This paper reports on an out of school creative writing collaboration between a grandmother (the author) and her then eleven-year-old granddaughter, and suggests ways in which this may be relevant to writing in school. The narrative is framed and analysed in the light of Donald Graves' concepts of process writing. The paper highlights the challenges and opportunities of the collaborative process of writing a novel and what the author learned about herself and her granddaughter as writers. The collaboration highlights the value of teachers being writers and sharing their writing with students. The final section reflects on some of the possibilities of collaborative writing in the classroom.