Captain Collaboration

I love what Marcella said about all writing being a kind of collaboration. It’s so true! There is a way in which I view beta readers and critique partners as collaborators, and even readers are collaborators of a sort. I see myself as a good collaborator, and I really value and use input, but it’s easy to collaborate when you’re actually the captain of the ship.

I actually love and miss collaborating with others, but I don’t miss the part where I feel really strongly about something and then I can’t have my way. I hate that part of collaboration!

Coming up through the ad agency, I had to collaborate a lot, and I didn’t always like it, though I can see that it often resulted in a better end product.

You know, I’m kind of jealous of some author teams, though because it would be so much easier to make all the other decisions as a team. Like, career decisions! You can’t believe how I dither on those. Or to weather bad book days—that would be so much nicer if you were a team! And to be really thick in the cross-critiquing process. I really do love working with people.

I once collaborated with my husband on a screenplay like ten years ago and it didn’t go well, because I ended up doing 75% of the work, being the workaholic I am, and I was unhappy about that. But then, I also got more of the decision making power, and that rather suited me. It was a really good idea for a screenplay that we never finished. Recently I was like, I should turn the Omega Zone (that was the name of it! lol) into a book series and we were both really excited and we had all these great ideas. I’m sitting on it right now, like a hen sitting on an unhatched egg. I might do what we conceived, but I might take it in a radically different and smutalicious direction. We’ll see. Either way, it will be something good that came out of a collaboration.