This is the End

 

            Okay, here's the deal: I hate blogging. I have for a long time.

I started blogging as a way to reassure my friends and family who were worried that all I was writing were dark stories, mostly with monsters and somebody (or somebodies) dying. I wanted them to see that I still had what they would refer to as fun. A good percentage of my posts had to do with my son and me, and were a way to keep my family aware of what was going on with him as well.

He's fifteen now, and he has school, and video games, and a girlfriend (whom I love, she's a terrific kid), and most of all he's fifteen, so the last thing he wants to do is spend any time with his parents. Hasn't wanted to for better than two years, really. And without doing stuff with him anymore, all I have to blog about is myself . . . and I think I'm done with that.

See, there are people persons, and then there are people like me; shy, lacking in self-confidence, socially awkward, having social anxiety—call it what you will—I'm usually uncomfortable talking to people, and it's because of one main fact: I'm 99 percent sure whomever I'm talking to, whether friends and family or total strangers, couldn't give a shit what I have to say. It's not them, it's me. I'm positive my opinions are shitty, or if what I have to say is okay then the way I'm saying it is shitty, or it could be something wrong I haven't even thought of yet, but I'm pretty sure they're wishing they were somewhere else right then. Anywhere else.

That carries over into my blogging, too. No matter what I write about, if I'm writing as me, I'm convinced no one's really going to care. I stumble over words and phrases. I struggle to come up with sentences.I rewrite passages again and again, then edit the whole thing a half dozen times, just looking for the part (there may be one, there may be many), where my reader will say What the fuck am I reading this shit for? and bail, lip curled in disgust at my wasting his time.

I know people—bloggers, good ones, you should read them—who complain that it may take them as much as an hour to write a blog post, when ususally they bang one out in thirty to forty minutes. They whine about the wasted time. The New Year's post that I kicked aside this evening when I decided to call it quits was just over a thousand words long and took me eight or ten hours to write, spread over the course of three days. Let me repeat that: eight or ten hours. A thousand words. And I hated about seventy-five percent of them. The other twenty five percent sucked. And I grew more frustrated and angry the longer it went on. This is what blogging often is for me: hours of frustration and trying to get the words out while convinced no one's going to read them anyway.

I've tried to draw out some kind of response in the past, asking questions, requesting suggestions, even posting polls. They've never worked. And I'm not pointing my finger at anyone and saying You people didn't support me, either; I simply can't draw people out like some other bloggers can. I get the occasional response on Facebook, but I could do that without the blog, without the aggravation and frustration. Without the wasted eight or ten hours.

When I write stories, though, people respond; I'm enjoying it then, and they're enjoying it with me. When I speak as a character, I don't stumble. I struggle a lot less. I have fun then, and love what I'm doing. Is it really any wonder that I'm more comfortable writing in someone's fictional skin when I'm so uncomfortable living in my own? I could have taken that eight or ten hours and worked on the novella I'm writing right now, or banged out a chapter in the collaboration I'm taking part in again, or maybe outlined something for at least one of the three submission calls I saw today that I want to respond to. A few people asked me over the course of 2017, Hey, isn't it time we saw a novel or something from you?

I think they're right.

If you're one of the dozen or so people who've actually been reading along with me here every post, please, if you've not looked me up on Facebook, do so now. I'd love to hear from you. We can keep in touch. You'll know what goes on with me even better over there. If you get a kick out of my writing, and want to keep reading it every month, check out my Monster Movie Madness column over at Cinema Knife Fight—I understand my reviews can be pretty entertaining.

For me, though, I'm going to focus on what feels better for me, and what people seem to enjoy more—and more people seem to enjoy. The banner at the top of the page says I write character-driven dark fiction, so, for now at least, fuck this blog, I'm out of here.

I'll see you in the story books.

I'll Tell You What I Want, What I Really, Really Want.

 

Hey there, Readers!

I was wondering aloud what to write for this month’s blog post, and someone pointed out that I’d recently finished reading for an anthology I’m editing, and I could write about all the fun I had doing that. And she was right, it was fun, and I read a lot of really good stories. But that’s the thing: there were a lot of stories.

Now, I’m not complaining about the actual number of stories—in fact, I’m thrilled with the sheer quantity of submissions we received, both because it spoke to a lot of interest in our project and because it gave me plenty of material to work with in creating the best book I could. That was the goal, of course, to put together the best book possible. That meant I had to read through the entire pile of stories searching out the ones I thought best fit our theme. Knowing I was going to have to do that, and to help funnel stories I might be able to use in my direction, before we actually began soliciting work we created and posted a submission call.

A submission call, for readers who may not know, is a statement of want. It’s a written indication of what an editor or publisher is looking for to help give writers the best shot at getting their work seriously considered for publication. Sounds pretty simple, right? It’s something we’ve all been doing since we were children: we tell people “I want this.”

So, since I was putting together a humorous horror anthology, I didn’t just say Send me your stories. I said Send me your funny frighteners. Make me shiver and giggle. I said, and I quote: “What we’re looking for: Original stories that are both entertaining and fall firmly in the horror genre. Think Jeff Strand, Joe Lansdale, Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland. Make us die laughing.”

While going through everything that came my way, however, I read romance stories. I read fantasy tales. I read some straight horror and I read some funny stuff with not a whiff of the scary. And some of those stories were good, I mean really good, to the point that I was sad I couldn’t accept them. But I couldn’t. Because they didn’t fit the theme—you know, that I outlined in my submission call.

Now if you’re a fledgling writer, someone new to the writing for money game, you might not know about submission calls. You may have heard of them but never dealt with them. If that describes you, then ignore this next bit. It doesn’t apply to you. We all had to start somewhere, we’ve all been where you are, and we’re not going to fault you for not knowing stuff you don’t even know you need to know. You can, of course, read along and learn from others’ mistakes.

If, however, you’re not new to the writing game, and you’ve been doing this for a while, and you know what a submission call is, and you knowingly submit something—no matter how well written or loving polished—that is obviously outside the parameters set forth by the editor/publisher, well . . . you’re kind of an idiot.

Seriously. If I’ve told you what I want, what I need, why the hell would you waste your time and mine submitting something you know I don’t want? I’ll give you an example I’ve used in the past. We’ve all gone out to eat, right? Been in a restaurant? I don’t care what restaurant— from the biggest, most expensive steakhouse (sushi bar, vegan establishment, whatever) down to the shittiest, dingiest roadside diner, they all work for this example.

You check the menu, tell your server what you want . . . and they bring you something completely different. You ordered the steak, they bring you the chicken. You asked for the vegan special, they slap a big juicy burger down in front of you. You clearly said “The meat lover’s pizza, please,” and they bring you a Caesar salad.

Are you satisfied? Are you happy? Or do you look at the server and say, “This isn’t what I ordered”? They’re not short staffed, they’re not in a big rush, they had plenty of time to look at the pad they wrote the order on, and you’re paying for this meal.

You send it back. Of course you send it back. And maybe they’re just having a bad day, but you’re going to think just a little less of them than the server who gets it right for you every time—and the next time you go there, you’ll likely remember your disappointment and hope to avoid that server if you can.

The editor/publisher is the customer in that example, and you, the writer, you’re the server. You’re also the cook, the one in the background putting your heart into the product you’re handing out. Wouldn’t you do everything you could not to be that server, delivering that lovingly prepared food to the wrong people?

I seem to go on about this again and again, but whether you’re an inexperienced writer who still has that new car smell or a seasoned scribbler with leather skin and ink for blood, submission calls are important. They’re a direct communication from the one you’re trying to sell a story to, where they’re telling you how to do it. Some of those stories were too long, some to short, some, as I said above, were even the wrong genre and seemed like the writer hadn’t read the submission call at all, but I’m serious when I say some of those stories were terrific. I would have loved to have read them in some other context, but here, in this context, all I could do was wonder why these people were shooting themselves in the foot.

