Blog About Co-Writing - Part 2 (The Benefits and Drawbacks of Co-Writing)

If you missed Part 1 on the bare bones history of my collaboration with Laura Morrison, go check it out. I can wait for you. I’m just words on a screen.

All good? On to Part 2…



Benefits of Co-Writing

1) Somebody else cares (about your current project)

At least for me, and I don’t think I’m alone here, the most exciting writing phase is the idea phase. The idea phase is impossible to share outside of cryptic social media posts people will either ignore or pretend their hardest to be excited about. But a co-writer is automatically excited about your ideas! A co-writer has the context to understand your ideas! A co-writer is coming up with her own ideas! This is my favorite part. In some ways, having a co-writer is like being in a fan fiction community of two.

Plus, a co-writer can read a first draft and see the potential. Readers are lovely, but they only come in after a few layers of polish when the mad excitement of a new idea has already been muted to socially acceptable levels.

2) Accountability

Somehow, Laura and I finished a 91,000 word novel in a year where we barely found time to breathe, let alone write. Halving the responsibilities helped, sure, but there was something motivating about knowing somebody else needed me to finish my part before she could continue on. Plus, the sooner I finished, the sooner I could share my new writing. (See Point 1)

3) Unexpected twists

Imagine driving to Denver and handing your buddy the wheel around Omaha while you take a nap. Maybe when you wake up, you’re in Fiji. Suddenly, you get to explore a Fiji plotline you never could have touched in Denver. Or sometimes you need to stop the car and request a boat and a detour to Minneapolis on the way to nearby New Zealand. Co-writing is exactly like that.

4) Keeping the smallest bit of distance and objectivity about the project

Objectivity makes the revising and editing process that much easier, and distance helps an author absorb or blow off criticism as needed. Maybe this is the equivalent of a mom throwing up her hands and declaring, “You sure are your father’s child.” I mean, I love my project, but sometimes it’s going to cut its own hair right before picture day. It happens, and it usually makes for a better story.

Drawbacks of Co-Writing

Most of the “drawbacks” I could come up with are those fake ones a job hopeful would give in an interview to make themselves sound better. “My weakness is that I work too much!” Nobody needs that, so I’ll try to avoid selling you on flexibility and added pressure and constant communication as drawbacks when they ultimately force writer growth.

1) Coordinating schedules

Sometimes Laura had the ball, but she was out of town for the week. Sometimes Laura needed an answer right away, but I had no cell service for the day. Sometimes we missed messages. Sometimes we were inspired to work but couldn’t carry on with the next part on our own. Sometimes summer break* happens. All of this leads to inconsistent writing progress, sometimes to the extent where one or both of us would forget plot points or what we were working on.

2) Shared disappointment

If you’re in the “misery loves company” camp, I guess this might be a benefit. In that case, I lied about the fake drawback thing. But for me, when a project doesn’t take off, it’s so much harder to handle the disappointment for two people instead of just my own. It’s always worse to feel like you’ve let someone else down. The Co-Ed Files couldn’t find a home, and that was disappointing. This time around, the “prequel” is getting quite a few requests to be read by the agenting community. It’s a great feeling, but if they all decline, then what? Since we share the project, we can’t very well take it in a completely different direction without both of us agreeing and understanding what that looks like. We ended up taking a lengthy break between Co-Ed and this latest project, even though be both had plenty of ideas.

✽✽✽✽✽

Obviously, I can think of plenty of drawbacks based around co-writing with an incompatible author. Perhaps matching another author’s writing style would be nearly impossible, or I’d snap the 800th time another person rewrote an entire section for me. Maybe Laura and I should co-write a story about two horribly mismatched authors trying to co-write a story**. Even though Laura is particularly easy to work with, having our own distinct point of view characters and splitting chapters was a must for my sanity. Every team is going to function differently.

Overall, co-writing is amazing, and I’m sure will do more of it in the future. If you have any questions about the nuts and bolts of the tools we used to write a book at the same time, feel free to ask!

*To stay-at-home moms, “summer break” is code for “see you in September.”

**Note to self: do this.

Blog About Co-Writing - Part 1 (The History)

I’ve had a few people ask how co-writing works, so here’s the secret:

…

You write a book with another person.

Blog over.

But, no, really, how does co-writing “work,” you might say. Is it harder than writing a book by yourself? Easier?

Well, yes, it is.

This isn’t going well at all, you might tell me.

You make a good point. Let me try again.

How Laura & I Started Co-Writing

Back in the day, there once was a serial fiction website named JukePop. It was a happy place where Laura Morrison and I met and frolicked with a group of fledgling writers all working on and sharing different pet projects. We encouraged each other and made up fun games for each other and talked incessantly about our work. These were good writing times.

