03/06/00 -- Collaboration

You want me to share my what with you?

So I had my first collaboration last week.  I wrote a duet with another writer over on Jackhammer.   If you get there quick (like before the end of this month) you might be able to catch it in the Archives.

It was an experience.  I definitely created something I never would have created on my own.

And I think that if I ever do a collaboration again, I want to spell out who the character is, what his past is, what his dreams for the future are, where the story takes place, and when, and where we hope to get as we go from the first sentence to the last.  Maybe I'm getting crotchety in my old age, but I'm finding more and more that I can't just start writing with a cool opening sentence and get to the end of a story.  I have to have some idea of what the end is, of how to get from It was a dark and stormy night to and they lived happily ever after.

I had fun, but it was a lot more work than fun.  I'm not sure why. Except that maybe it's because my muse has abandoned me and left me with dry, brittle writing that cracks and flakes apart if I look at it wrong.

Maybe I'm too much of a control freak, too.  I hate leaving the next section, or the next chapter, or whatever up to someone else.  What if they screw things up?  That's what's going through my mind.  Not that I don't trust other writers, I just hate to let go of my ideas and give someone else a chance to play with them.   Heh, I guess I better not get anything popular published, then.   I'd probably wet myself over fanfic if it ever appeared.

And I guess that's the same reason I don't really do fanfic.   I just don't feel like I know someone else's ideas/characters/worlds well enough to get comfortable with them.

Oh well, at least it wasn't a disaster.