There’s another category I want to talk about before I go, another level to this scenario (new writers, pay attention!): if your story’s been rejected for being outside the parameters of the submission call, for any reason (it’s too long, too short, wrong genre, didn’t include the one specific thing the call was asking for, whatever), don’t argue. Don’t tell the editor (the customer) your eighteenth century period piece would work well to offset the other stories in their Sci-fi book. Conversely, don’t voice the opinion that your romance set on the planet Kerfuffle in the year 3,071 would add spice to their old west mystery anthology. And your five hundred word story might just be fast moving and full of action, but arguing that it would inject some life into their tired, slow-moving book filled with stories from 4,000–8,000 words doesn’t make you a good salesperson.

It makes you, in their minds at least, an asshole.

Just to check, let’s go back to the above restaurant example and see what we think of our fictitious server when he offers us similar responses when we say we’d really prefer to eat what we ordered.

“Oh, forget the steak—I know you’ll like the chicken better.”

“I know you ordered the vegan meal, but, seriously, you need to get some protein into you. You’re looking a little peaky.”

“What? The pizza? Look, honey, do you really think someone with your hips should mow down on a meat-lover’s?”

Asshole. Asshole. Asshole. And the worst part is that while looking a little like an idiot could be someone merely having a bad day, or not knowing any better, being an asshole actually takes a little effort—and it definitely gets you remembered.

So, writers out there both new and old: submission calls are important tools and following them works in your favor; people do have bad days, and every once in a while we all look like idiots, but we should try to avoid it; and, for God’s sake, try not to be an asshole.

Now, I have to go write a story for a submission call I’m following, for a publisher looking for pizza-based horror. Yes, there are some weird submission calls out there. And though I already have a few unpublished horror stories I could send them, even some of the proper size, none of them fit that submission call exactly; they’re all missing one key element. So I’m writing a new story.

It will be from 1,000–5,000 words. It will be horror. And, by God, there will be pizza.

 

Talk to you later.

Author’s Note:

While preparing to post this to Writer in Progress, I’ve noticed I sound a little bitchy. I’m leaving the bitchy (it was how I felt when I wrote it), but wish to make one distinction: asking the editor/publisher why a particular piece didn’t work for them is not the same as telling them they’re wrong or trying to change their minds about what they want. Asking why a piece didn’t work is simply you as a writer looking for feedback, something we all crave in our efforts to do this better. Some editors will provide feedback, some won’t (sometimes there’s just no time), but no one will fault you for looking for it.

Author’s note recap:

Asking for a little feedback: a writer looking to improve, which is a good thing.

Insisting they accept the Caesar salad: asshole.

~fin~ 

Unpopular

 

I’m going to let you in on a little secret about myself today. It’s nothing huge, simply an unpopular opinion I have that I usually keep quiet about. But what the hell, I can let my thousands of readers in on it, right? Okay, hundreds. Tens? Uh . . . readers. I can let my readers in on it. Reader.

Hi, Mom!

For the love markets. Those websites and ezines—or even print anthologies destined for Amazon—where there’s no pay involved for the authors. Where we’re asked to just give our hard work away, for free, for the love of the genre, or writing itself, or exposure, or somesuch bullshit. I hear all the time about how evil they are, both online and when I attend (and sometimes sit on) event panels about writing. I was on a couple of panels last month (October is the horror writer’s busy time), and it was said at both of them: writers deserve to get paid; FTL projects weaken the market; don’t fall for the line we’ll pay you in exposure because (pro tip:) people die of exposure; you should never, ever give anything for an FTL publisher, because it means even you don’t think enough of your own work to insist you get paid.

I’ve heard all that. Hell, I’ve said all that. But here’s my shameful, dark little secret: I don’t really think FTL markets are all that bad.

I’ll break the litany down for you.

Do I believe writers deserve to get paid?

You bet your ass we do. I know we do. Unless you’ve done it, you have no idea what kind of work goes into even the shortest piece of good writing—hell sometimes making it the shortest takes the most work!

