It's coming up to school holidays, and for me that means a lot more shifts of work and a lot less time to get together with my friend and write. It really got me thinking about how important having someone else to write with can be for me.
Everyone makes jokes about how writers are antisocial, that they sit in dark rooms with only the light from a computer screen to see by and just smash out thousands of words. Maybe it works for some people, but this doesn't work for me, that's not to say I can't sit down on my own and just write, but sometimes having someone else there is good for me.
I have a great friend who I stole off my little brother who is also a writer. We try and get together as often as we can, but when I can't get together with her I find myself not writing any where near as often as I should be. When you commit yourself to meeting up with someone and working together, you're going to be forced to get some writing done. You don't want to talk to them to much and interrupt them from their writing and feel like an arse for the rest of the day, so you're going to write and keep your mouth shut unless you are in desperate need of help.
If you have a writing partner who knows quite a bit about your characters and story, you can bounce ideas off them when you're stuck. I've been so thankful for my friend many times in this regard, she's kept me from throwing my book across the room in frustration when I'm stuck for ideas. No matter how small it is, having a second opinion from someone can help you work more efficiently in the long run.
Other people also have a lot of knowledge in areas that you might not have any knowledge in. It saves you going on Google and finding yourself lost in the world of research instead of working on getting those words onto pages.
They're also really good motivation to keep you from getting distracted, if they catch you on Facebook they're going to tell you off for it unless they're on Facebook themselves and then you're just not doing your job properly. You don't need to be looking at cat photos when you've got a novel that needs writing, and your friend is going to be the devil on your shoulder telling you this when you aren't strong enough to tell yourself.
You don't have to write with someone who is writing the same book as you. The only similarities between my book and my friends book is that they're both romance books. You don't even have to have a friend who has the same writing style, I'm a plotter by nature and my friend is more of a pantser.
When it comes to finding someone to write with, you need to be friends. Friends aren't clones of the same person, and neither should people you write with have to be. If you find someone you can trust, you can talk to, and you're happy to spend hours at a time in their presence, you've found yourself a pretty good friend to write with.
Writing with other people might not work for you, and that's fine! It's like pantsing and plotting, some people are one or the other and some people are a bit of both. You always have to find what works for you.