Tuesday, October 16, 2018

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.

Monday, October 15, 2018

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:




Or read this interview: