Close But No Cigar

We talked last time about our workflow for this revision pass, and the benefits of all the extra conversation. This time we’re going to come clean about a downside to this approach.

Stuff doesn’t always match up the way we want it to.

At least half the time our wordcounts or character counts don’t agree after we finish getting “synced up,” which leads to a rather laborious process of tracking down the discrepancy, which isn’t the most effective use of our time. And time is a very important commodity for us, so things that waste it are a major concern.

The silver lining, if there is one, is that this way we’re catching little errors that much sooner. If Kent handed over a file with “He went the store” in it, importing that would infect Jen’s copy of the manuscript with the mistake. Sure, it would get spotted on  a future read-through, but we sleep better knowing we’re on top of that stuff.

Having two people working on a project makes certain things more complex, and sometimes that makes them less efficient. We look at it as a cost of doing business, and we think the negatives are tiny compared to the positives.

What’s the biggest challenge you face in working with a co-author? If you’ve never done it, what’s the thing you’re most worried about?