Do FTL markets weaken the writing market as a whole?

I don’t know. I know I’ve seen essays insisting they do, and I’ve found some fairly persuasive arguments in there, but for myself, I’m just not sure. Perhaps I’ll come to a decision about this someday—I’m growing in this business all the time—but for now I’m content to read all the essays that come my way without comment: I just don’t know enough yet.

Do people die of exposure?

Of course they do, but not the kind of exposure certain publishers are talking about. What they mean is they’ll help you get your name out there, put your work in front of a bunch of eyes, and isn’t that something every writer wants? If people just see what I’m doing, the new writer thinks, they’ll love it, and look for more of it. They’ll clamor for it, I know they will!

No, they won’t, little lads and lassies. Not the way you’re thinking. FTL markets vary about as much as smaller paying publishers do, but chances are still good that if they’re not paying you, they’re not going to pump all that saved cash into professional editing or a decent cover. Those things cost money, boys and girls, often (and sadly) more than what the authors would be getting paid anyway. Without those two things, your FTL market isn’t going to have a distribution higher than the number of friends I have on Facebook, and hell, I can reach all those people myself.

I’m on the fence about this one, though, as I have had a certain amount of success getting my name out there with work I’ve given away. I write a monthly movie review column for fun and exposure. Has it been fun? Big yes on that one; looking for films to review has gotten me to see some gems I may have otherwise missed. The exposure part . . . well, that’s harder to gauge. I can say that after writing reviews of the films I did pick up Twitter followers from the cast and producers of the movies Wolfcop and Wyrmwood: Armageddon Road, and I have been approached by a production company or two about reviewing their films. I suppose it depends on where you’re putting your FTL work, and I may have simply been lucky.

Does giving something to an FTL publisher mean even you don’t think enough of your own work to insist you get paid?

Possibly. But at the beginning of our writing careers, some of us actually feel that way. And you know what? We’re probably right. We’re just happy to have anything we can point to and say That, that right there; someone else, someone I don’t even know, likes that thing I wrote enough to come out and publicly say “I want it.”

I know of writers who are bastions of self-confidence, who assume that if they wrote it, it must be good. But not every writer is like that. Some writers, myself included, walk on the scene with almost enough self-confidence to fill a peanut shell. Without taking the nut out first. I’ve been doing this since the end of 2010, and I still lack self-confidence; pushing the SEND button on a submission fills my stomach with Mothra-sized butterflies because I’m sure I could have done something better, or written a more powerful story, or something.

The first story I ever had accepted was to an FTL market. I knew what it was, and didn’t care: I wanted to see my name somewhere. Anywhere. The acceptance email, for all it’s bland, form-letterness, still gave me that weepy They like me, they really like me feeling. The queue of accepted work was so long for that ezine, the wait between acceptance and publication so prodigious, my second accepted story was actually published first—in a paying market.

For a while there I was submitting anywhere, pay, non-pay, I didn’t care, just so long as I didn’t lose my nerve and stop submitting. I got acceptances—some for pay, but more for non—and my confidence grew. As it did, my target audience for submissions changed, and I was looking to get into more and more paying markets. It’s more challenging to get into a paying market; there’s more competition, and it’s just all-around cooler if someone says they like your stuff enough to pay you for it. And, like I said above, it’s a lot of work putting out good fiction; just because my work has been getting better, doesn’t mean it’s been getting any easier. Actually, doing all the things I didn’t know to do when I started means it’s actually more work than back then.

Good thing it’s work I love.

That was all in the beginning.

Now, every market I submit to is—with a couple of notable exceptions—a paid market. Every small accolade I’ve received has been for something that was, in some way, making me a little money, as is everything you’ll see me mention in a bio or query letter. I’ve come a long way as a writer from those first submissions, and though I still have all the self-confidence of Dumbo without his feather and an anchor strapped to his ass, I’ve been doing this long enough and gotten enough feedback to suck it up and say that yeah, I’m a pretty damn good writer, and if you want my best work you’re going to have to pay me.

