my PhD and his advice was so fundamental that my style of writing has got John written (!) all over it…

PPS I didn’t let him see this until I’d seen his comments and now he wants to change his but I’m not going to let him – I’ve got the keyboard!