Home Posts tagged "collaboration"

Tag: collaboration

In the Throes of Editing

Just a quick post today, lovelies, because Kit and I are still wrestling bears editing our novel for your future reading delight. I’ll be honest: it’s been a really tough slog. Not because I can’t take critique — I’ve been in critique groups for years, and have gotten past the initial defensive reaction. When someone like our awesome editor KD points out a problem, I listen. (And then decide whether the passage in question should be fixed in a different way, or should actually stay as is while I go fix something elsewhere that led to the perceived problem…) Not because I can’t stand the thought of changing a word. I’ve long since gotten over the fear of messing up my first drafts. (I mean, first drafts are rough by nature, but there’s something raw and pure about them — that’s the way the story came out of your head, and it can be hard to contemplate making it different. But first drafts aren’t canon. Or maybe they are, and second drafts are the fanfiction that seeks to improve upon them? Good grief, I think it’s too late in the day for analogies.)

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Co-Writing for Fun and Profit

Didja miss me? Well, too bad…I’m back! Today I’d like to share a bit about Turtleduck Press’s next novel (title and cover art forthcoming in due time). Kit and I have both talked in this space about the fact that we’re co-writing, but we haven’t gone into any detail about the experience…until now. It’s not Kit’s first time co-writing a novel; I’ve done it before too, but not for many many years. And I’ve blogged before about having a major crisis of faith as a writer last year. So I was a little apprehensive about how it would go. In fact, it’s been quite a smooth process — at least as smooth as novel writing ever is! It’s helped immensely to have somebody to bounce ideas off, to trade chapters with (we each wrote one point of view, in alternating chapters), to keep each other motivated. Having two minds to work on the worldbuilding and plotting has not meant that we’ve each done half as much work as on a solo novel, but it’s certainly helped — I think we’ve done a better job on this story than either of us could have on our own. Luckily, we’re on a similar — though not identical — wavelength when it comes to planning. We did a pile of worldbuilding first (it’s a fantasy novel, more or less), then identified our respective characters and wrote some sample chapters. Those went out the window and we started over, with a clearer idea this…

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The Dreaded Middle

So Kit Campbell and I are working on a secret project for Turtleduck Press. It’s a novel that we’re co-writing, and you’ll hear more about it in due time, after it’s been made suitable for public consumption. In the meantime, though, we’re wading through the first draft. Well, I can’t speak for Kit, but I’m wading. Or wallowing, maybe. I’ve passed the halfway point and am flailing around in the late middle, feeling rather as if I’m trapped in Zeno’s dichotomy paradox. I’m also fighting the deep-seated conviction that the story sucks (or my half of it, anyway — I’m not about to say that for Kit’s half!). However, I’m not the only one. Check this out:

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