getting my kicks on route 66

[chase_acow]

So, my weekend has gone really well. Amazingly well. Stupendously well.

Hornets won the game Friday night. I was slightly tipsy off two very strong long island ice teas, but still didn't make any more of a fool out of myself then normal. The Boy was entertaining, and it felt just like old times when we talked all the time. He's warm and smells good, and that's not a setback, I'm just establishing facts.

The Foreign Service Written Exam went so much better yesterday. I think I've got a real shot this time around, though I'm trying desperately not to get too excited. I really really want to do this.

I'm working on Couple's Counseling the last installment of Couples Night and I'm just stuck. I made the mistake of writing out all of the dialogue first because that's the fun part that I think I'm good at, and now it's hard to go back and fill it in with the "he turned back to the window, determined not to see whatever was going through Cameron's face as he said..." and "gripped his shoulders pulling him in before Daniel could escape..."s. I suck, and tomorrow after class I will sit here until I get it done.

On a only slightly related note, has anyone here ever collaborated on a fic with someone else? I was thinking maybe I'd like to give it a shot in the near future after I can think of some terms and agreements to hold by. I was just wondering if ya'll enjoyed it, or if it was a pain. If it helped you as a writer etc...

I hate Aprils. It's like school/friends/work/weather all of it just realized there was only one more month until May and they need to squeeze in everything possible.

Comments

[or-mabinogi.livejournal.com]

Only one installment left for Couples Night? I didn't realize you were going to have a limit, and certainly not this soon.

Never collaborated on a fic with the exception of a beta reader. Might be interesting to try. Think it might be like a round robin? Author A writes one paragraph, Author B writes another, see where it ends up?

[chase-acow.livejournal.com]

You, my dear, are a genius! I realized the reason I was having trouble writing was that though it was the last part, there was at least one section that had to go in between.

I suppose collaboration could go anyway the participants wanted it to. I've never tried a round robin before either. I just thought maybe ideas and plot devices would come easier with someone to bounce around ideas. Edited would be a fun back and forth I'd think. I was just curious, I know that a lot of ficcers as well as pros collaborate.

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

I've cowritten, and it was fabulous and fun. But in fandom I've only cowritten with a very close friend - the other half of my fannish brain, basically.

And since she's the other half, it was an atypical experience, because we basically functioned like one writer, and we covered each other's weaknesses almost perfectly. Like, I can't write porn, even though I love to write porn set-ups. She writes fantastic porn, but doesn't enjoy writing the set up as much. I write mostly in dialog. She prefers narrative. We were writing Fraser/Kowalski, and she's most comfortable in Ray's voice; I'm most comfortable in Fraser's. So, really, collaborating came naturally to us; we already knew who would do what and how it would go.

I'm still insanely proud of the story we wrote (and I do mean insanely; it was tentacle porn), and it was one of the better writing experiences of my fannish life.

Cowriting can also be a disaster, in part because - okay, with that one story, it felt to both of us like the other one was doing all the work. But in most collaborations, each person is going to come out feeling like she's done 80% of the work. That's hard for some people.

Also, people sometimes have problem with the pace of the writing - my co-writer and I are both hideous fannish slackers and procrastinators, so that was no problem, but if you have one person who wants to write X words each day without fail, and one person who doesn't write at all for three weeks and then drinks half a bottle of absinthe and cranks out 10k words, well. There will be problems.

And it's good to have an agreement going in about editing; will you both edit each other's work as it is finished? (This is what my co-writer and I did. But it can screw up the process and cause hurt feelings.) Or will you wait and have one of you edit it all when it's done? And so on.

Still, co-writing is - it can be wonderful. And from the standpoint of a reader, I love it; it makes my inner stylegeek squeak with joy to see what happens when you put two writers together.

[chase-acow.livejournal.com]

Okay, first of all, excuse my slight foray into the realm of Squee. Ahem... OMG thefourthvine left a comment on my lj! OMG! All right, done now.

Writers should always be proud of tentacle porn! I think it probably takes a "special" gene to write in that genre. And yes, I called it a genre and I'm not taking it back. :)

I'm excited that you left your thoughts here, I am interested in trying to co-write with someone, eventually, and all of your points are good ones. I really appreciate your in-put, and it gives me somewhere to start in my thought process. Thanks so much!

[thefourthvine.livejournal.com]

Writers should always be proud of tentacle porn! I think it probably takes a "special" gene to write in that genre.

I'm guessing you put "special" in quotes because you meant the crazy kind of special. In which case, I totally agree, and I am darned proud of it. I own my neurological differences.

But it's kind of pathetic. I mean, I'm a slasher by name and by nature. And I'm not a huge fan of the fetish subgenres of slash - I like a good, say, wingfic as much as the next fan, but it's not my primary reading focus or anything. But when I write? Well, the only two explicit things I've ever written were tentacle porn and het.

*tries to figure out where she went wrong in life*

I am interested in trying to co-write with someone, eventually, and all of your points are good ones.

Hmmm. There was a community that started about a year ago that was for people looking for co-writers. Have you been there? (If you haven't and you want to check it out, let me know; I don't remember what it was called, but I could probably find out.) I don't know if it's still active at all, but it always struck me as an interesting idea, and I know a few great collaborations started there.

Plus, maybe by now they'd have some resources for starting out as co-writers. My own suggestions would be:

1. Agree on the basic rules in advance.
   
2. Make one of those rules, "Anyone can back out at any time, no hard feelings." Have this rule cover what will happen to the story if someone does back out. (Dead forever? Other person can finish it?)
   
3. Have the rules cover timing, how the plot will be established (Surprise each other? Mutual outline? Outline by just one of the parties?), who writes what, how the work is edited, and how it is exchanged. (There are some good online word processors that you can use for collaboration, for example.)
   
4. Start with something that is crazed. Don't start, in other words, with the Great Epic; start with, oh, tentacle porn. Or whatever. In other words, something where you're both just playing, just having fun - getting the kinks out, in all senses of the word.
   
5. If you can't work out the rules together pretty easily, you probably aren't going to be able to co-write all that well, either.
   
6. And if you do this, totally tell me if any of this works, because it's not like I actually know what I'm talking about it.