One of the joys of collaborating on a writing project is how quickly you can accomplish things. With two sets of hands typing, the combined output can set a blistering pace.

After fumbling our way back into the writing process after being AWOL for a while, we’ve hit our stride. Each of us dove in on some of the scenes that had been patiently waiting, and our word-counter was a blur.

As is inevitable, we reached a part of the story that wasn’t amenable to tandem work. The plot was at a very kinetic point, with one scene cascading into the next like a chain of dominos. Even with our thorough outline and our scene stubs to guide us, the clockwork precision required to make everything seamless ruled out the ambidextrous approach. Sure, we could have winged it and smoothed out the transitions on an editing pass, but we chose a different method.

Since Jen is the resident stub-maker, she leapt in on those while Kent attended to the actual prose composition.

We’ve come out the other side of the tentpole moment with no time wasted, and a roadmap that will lead us to the very end of the story.

There are 14 scenes left to write. If we each tackle one per day, we’ll be done in a week.

Spoiler alert: We will not be done in a week.