It’s important to celebrate your writing progress with your coauthor, and today we’re doing just that. Instead of putting the final touches on Son of Music Novel, or writing an actual blog post about collaboration, we’ve opted to take the whole family to a galaxy far, far away.
We’ll be back next week with actual content. Happy Star Wars one and all!
the man with the severed legTune In Next Time Part 13 Click Here for Earlier Installments
Tessa’s hiccups persisted as we cruised the darkened back streets of the city. I knew Michiko had enemies, and her unsubtle car might draw unwelcome attention on the boulevards. I was grateful for the narrow lanes I had to guide the huge car through, because the tight quarters demanded my attention, kept me from becoming too distracted by what those hiccups meant.
“Oh, crap,” I muttered.
“The parade,” Tessa said.
Where our tiny side-street debouched onto the main thoroughfare, sawhorses and hay bales blocked our path. I approached the barrier slowly, thinking we might be able to shift things aside and sneak through before the parade began.
And in any other town that might have been reasonable. But the weekly Macabre Misfits parade was in full swing, as it would be for 24 hours. To the double-M, this was just another Tuesday.
There wasn’t room to open the car door, so I rolled down the window and climbed out. Jugglers were passing, throwing mannequin limbs back and forth. I hoped. The man with the severed leg in his hand glanced at me, and although I couldn’t actually read the sweatshirt he wore I did notice a subversive slogan partially tattooed on his elbow.
Tessa had emerged as well, and the man seemed surprised to see her.
“Hi, — hic — Terry. Sorry we’re late,” she said, dropping me a wink. “Think your troupe can sorta — hic — vamp for a while so we can get our — hic — float out of this alleyway?”
The man bowed to us, then rallied the rest of the jugglers to hold a space in the parade while we got the barricade out of the way.
“He — hic — does this every week,” Tessa explained. “My third cousin or something, but he’s older so — hic — I always thought he was my uncle. The — hic — limb-juggling is his passion (just “Uncle Terry” being Uncle Terry). Shall we?”
The parade was even heading in the right direction. But it was so slow.
Tessa’s hiccups persisted.
although his solid chin is clear of any hairAureliano is really quite masculine, although his solid chin is clear of any hair, his chest as well. He has dark blue eyes, and a beautiful bellybutton rests in the center of his rock-hard abs. Dancing at my bachelorette party with a canine-skin collar around his thick, manly neck, and absolutely nothing else on but Chippendales style faux-cuffs decorated with “Big Apple” cufflinks, he is the very definition of virility.
“What the heck,” I say to myself, “I’m not married yet!”
I throw caution and my clothes to the wind and smile enticingly at Aureliano. He smiles back, but our tryst is overruled by Judge Maurice, which is what Aureliano calls his penis, which refuses to cooperate, if you know what I mean.
I tip him well anyway, to ensure he doesn’t mention this to my fiancé Dirk tomorrow when Aureliano stands beside him as best man at our wedding.
plays cat and mouse with the yakuzaOfttimes in my job as a wedding planner I am at the beck and call of a very demanding and challenging bride, but none in my experience were worse than Catrinka. Popular culture calls these women “Bridezillas” but I see Catrinka as a different sort of Japanese-inspired trope: the geisha who plays cat and mouse with the yakuza and Daddy’s checkbook.
Nothing could please Catrinka. No matter how spectacular or expensive an item or venue, it simply wasn’t awesome enough for Catrinka. Her groom-to-be, Harold, meanwhile meandered along in blissful ignorance of the preparations. He cared naught for the details of the wedding or reception as long as the bachelor party was, in his words, “one helluva romp.” Catrinka didn’t give a fig what he and his friends got up to with the strippers as long as Harold arrived on time to the wedding wearing the proper color bow tie and socks. The betrothed liked each other sincerely enough that there was little awkwardness in this arrangement. And the checks all cleared, so I suppose I ultimately have nothing to complain about.
a great deal of reviewingChauncey knew the way to win Myrtle’s heart was by winning the dance-off at the senior prom. After a great deal of reviewing how-to videos on YouTube and practicing in front of the mirror, he was ready. Chauncey’s rental tuxedo was a stunning combination of white and gold that some people inexplicably saw as blue and black. At the country club he stood in line with all of the other hopefuls. The music started. He got down with raised eyebrows. Despite his sick dance moves and the soulful expressions he threw at Myrtle, she did not respond to him in a favorable way. Neither did the judges. They awarded the trophy to Mike Phillips for no special reason that Chauncey could see, except for the fact that Mike Phillips’s mother was a senator and the judges were all blinded by his proximity to money and power. But not Myrtle. She left the prom the way she arrived, surrounded by a group of indifferent girls dressed all in black.
bonus points for using them in order!