When I hear the arguments against FTL markets though, for all that they make sense to me, I can’t help but remember that terrified younger me, convinced what I was writing was shit but writing it anyway, and just hoping for a little encouragement. I remember that guy and I remember a couple of well-timed acceptance letters, and I thank God those for the love publishers were right there, right then. If you’re an established writer who never needed a crutch, or a new writer who doesn’t want one, then good for you. I’m honestly happy for you, and wish you tight writing and rocking stories for the rest of your days. If, however, you’re more tentative—even terrified—then FTL markets might be just the confidence builder you need. You can always outgrow them if you want, and leave them behind.

After all, you, like me, are nothing more than a writer in progress.

Our Collaboration―Part 3: Is It A Book?

 I've been blogging lately about the experience I had writing a collaboration with my writing partner, Stacey Longo. Coincidentally, she has, too. If you've just stumbled across this post and not read the ones that came before it―or even just skipped one in the series―this will all make a lot more sense if you go back and read what you've missed before trying to make sense of what I'm sharing today. The best thing would be to read them in their order of appearance:

My First Post     Stacey's First Post     My Second Post     Stacey's Second Post [edit: Links to Stacey's blog removed 7/22/2021 as her blog appears defunct]

Yup, it seems we even collaborate when writing about collaborating. All caught up? Good! On with the show.

~ ~ * * ~ ~

So Stacey and I had this thing.

It looked like a book. I mean, there were lots of words―lots of chapters, even―and there were quite a few characters in there doing all kinds of stuff. So it looked like a book.

I shipped the file to the printer and let it run awhile―and it ran for a while. And when it was all done I took the whole manuscript over to my comb-binder, punched the holes, slipped the sheets into the open comb, took it out of the machine, and hefted it.

It felt like a book.

I dropped it on my desk from about a foot up, grinning at the healthy thunk.

Christ, it even sounded like a book. But was it a book? Or was it, as I've had happen in the past, merely an attempt at a book?

I was about to find out. I sat down to read the manuscript all the way through for the first time, settling in for the long haul.

Now, what usually happens when I try to read anything of mine, especially first draft, is I read it in fits and starts, stopping along the way to repair fractured grammar, fix typos, and rewriting bad story elements on the fly, sometimes adding or deleting whole pages of text. It makes for a very slow read-through, and effectively keeps me from looking at the work as a whole, as, well, a story. But that's when I'm reading my work on my laptop, Chromebook, or tablet―hell, even my phone―and we'd kind of edited this thing as we wrote it, passing it back and forth, each of us reviewing the chapter we'd just been handed before trying to write our own to follow. I think I mentioned last month that we'd even gone back and added a needed chapter close to the beginning before we'd even finished the first draft. I'd printed out a hard copy specifically so I couldn't do any rewriting on the fly. Oh, sure, I had the manuscript in one hand and a red pen in the other, line editing as I went because I just can't help it anymore, but I was going to look at this as a whole story; as a book. And you know what? It was―

I'm going to break away for a moment to let you in on a little secret: at a certain point―usually while I'm still writing the latter half of whatever the current project is―I don't like a lot of what I write. It always seems fantastic when I start, but sometime while I'm finishing it up or reading the first draft, it all goes retroactively bad on me: characters seem flat, dialogue sounds stilted, and whatever twists or turns I've tried to instill into the plot suddenly read as so obvious it's like I'm trying to insult the reader. I have a bunch of stories banked I should be submitting—getting them out there making the rounds looking for homes—but I'm kind of . . . not. And, yeah, part of that not is that I don’t have a lot of time right now for my own stuff, but another part—probably the larger part—is that I’m pretty sure that somewhere in everything I’ve written, something somewhere sucks. I’ve been told it’s a self-confidence issue, and I understand that intellectually . . . but I still can’t help it.

So with all that in mind, I sat down with my red pen in hand, opened the manuscript, and started reading, looking for the suck.

And didn’t find it.

