Annie Sanders, author of the best-selling Goodbye, Jimmy Choo, comes clean about her split personality. ‘She’ is in fact writers Annie Ashworth and Meg Sanders, best known for writing non-fiction TV spin-off books, including the acclaimed Trade Secrets.

So how on earth do two people write together?

We cut our teeth as a writing partnership on non-fiction. We would divide the book in half, research and write our sections separately. Then we’d fit the chapters together and write an introduction, sitting side-by-side at a computer. We’ve written about 10 this way over the past five years.

But don’t you have different writing styles?

Our approaches are rather different – one of us researches fully, then writes, the other writes as she researches – but over time, our writing styles have become more and more alike, to the point that we sometimes can’t remember which of us has written what!

So why the move into fiction?

All our non-fiction titles had been commissioned, and we wanted the chance to do something for ourselves. We’ve spent a lot of time just chatting and laughing about situations and people, and slowly an idea for a plot emerged. Goodbye, Jimmy Choo is about two women, both of whom have small children, who move to the country from London because of their husbands’ work – well, that’s more or less our situation, but the rest of course is fantasy (including the dishy Frenchman!).

Isn’t writing fiction much harder?

Yes, because inevitably we saw the scenario in different ways, but, after talking through and writing down a very tight synopsis, we both wrote half a chapter each from our character’s point of view. We talked over Maddy and Izzie’s personalities very closely especially because we each had to write dialogue of the other’s character so needed to know all about them. We worked a chapter at a time, then would email the part we’d written to the other. We reckoned that if we could make each other laugh or cry then we were on to something. Obviously we had to edit very carefully to rule out inconsistencies, and we also had to be brutally honest with each other about what we’d written. It’s a quite a test of a friendship.

Did it help having been published before?

Not at all! This was a whole new ball-game. We had decided to write a commercial book, so we chose three agents from the Writer’s Handbook who specialise in this, and submitted three chapters and the synopsis. Luckily for us we got a phone call from one the very next day. Ironically the book was eventually bought by Orion – who’d published four of our previous titles!

Another one in the pipeline?

Yup! We are about to finish another but it’s much scarier writing the second. There’s the weight of expectation.

Any advice for anyone wanting to write with a partner?

Make sure she makes decent coffee.

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