Laura and I enjoyed many of the same things in writing and in life, and we would frequently do first reads for each other and give each other ideas about where to go next or serve as sounding boards for what’s working and not working. In general, I'd say Laura is the better active listener and I am the better idea vomiter. We all have our strengths.

One year, as part of Nanowrimo, we decided to write The Co-Ed Files together. It was magical how that story clicked. We had our two main characters split geographically because they were attending different colleges, and each girl pursued her own mystery. Laura and I would throw out ideas for each other and carve out time to write combined conversations, but the bulk of the writing was separate—two distinct stories we managed to weave together at key points.

Around then, much of our writing crowd tried to dip into the publishing world—self-publishing, traditional publishing, querying for agents indie publishing, short stories, script-writing, podcasting, etc. The publishing world was dark and soul-sucking and filled with faceless rejection and deafening silence. We realized to survive, we would have to work on projects that were fun, things we enjoyed writing despite writing only for ourselves.

During last year’s Nanowrimo season, Laura and I decided to work on a project that was still fun, but possibly an easier sell with a more focused young adult audience. The idea was based around a paper-making book Laura was reading one day. The book advised using poisonous flowers as a decorative paper element, and Laura and I agreed that sounded just like a mystery Felicia and Emily would handle—death by poison paper. Of course a camp where they had summer jobs was a natural setting for this mystery, and suddenly we had the beginnings of an entire story.

We still divided up chapters based on points of view, but the girls were in the same place at the same time a lot more during this mystery. More frequently we had to match the styles of each girls’ speech patterns or behavior, and we had to be pretty comfortable adding description or dialogue or changing things around in each other’s chapters. We left each other a lot of notes. Without writing the first book, I’m not sure we could have known these characters (or each other) well enough to make this work.

The end of The BFF Files was hard to write! It took months of writing and rewriting, schedule coordination and waiting while we sorted through ideas that weren’t quite bringing all our plot threads together. At the same time, our schedules blew up. Laura was juggling the promotion of two (!) different indie-published novels. We both disappeared for days at a time into the black hole of school vacations. Writing time evaporated because life intervened.

Still, eventually, we finished. We each managed to complete a final editing pass and get The BFF Files shipped off to our first round of agents for consideration. Initial response has been good! We’ve learned a lot from our individual forays into publishing, and our collective knowledge is clearly paying off. Will it lead to publication…? Who really knows. Either way, the process has been fun, and it’s been even more fun to share with a friend (who knows a little too much about poisonous plants--I'm just saying).

Next time, I’ll talk about the benefits and drawbacks of co-writing. Until then, go find Laura here:

https://www.lauramorrisonwrites.com/

https://www.facebook.com/landoffritillary/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17380168.Laura_Morrison

Or read this interview:

https://independentbookreview.com/2018/07/19/laura-morrison-interview/

Planetary Politics and Pizza

One of my favorite short stories was turned into a podcast episode by Mariah Avix of 600 Second Saga!

Find the lovely audio version of Planetary Politics and Pizza here: http://insani-x.com/2018/05/09/s3-6-planetary-politics-pizza/

In case you'd rather read, and if you happened to want to read the Director's Cut, the following is the expanded version of that story. You get about 1250 more words of inappropriately funny anecdotes and a lot more conspiracy. Enjoy!

Planetary Politics and Pizza

Jennifer Flath

I’m not sure how much time I have before I succumb to the noxious gasses or molten cheese burns, but I need to explain some things, and this is my only chance. Our planet is a mess. The implosion was arguably the tipping point, but Blargots and Klangers were mortal enemies long before The Incident. I’m not going to bother getting into who blew up whose planet and who was at fault because I know we all study that to death in school. I will say that in some ways, things are worse now that we share one planet. The official edict by the Interplanetary Task Force used the words, “a few stellar centuries of togetherness to sort out issues.” It’s like a planetary buddy bench. In reality, peoples who hate each other are not only forced to live together, they also have to elect a single planetary representative to the Interplanetary Council every three chroncycles. Believe me, elections are ugly: mudslinging, campaign corruption, voter fraud, Blargots mailing piles of wool to unsuspecting Klangers, Klangers boycotting freeze-dried pineapple. It’s embarrassing. Our planet is the laughingstock of the Interplanetary Union.

            The IU is no help, goading us by sending their reporters every year to mock our electoral spectacle. If it’s not a Nan Romaine exposé on edict-violating segregated schools, it’s a Po-No Network street interview about how political debates always end in candidates flinging egg salad at each other. It was one time, ok?

            Before I pass out from heat stroke, I’ll fast forward to me. I joined Open Borders in college and volunteered for six months of humiliating quarantine to participate in a culture-bridging work study swap. My parents were not thrilled with Open Borders, but I knew that was because they were part of the old regime of hate and division, and I was going to fix the planet. Hence, I ignored them and took a job serving endless arugula herring pizzas to horrified Klangers who occasionally turn around and walk out the door after spotting me at the counter. Their reaction could be an overdue realization about arugula herring pizza as a crime against vegetation and sea life, but probably not.