Stuff I’d written was supported by things Stacey had added in. Some of her work was supported by my crap. She’d taken ideas I’d slipped into the story and run with them, often in directions I’d never even considered, and I’m pretty sure I did the same with her. Between the two of us, nothing ever seemed flat, stilted, or obvious, and the whole thing was just . . . fun.

And as I was reading it faster and faster, that damned red pen lying forgotten on the desk, the little part of me that was still trying to analyze things realized just how much my this sucks attitude about my writing really is a lack of self-confidence, and that I was getting an added little surprise bonus out of this collaboration, because—and here I have to let you in on another little secret:

I really like Stacey’s writing, and have a huge amount of respect for her as both a writer and editor. As a writing/editing partner, she’s sometimes sent me pieces to look at with a little note attached, some variant of either Does this suck? or How can I make this not suck? I’ve yet to receive anything from her that actually sucked, and often I’m at a loss to even identify what she thinks the problem is. I have a tremendous confidence in her as a writer; what I didn’t count on was that offsetting the lack of it I have in myself. In a blog post a couple of months ago, Stacey listed five things to look at before embarking on a collaboration:

1. Compatibility.

2. Who is going to write what.

3. Writing style.

4. Legality.

5. Post-writing workload.

To this list, I’d like to add a sixth thing, of special importance if you (like me) are a bit lacking in the aplomb department: team up with someone you’re kind of a fan of—it makes the experience more enjoyable all the way through.

So, with all that in mind, is it really any surprise that I read to the end of the last page, all the way to the little ~fin~ I’d added down there as a reminder I could stop looking for the suck, dropped the manuscript on the desk so I could hear that hearty thunk again, and spoke aloud through a huge grin?

“Son of a bitch, I think we have a book!”

Our Collaboration―Part 2: Letting Go

 

Okay, did you see up there where it said "Part 2"? You missed that? No worries. You can click here to go to "Our Collaboration—Part 1: Two Heads?"

Oh, you have read that already? Well, did you know there's kind of a part 1.5 over on a completely different blog? No? Well, you can see what Stacey herself—the other half of this collaboration I'm telling you about—by clicking right here and going to "Collaboration" over at All Things Stacey Longo [edit: link removed 7/22/2021 as Stacey's blog appears defunct]. Right now, though, I'm going to tell you what happened when we got started.

We got started.

We had our outline—and better, had agreed (quite strenuously on both sides) that it was really no more than a guideline; we had a starting point and a tentative ending, but were both completely free to veer wildly from the stated path while making the trip. But it had been my idea and I’d written the outline in question, a situation I think Stacey found somewhat daunting with regard to who was going to light the fuse on this bottle rocket. She stood back and let me write the opening chapter.

I thanked her for the chance to go first. I looked at that fairly detailed outline, thought of our vow to use the thing as a guideline at most, checked the outline again, reveled in being completely free to veer wildly from what was in the damn document, and then . . . wrote exactly the scene I’d had in my head when I’d written the outline. Oh, sure, there were little things I’d not thought of before, things informed by the characters as they developed and moved about the scene, but the scene itself was pretty much what the outline stated—excuse me, what the guideline suggested. I went over it a couple of times—the thought of sharing something first draft made me feel queasy (still does, really)—and sent it off to Stacey. I checked the out—guideline, tried to estimate what she’d cover in chapter two, and started thinking about the stuff I’d be putting into chapter three.

A week later an email from Stacey hit my inbox with the growing document attached. Excited, I cracked that sucker open, eager to see how she’d handled the next part of the outline. If she’d written through where I thought she would, I needed to see if what she’d put down would support my . . .

Hang about. What the hell was this?

She’d glossed right over some stuff that would have been gold, just gold, and written some of the scene I’d been preparing to do. And said scene wasn’t what I’d envisioned at all! There were a lot more characters, for one thing, and they weren’t at all like the characters I’d been going to . . . Hot Jugs? The mother’s nickname was Hot Jugs? But that’s . . . And the grandmother was a tippling wrestling fan? Hold on.

