How many of us have group project trauma from school? I know I do. I was ready to come in here, shrug, and say 'of course I don't do collaboration'. Then I got to thinking. Of course I DO collaboration.
Collab Lite:
I
have a critique group. I talk with other authors. We just naturally
toss ideas around. We consult with one another or with the group when
we're stuck on a plot point. I realize this amounts to talking out
sticking points in our work. I submit, however, that it is a form of
collaboration. None of us is working in an idea vacuum. That author's
idea over there sparks three more in me which hopefully spark five more
in someone else. It's a positive feedback loop and I'll claim it as a
form of collaboration.
Collaboration fer realz:
Okay. The kind
of collaboration you really came for today is the kind with coauthor
credits. Again, I was ready to come in today, laugh uproariously at the
notion that I'd ever consent to do any such thing. And then. And then I
realized I had done a coauthored thing.
That aforementioned
critique group. Four of the members came up with an idea for a cozy
mystery series involving past lives in ancient Rome colliding with
present day lives in Seattle. The notion was that each of us in the
group came up with a character in the story. In ancient Rome, we'd all
been together until a murder got us all charged and executed. In present
day Seattle, the group are scattered and have no memory, of course, of
that shared past until one of the present day women is suspected of
murdering her husband. We all come together to solve that murder while
resolving the murder in the past at the same time through a slow reveal
series of flashbacks. The construct was that each of us would write a
chapter and the others would edit for character voice and such. The
grand vision was a 9 book series.
We hit the ground running
with a plot map and a plan. We got six or seven chapters into the story.
Then everything fell apart. The thing about any group project is that
it is only as strong as its weakest link and in this case, our weakest
link was a lymphoma diagnosis for one of our members. She's fine.
Finally. But the project was mortally wounded and never recovered.
I'm not sad. Y'all, it was HARD. No joke. Everyone comes to the page with different strengths and different ways of executing story. This was never more evident when trying to corral five very different writers into some kind of homogeneity. It pressed every old group project button I have. Having that project slip quietly in the rear view, especially given the reason, was sad, but freeing. Writing to a story that isn't solely yours and where you need to tone match someone else feels (to me) a bit confining. I wanted to go dark with parts of the story because I felt like it called for that. My coauthors vehemently disagreed. So yeah. GROUP PROJECTS. O_o