            See, Blargots and Klangers don’t eat together. It’s not an official law anymore, not since the Interplanetary Edict on food segregation, but Klangers specifically serve food so disgusting no Blargot would ever set foot inside one of their restaurants. This particular work study sold me on the opportunity to “meet each other across the table” to “build a bridge of friendship over food.” The informational holobrochure showed a bridge made out of forks and spoons and puffy loaves of bread with little cartoon animals shaking hands. The brochure specifically left off all the bits about how bad herring smells baking in a pizza oven. At least I don’t have to eat the food I try to serve with a culture-bridging smile.

            Phew. Hot. Speeding up. Today, seconds before Leafy Fish Pizza was about to close, I was kicking out my second to last table. I did this by politely asking the family if they needed anything and standing there while they threw their extra slices into boxes and shoved their kids out the door with a look of horror. My next move was to lock the door and work on ousting the weird table full of people in suits who were looking around shiftily and hadn’t ordered anything. Before I could head over, Blargot Rep Vin walked in, warming my heart. He was surely attempting to heal the fragmented spirit of our hate-weary peoples. Then Klanger Rep Klass strolled in. Uh oh. After three hours of screaming, their Interplanetary-mandated debate last night ended in both candidates taking selfies while smearing each other in frosting. There’s nothing more humiliating. It’s the only thing our cultures agree on.

            Now frosting-free, the mortal enemies both veered toward the table occupied by the shifty, overdressed people including a woman with distinctly aquamarine hair peeking out from under her hood and sunglasses. She could only be reporter Nan Romaine. Sensing something fishier than the pizza, I grabbed an arugula herring monstrosity under the pretense of delivering it to their table and edged closer.

            They were having a completely civil chat. Vin wasn’t the only Blargot there either. I hadn’t noticed before because they had hats pulled over their distinctive ear bulbs. Despite this unprecedented gathering, no food was being flung, and no cutlery was being used to threaten harm. I felt actual tears spring to my eyes. Maybe this was the cycle things were going to change. Maybe all the “Heal the Planet” campaigns had finally taken root and were blossoming into a beautiful, glorious flower of friendship. Take that, Grandpa. No more Thanksholidays listening to him blather about Klanger barbarians and how we could never coexist.

            Then I heard what they were talking about.

“If I denounce wool,” said Rep Vin, “can Nan incite some rioting?”

            “Perfect,” cackled a Suit Guy. “I’ll manufacture a wool shortage to drive up prices.”

            Wait, this suited man had been in all the digi-papers yesterday. He had just bought up another wool-processing facility last chroncycle. Every Klanger in Leafy Fish had been grumbling about sheep monopolies and businesses stepping all over the little guy. The image transmission center in the corner had been a constant stream of Rep Klass on all the Klanger news programs saying she would fight for the people. “Wool will never buy me,” she had insisted, banging on her podium. She was always banging on things to make her point. I thought she was ridiculous, but Klangers ate that stuff up. I wondered how they would feel now watching her rifling through an envelope full of money.

            Gasp! Suit Man Two was sliding Vin his own envelope. What had I uncovered?

            I dumped the horror of a pizza on the nearest table and fumbled with my communi-watch. I needed to record this. Everyone had to know our political strife was being manufactured by bought politicians and the businesses behind them. I saw visions of myself taking down our strained political system, righting wrongs, creating a—

            “Why is she staring?” somebody snapped. “Are you taking video?”

            The mayor. The lady right next to Vin was the Klanger mayor. She was a horrible person, always talking about purging Blargots from the homeland. She had been fined three times by the ITF. “Civilized societies don’t use the word ‘purged’ in reference to their citizens,” the stern ITF representative said in his last State of the Planet Check-in Transmission. That’s when the delightful “pineapple” slur started up, but I digress.

            “No—no Mayor,” I stammered, my mind plodding slower than a Klanger airship. “I just wanted to…umm…” Obviously I should have taken up undercover espionage as a hobby instead of picketing the segregated Healing Centre every weekend.

            The Mayor glared at Klass. “Why does she recognize me? Why isn’t the facial imager working?”

            “Only works on Klangers,” Vin whispered, leaning in. How nice they were all such good friends. “Why are you here?”

            “I work here,” I bleated. Nobody else was seeing this? My eyes darted around the pizzeria. It was empty because I had just kicked everybody out. Espionage is really not my thing.

            “I’ll take that communiwatch,” Vin snarled at me.