I kept reading, going faster and faster once I’d stopped my silent bitching. And I had stopped, interested in the interplay between these new people I was meeting for the first time—people I’d be getting to know very well, if this project moved forward. And I saw how it could move forward. The way the mother and father spoke, and the relationship between both of them and the grandmother, well, it wasn’t what I’d had in mind, but if I . . .

I sped through to the end, amused and entertained and slightly awed in turns. Then, just to make sure I hadn’t missed anything, I read it again.

The third time was just for fun.

And that was the last little bit of solo-writer reaction I had to anything Stacey did, the final but what’s she doing, this is mine! Editors—the good ones, anyway—never look at a manuscript with the idea that they would have done it differently. They might have, if they’d written it themselves, and it may have turned out better or worse than the story they’re currently editing, but that doesn’t matter. Ever hear the saying My sandbox, my rules? Editors are constantly working in someone else’s sandbox, so they have to cultivate the mindset How can we make this better, rather than How can I make this better. They have to fix things grammatically and make them fit whatever style guide they’re following, all while maintaining the author’s voice, characters’ voices, and story tone—and that, friends and neighbors, is pretty much impossible if all you’re thinking is me-me-me.

So, after that one hiccup, I stopped thinking about me-me-me, and started thinking about it-it-it. No, I’m not talking about the Stephen King tale of Pennywise’s playground, I mean the manuscript in progress itself. I wasn’t working on my book, we were working on the book—or, at most, our book. We started shooting the manuscript back and forth in earnest, and I started really enjoying the ride. And if any readers out there are thinking Hey, now we know you wrote the odd chapters and she wrote the even, good luck with that. It didn’t take long for us to get to the point where one might say, I know I’m supposed to be writing this chapter, but [blah-blah-blah] is happening, and I think you’d be better at that scene than me. Why don’t you take this one and I’ll take the next one? So we swippy-swapped, and skipped turns—even went back and inserted a chapter at one point, completely messing with the chapter numbers—and tried pretty hard to mesh everything together.

We even started playing kind of a game, showing just a little bit of one-upmanship. We each like to end our chapters with a little tug toward keeping the reader reading—maybe not a full-fledged cliffhanger, but a little something. Those little somethings grew, and grew, until it got to the point I’d read each new chapter sent my way, tearing through the new addition, only to find the chapter ended much like the Coyote wound up in those old Road Runner cartoons: ten feet away from the wrong edge of a cliff, hovering over a thousand-foot drop, with just enough time to hold up a Yipe! sign before the plummet began. Shit, I’d think. Where the hell do I go from here?

Then I’d find a place to go from there, working the chapter toward my own yipe! moment before sending it back. The yipes got bigger and bigger, until one day, shortly after I’d sent off my newest chapter, Stacey emailed me back: Shit! Where the hell do I go from here?

Success! [insert evil laughter here]

She figured it out. We always figured it out. And this was the most fun I’d had writing in a long time. And with all the back-and-forth, and all the one-upmanship, and there was never a feeling of God damn it, that bitch really screwed me this time. What there was was a whole lot of admiration, glee, and the feeling God damn, but this is all making a really great story! Because after that one hiccup it wasn’t about me.

It was about the story.

At the time of this writing, the first draft is complete, but I haven’t yet gone back and read the whole thing from start to finish. I’ve been looking forward to it—hankering might be the word here—but putting it off until I could sit down and read it through, without having to do it a chapter or two a day (I’d like a time machine for Christmas, if anybody out there is paying attention) to get the full effect.

That day is coming soon.

Our Collaboration―Part 1: Two Heads?

 

Fʀᴏᴍ Mᴇʀʀɪᴀᴍ-Wᴇʙꜱᴛᴇʀ

Collaborate:

\kə-ˈla-bə-ˌrāt\

intransitive verb

: to work with another person or group in order to achieve or do something

: to give help to an enemy who has invaded your country during a war

This is very important, and the main thrust of today’s post: one of those definitions above is a good thing when writing; the other is not.