One of the great things about having a writing partner is that you can pat each other on the back, so neither of you has to risk a sprained elbow doing it for themselves.
Not everything you write is going to be pure gold, and the same goes for any human writing partner you might have. It really is important to show support and encouragement, but it’s equally important to call bullshit when necessary. Even when the offending idea is something your partner is deeply in love with. Especially then.
There are two ways to go wrong with this kind of feedback.
You might be too soft about it. You don’t want to be mean, and you don’t want to come off like you think your own work is flawless. Who are you to criticize? You’re the co-author, that’s who. If you don’t speak up, then either the defect will remain in the writing, or else later when you do finally raise the issue it’ll be that much harder to deal with. (Maybe your partner will realize on her own by then? Don’t count on it.)
The other pitfall is fixating on the things you don’t like to the exclusion of what’s good. Even if you’re not rude about it, the cumulative effect will wear your partner down. You might train him not to overuse passive voice, but you’ll be smothering his creativity while doing it. “Dull, but free of errors,” isn’t what anybody wants for a log line.
Positive reinforcement is more effective than negative. To help each other improve, and to improve as a team, you need to praise the good stuff. Offer that pat on the back, and hope to earn one for yourself.
Good news everyone!
We are thisclose to putting our current first draft to bed. The text of the story itself has been done for a couple weeks, and we’ve even started to get feedback on it from our critique group. So far so awesome.
The only thing we have left to write are some supplementary materials, which we talked about a little bit last week. Kent has been reveling in this opportunity to explore the original story spark that morphed so completely to become our finished novel. His excitement is contagious, and Jen has joined in to a limited extent. We anticipate needing less than 1000 more words and the whole thing will be done.
And then we get to celebrate!
Celebrating your milestones is an important part of the writing process. You need to reward yourself for a job well done, and it’s much more fun to do that with a partner. And we don’t even mean that in a salacious way — we mean with your writing partner. Sure, your spouse or your buddy can lift a glass with you to toast the completion of your new story, but they probably don’t have a full understanding of how satisfied you feel, how proud you are, or just how difficult the road there was. When you have a coauthor, that person is with you every step of the way. You’ve had each other’s backs through the whole long slog, now you can let loose together and get freaky!
Just how freaky do Jen and Kent plan to get? Well, there are some movies that have been clogging up the TiVo for a while. Plus this Day of the Doctor thing is happening. And next week is Thanksgiving.
I hope you’re not scandalized.
Next up, after our Authors Gone Wild break: plotting out the new story idea, followed by extensive edits of a previous novel that’s been waiting patiently on the back burner.
Perhaps the best part of collaborative writing is having someone to toast with when the work is done. Around 10:00 last night, Kent wrote the final words of our first draft! Woohoo! We popped the cork on a bottle of champagne and celebrated in style (if “sprawled on the sofa watching a movie” qualifies as “in style”).
Two weeks ago we had 14 scenes left to write, and now they’re all checked off. The manuscript came in at just a hair under 110,000 words, which is in line with most of our work.
Of course we can’t rest on our laurels for too long. There’s still plenty of work left to do to get this novel in shape. We’ve been debating our best course of action, whether to immediately go through and address the things we know are issues, or to let the manuscript rest for a little while before doing a full read-through and then tackling the edits. Both approaches have their merits. In the first case, the work is fresh in our minds and it should be easy (ha!) to fiddle with the things we’re not happy with. In the second case, if we step away and lose our infatuation with it, then when we come back we will be better able to see over-arching issues. In either case, this will only be the first of several editing passes. There’s still a lot of work ahead.
Luckily for us we each have a partner we can rely on when the work is tough, and celebrate with when we reach milestones.
Go Team Skelley!
Last weekend we watched three movies, making only a tiny dent in the heap of them on our DVR. One was quite good, one was simply unambitious, and one was dreadful.
Being a writer can make it harder to enjoy movies, because so many movies are weak in story and writers become sensitized to that kind of problem. This one was really bad, not just failing to meet a writer’s elevated standards. Bad. (And it’s doubtless someone’s favorite movie, so it shall remain anonymous. No need to start a fight.)
Bad movies are baffling; was there no one on set who realized what a craptastic troglodyte they were making? When you’re working with a partner, you’re supposed to have someone there to tell you when the writing sucks. It’s probably a good idea to employ a bit more tact, but it really is important to be honest. It’s equally important to be receptive to your partner’s honest criticisms.
Unless you would rather not know about the craptastic troglodyte.