Duck Season! Rabbit Season!

One of the great things about writing with a partner is that it gives you two ways to see everything.

One of the trickiest things about writing with a partner is that there are always two ways to see things.

We’re doing revisions on Son of Music Novel. The method we use has us each take a turn editing every page in tandem. Jen goes first, and at the end of every work session Kent approves her changes. We let her get about five chapters ahead before Kent started, so Jen’s fresh edits have faded a bit in his mind, and now every night she approves his changes, too. It’s a good setup for us. Two sets of eyes and all that. And, Jen can leave a note for Kent if there’s something she’d like him to fix when he reaches that point.

Of course, that works a little less well when he isn’t able to see the problem he’s meant to address. Language is ultimately subjective, and a phrasing that “strongly implies X” for one reader might feel utterly neutral about X vs Y for the next.

What happened in this case was Kent rolled his eyes a little (if he sighs, it resonates throughout the Writing Cave and breaks Jen’s concentration) and made his best effort at repairs. When Jen approved the new version, she stipulated that it hadn’t really made the issue go away. It seemed to be an impasse.

So, she used a colorful metafor to describe what she wished was on the page, to which Kent said “Why didn’t you say so?” And he promptly put the colorful metafor, verbatim, on the page. The duck-rabbit waveform collapsed and harmony again reigned in the Writing Cave.