Hickman & Weiss

Golden & Moore

King & Straub

Preston & Child

There are many good writing teams out there, and we enjoy their work so much. The question is: how do they do it? My answer: beats the shit out of me. You want their secrets, go check out their blogs; I can only tell you what’s worked for us, and take a stab at explaining part of their success—and please keep in mind this is what’s worked for us so far. This blog is called Writer in Progress, not Guy Crouching Beside His Best-Seller, Shouting “It’s Alive!”as It Lies Hand-Twitching Upon the Slab. What we’ve got so far has a good beat and we can dance to it, so we’ve jumped on the floor and started to boogie. Stick with me here long enough and you’ll either see us holding up the dance trophy as the end credits roll, or watch as we slip on the freshly waxed floor and fall on our asses. But I really have my fingers crossed for that trophy.

Full disclosure time: what I’m writing about today is not my first attempt at a collaboration. I tried one a few years ago, when I was a much newer writer than I am today. I liked my experimental partner’s writing, and she liked mine. But she came to the project with a particular story in mind, and so did I . . . just not the same story. We were each in the process of convincing the other that our story was the one to write—which was not a lot of fun, by the way—when we each had other things come up, each developed other things to write, and the head-to-head collaboration fell by the wayside. Rather than working together, we’d each tried, in some fashion, to sublimate the other to our will and make our ideas dominant, intending to simply allow the other to help . . . which sounds a lot like that second definition above.

Not a success story.

Fast forward to last year. In our writing group, The Storyside [edit: group now defunct], the concept of collaborations was thrown around one day, kind of like a beach ball rolling atop a concert audience: everybody touches it, but no one really keeps it. Then it was mentioned at the next meeting. And the next. And eventually, because we were tired of the beachball rolling into our heads and blocking our view (we’re the somewhat cranky old people at the concert), Stacey and I had a brief side conversation, consisting, basically, of We already work pretty well together, we could give it a shot. So we took the ball and went to our respective homes . . . where we then sat and wondered what the hell we’d just done.

A quick word about us already working well together: we’re an editing team and, I think, a good one. For both The Storyside and our clients over at S&L Editing [edit: now defunct], we try very hard to maintain cohesion: you get two editors’ opinions, but it’s just one edit rather than two competing edits running side-by-side. We don’t always agree on everything, and when we don’t then the client is told what we differ on and why; in other words, we’ve already discussed it.

Communication is key.

Back to me and Stacey. I had an idea on a back burner somewhere—I have a ton of back burnered ideas—that had a pair of teen girls as protagonists. Now, I have never been a teen girl, but Stacey has, and she writes them well (he said from his 48-year-old male perspective). It seemed like a cool idea, something that would be fun to write, but I did have that failed collaboration attempt in mind. I tentatively pitched the idea to her, trying hard not to sound like I was saying, This is what we’re writing.

“That sounds like fun,” she said. “Do you have an outline?”

I did not. I’d tried working from an outline once or twice, but I’m a bit of a pantser (meaning I tend to make it up as I go along) and I found them impossible to strictly adhere to. I wrote one up anyway and shot it her way. I was a little nervous sending it, as the two of us seem to be a small study in contrasts: she reads lots of true crime, I have shelves of fantasy and science fiction; when she types it sounds like a teletype machine set to ludicrous speed, while I hunt and peck a bit like a narcoleptic one-legged chicken; when she writes she’s sharp and to the point, skipping unnecessary descriptions for brevity, while I tend to meander a bit, getting to the point eventually and having a fine time on the way. I don’t use outlines, so I assumed she would be all for them as a logical tool to get the job done. My outline, I was convinced, would suck.

“Wow, this is detailed,” she said, and my heart grew and cringed at the same time. Then, as tentatively as I’d pitched the idea, she asked, “Do you want to stick right to this? Because I’m kind of a pantser, and I figure I’m going to have ideas of my own to add, and we’re really going to have to work together to pull this off, and . . .”

I’m sure there was more, but I was busy melting.

We got started.