The Klanger digi-papers were always saying Vin’s nose looked like a pig snout, and right now I had to admit they had a point. He was supposed to be the first Blargot representative to the Council since the Klangers had that population surge years ago. The Klangers had paid families to have children so they could take over! Despicable! It was years before Blargot cloning technology could catch up, and the court battles declaring clones legal voters took almost twice as long. Vin was supposed to fight for our rights. He was supposed to be a champion for unity. He was supposed to be above the voter fraud. He had been the whistle-blower who had caught that city council registering dead pets to vote. I raised money for his “PlanetUnited” Campaign. I even had a flashing hat with his grinning face on it! We all trusted him, and he was full of lies.

To be fair, he was working hand in hand with his enemies, but I had a hard time seeing this as progress. Surely Blargots and Klangers could all agree mass manipulation was not the type of unity we needed.

Not appreciating my hesitation, another Suit Guy whipped out a spiral-barreled gun. He wasn’t Blargot or Klanger, and that gun was technology I had never seen before. The way things were going, I wouldn’t have been surprised if he turned out to be the Interplanetary General.

“Congrats, kid,” he sneered, “for uncovering the biggest political conspiracy since Earthworm Cove. Hurry up.”

            With trembling fingers operating in slow motion, I peeled off the communiwatch and moved to place it on the table next to a tall glass of oregano-flavored cucumber juice.

            Speaking of, a bucket of cucumber juice would be incredibly welcome right now. And the last time I accidentally ingested a cucumber, I threw up for three days, so that’s saying something. What kind of monsters make juice out of cucumbers? The evil green tubes can’t even decide whether they’re fruits or vegetables. I should really stay focused on the story, but it’s so hot. I can’t even think.

            I needed to run. I needed to go back in time and skip the Open Borders meeting with its inspirational handouts and its snazzy virtual holotours insisting I would change the world, one stomach at a time. I needed a distraction.

            As the communiwatch dropped from my fingers, I reached for the cucumber juice. Disgusting little seeds sloshed through the milky liquid flecked with green bits of oregano as my hand wrapped around the glass. I’m not sure what my plan was. I’m not prepared to give myself credit for even having a plan. The moment I tried to fling the glass forward, the nameless man in a suit hit the trigger on his death ray.

            Bzzzt. The sound vibrated through my whole body, but I wasn’t dead. I felt the briefest of instants of relief over not being dead. I was in a different world—flat, shiny tiles stretching for miles in all directions.

And then the shadow swept down over me. I looked up. I was not in a different world at all. I was in the same world. The same horrible world of injustice and fraud. I was the only one who had changed, and not in some sort of metaphorical way where my eyes were opened to the cold, cruel way things worked in the real world. I was actually two centimeters tall.

Mottled yellow hands the size of orcaphants reached for me. I dove under a smashed arugula leaf. My only hope was the loose tile in the corner where the cleaning crew plugged in the sani-blaster at night. The tile covered a tube that went all the way down to the extra generator. Ugh, honestly, if the owners of Leafy Fish didn’t feel the need to bake putrid herring all day, their restaurant wouldn’t need a molecular scrub every night. Although I shouldn’t complain about them too much. Mr. and Mrs. Kingtot only took my forced hiring to court a little bit, and I don’t take the sign in the corner that says, “We support diverse hiring! (Especially from the hours of 8.09.43 to 60.87.02 on alternate weekends)” too personally.

Where was I? My head feels so foggy, and I can’t… Oh, the power tube was my only hope to get away. Right.

Using the giant leaf as a shield, I made a dash for the corner.

“Get her, Vin!” A voice that big sounded more like thunder than speech, but I assumed it was saying something like that.

“I’m not touching arugula!” Vin’s voice boomed back. “Do you know what kind of rash that stuff gives me?”

I was slammed to the ground. All was darkness as my leaf was clamped to the tile floor over top of me. Then the floor began to slide. I don’t know how to describe this, but the way a spider feels when somebody clamps a glass on top of it and then scoots a piece of paper underneath so said person doesn’t have to touch the icky spider—that’s exactly what was happening to me.

My world turned upside down. Again, this is not a metaphor. Yellow hands righted the glass, sending me shooting down the slippery sides of my glass prison. I thudded onto the bottom. I gave my best effort at screaming and pounding on the glass sides, but the eerie elongated faces of the giants outside cared nothing for my struggles. I knew too much.

I was tossed in the pizza oven and soon sinking knee-deep in the molten mozzarella of what should have been the last delivery of the day. At my size, my only exit is kilometers away across a burning metal grate broken up by chasms of licking fire. I’ll never make it.

They went back to their meeting like nothing happened. I can hear them out there, arguing about whether civil war is in their best interests and whether or not to loop in the police chief.

            I have just enough time to rearrange the herring to spell, “Vote Non-Allied!” before I succumb to the heat. Politics and fish pizza—they’re killers.

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