How to Find a Writing Partner: Our Story of Collaboration Without Social Media

This post was adapted from Writing Off Social: The Podcast, Episode 100.

We didn’t set out to build a business. We just wanted a friend.

If you’d told either of us, years ago, that we’d end up co-hosting a podcast together, we probably would have laughed. Not because it seemed impossible, but because for most of our writing lives, we were doing this alone—chasing the same dream from two different states, two different seasons of motherhood, and two very different relationships with social media.

But somewhere in the mess of blog hops, viral posts, and burnout, God was quietly stitching our stories together. This is that story—and through it, we’re sharing what we’ve learned about finding (and keeping) a real creative partnership.

Sandy’s Long Road Through the Blogging Years

Sandy’s writing life started back in the early 2000s, wandering the Christian Women’s section of Barnes & Noble as a sleep-deprived mom, fantasizing about one day having her own book on one of those shelves. Her first writers conference—She Speaks, in 2005— cracked something open. Watching the Proverbs 31 team teach and collaborate on stage, she remembers thinking, for the first time, that she wanted friendships like that. Women who spoke her language. Women she might someday build something with.

That longing followed her through years of starting and abandoning blogs, through the “hey days of blogging” when everyone gathered in the comments, and eventually into the all-consuming world of platform-building. One post went viral in 2014—over a million views in a matter of days—and for a moment it felt like her ship had come in. But she couldn’t sustain it. The growth flatlined, though the taste of it kept her doubling down for years afterward.

By 2019, she’d hit a wall. Publishers were now asking for 50,000 to 100,000 followers, a number that had crept up steadily from the 5,000 she’d once been told to aim for. One acquisitions editor took a single look at her platform numbers and handed her proposal back without so much as a conversation. It was a gut punch after eleven years of effort—and it became the moment that finally pushed her toward a full social media hiatus.

How We Found Each Other

We met through Hope*Writers, the online community founded by Emily P. Freeman, in 2019. By that time, Mary K. had gone all-in on Instagram and Sandy had already started pulling back. When Sandy announced her farewell to social media later that year, Mary K.—utterly exhausted from trying to parent two small kids while chasing hashtags and engagement—reached out to ask about it. That conversation moved to Voxer, and it never really stopped.

For the next several years, we talked about everything: motherhood, marriage, building houses, and through it all: social media. Mary K. was collaborating on projects like New Mercies for Moms and freelancing for Orphan Outreach, and Sandy watched how she worked—her integrity, her care, her commitment to doing things well. Mary K. was watching Sandy too, the way she prepared for every talk, weighed every opportunity with prayer, and showed up fully for the women in her audience.

Long before we ever talked about starting a business, Sandy asked Mary K. to be a beta reader for her second book. That low-stakes ask turned into years of brainstorming, editing, and cheering each other on—and it planted a seed neither of us fully recognized yet.

A Friendship Long Before a Business

We didn’t actually meet in person until the summer of 2022, when we attended a writers conference together—and roomed together, despite more than a few jokes about one of us possibly being a serial killer. We turned out to be excellent conference buddies. We wanted to rest at the same time, debrief at the same time, hide from people at the same time. That kind of compatibility is rare, and we knew it.

The Moment It All Clicked

At that same conference, we found ourselves surrounded by social media advice at every turn—even a session teaching attendees to stagger their likes and comments across different days just to keep followers hooked. Standing in the lobby afterward, more than a little exasperated, we asked each other where the resources were for writers who wanted to build a career without social media.

And then it hit us: maybe we were the ones who were supposed to build that.

Because of everything that had already happened—years of pouring into each other, learning how the other worked, praying for an opportunity to collaborate—stepping into a business together felt almost seamless. Three years and a hundred episodes later, here we are.

What We’ve Learned About Partnership

The Real Risks

Partnership isn’t automatically easier just because you like each other. No matter how well two people get along, there will be friction. It takes honest communication, a willingness to disagree well, real compromise, and a lot of grace. If you like being in charge, or you’re used to controlling your own schedule, sharing decisions with someone else will stretch you—even in a partnership as good as ours.

The Real Rewards

But with the right partner, so much gets lighter. The ideas double. The reach doubles. When one of us is tired, the other can carry more of the weight for a while. Traveling for the business isn’t lonely anymore. And after years of writing online alone—wondering if a given step was wise or foolish, with no one to ask—having a constant sounding board has been one of the greatest gifts of this season.

If You’re Longing for a Partner Too

We understand that our dynamics and the way our story unfolded can’t be replicated exactly. But we do think there’s something to learn from how it happened, if you’re feeling that same longing for collaboration.

This works for you if you recognize any of the following in your own life right now:

You feel a persistent desire to collaborate, even though you can’t picture with whom yet. That desire is worth praying over—it may be God-given, planted long before the right person shows up.
You’re willing to be generous first—pouring into someone else’s work before you know what, if anything, it will lead to.
You notice how a person treats others, handles conflict, and follows through on what they say they’ll do. Character shows up in the small things long before it shows up in a shared project.
You’re paying attention to who’s already in your life, already pouring into you, already running at your pace. Sometimes the future partner is someone you’ve been talking to for years.
You’re open to starting small. A beta-reading favor, a one-off conversation, a low-stakes ask—long before either of us said the word “business,” we were simply helping each other.

If you’re waiting for a sign that it’s possible to build something meaningful with a partner—across states, time zones, and completely different seasons of life— let this be it. If God could knit our story together the way he did, we believe he can do the same for you.

This post was reformatted from our original transcript by Claude and edited for accuracy by Mary K.