The two questions/suggestions Bob and I get most often are:
1. How do you collaborate?
and
2. You should make your texts into a book.
And the two answers we usually give are
1. Lots of communication, lots of back and forth, occasional arguments, and a lot of wordplay when we get to the point where we can’t write fiction without a break.
and
2. Because the vast majority of our texts are boring as hell to anybody but us.
What I’m thinking now is that it might be better to show what we do which would also explain why nobody would want to read an entire book of our texts. (And it would be a big book. I think Bob figured out we’d written 600,000 words of text to do the Liz/Vince books alone.)
So here’s what we did yesterday (warning, very long post):
Monday, December 9, 2024
That was the part of the monologue I was doing because I knew Bob was asleep in Tennessee, having signed off at 11:19 PM on Sunday night, whereas I was wide awake in Pennsylvania. This actually usually works out well for us.
Then I worked for awhile and then took a nap and came back at 7:25 AM to explain what I’d been doing, and at 8:31 AM, I posted the rewrite of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in The Honey Pot Plot.
Then I signed off at 8:53AM and Bob woke up:
[You begin to see why nobody would want a book of these texts.]
Then we talked about dogs for three minutes, and Pat Gaffney showed up at the Grille for lunch, and I ate and laughed with her in PA while Bob worked in TN.
After lunch, I checked in again.
And I kept talking (texting) and eventually, at 2PM, I noticed I was alone.
And then we discussed the many ways Thursday was messed up because we had different ideas when a major reveal should happen. Until 2:59 PM when we finally drilled down to heart of the problem: we had two different ideas of how Rose would handle a situation.
You know, a major difficulty in collaboration is trying to remember where the hell everybody is and what they’re thinking. Especially if we’ve both wandered off center and so are writing two different Roses. So for another nine minutes, we tried to figure out where everybody was in our different versions, ending with this:
And then we realized we had four vehicles to keep track of.
Then we spent another ten minutes trying to figure out where people and cars and llamas were. Which led to this:
When we start doing that, we’re tired. And I call nap time.
Then we discussed body bags until just after 6PM. At 7:48 I put up a link to an NYT article and ranted about elitism. Bob was somewhere else. At 8:45, I put up rewrite of Chapter 27. At 9:15, I put up my polish of Chapter 30. At 9:41, I put my rewrite of Chapter 32. Bob is not posting rewrites because he has the master doc and is working on that. At 10:40, I asked Bob a question, and at 11:02 PM, he answered me. And at 12:41 this morning (Tuesday) I put up my rewrite of Chapter 34. That was the end of the Thursday rewrites for me, except for one final scene I have to do from scratch. Bob gets that this afternoon.
It’s now 4:26 AM, I have been doing normal human stuff–cleaning out my e-mail in-box, eating, clearing a path to the bathroom (why do I never have time to clean? because I don’t want to clean) and writing this blog post. Bob is probably still blissfully asleep, but will wake at the crack of dawn with some post about Little Melvin before he goes back to work. I’ll wake up about eleven to work on Chapter 36, which will be brilliant, and this whole thing will start over again.
So
1. This is how we collaborate.
2. Never again say, “These texts would make a great book.”
Good night.
65 Responses
These texts do make a great blog post though. One has to admit.
What is the Master doc? This concept confuses me. Do you not save drafts of your document as you go? Why a completely different document, doesn’t that make things more confusing? And you move it between the two of you? Why? I’m so confused.
I would think they need one document that has all the edits they’ve agreed on. Otherwise they’ll have variants breeding like rabbits, and won’t know what they’ve decided on. (When I copy-edit, I tell the author I have the master copy, and they need to highlight any changes they want me to transfer to it; otherwise they’ll tinker all over the place, doing stuff that undoes my careful copy-editing (like adding double spaces after full stops).)
Should read ‘they need to highlight on the copy I send them’.
What Jane said above. Whoever has the master has the working copy. So when Bob has the master, he works on that, and I write off master, sending him my rewrites so he can just swap the rewritten chapter in.
I used to collaborate with lawyers on warranty copy and we used a program which tracked all edits with names and dates/ time of who wrote what.
This reminded me of that.
Of course writing warranties for appliances is SO much fun. NOT.
I’m confused too.
That was SO good to read 😀
Here’s what I got out of this: “Blah blah blah book, blah blah DOG!!!!! DOG!!!”
I’m easily distracted by some things. Are you getting a dog?
I am establishing a relationship with the local rescue. Who are the nicest people in the world.
Oooh, can’t wait to see who chooses you–I mean, what develops from this relationship. 😀
Precisely what I was thinking!
Right? Talk about burying the lede…
BUT WHAT ABOUT THE DOG YOU’RE ADOPTING! Inquiring minds want to know. Pictures? Description? Timeline for when he/she enters your life?
I’m just starting. But I met some lovely dogs. Well, all of them were great.
This was fun to read! Did you get the dog?
Patience, grasshopper.
Ummmm, way to bury the lede, woman! Tell us about the dogs!!!!!
It was a public event. They brought four dogs, all of whom were lovely. I filled out an application so I’m eligible to adopt when I’m ready. Which may be for a while yet.
Fun post but what about the dog?
There is no dog. This is not the dog you’re looking for.
Your Jedi mind tricks won’t work on us.
I see a theme here. LOL
They had cats, too.
Ooh! Cats!! I was with everyone else, curious about the dog, which you’ve answered, but cats! Any chance you’ll get a cat too?
I have a rescue cat. His name is Lionel. It’s taken him a year and a half to come sit on my lap for pets. God knows what he’ll do to me if I get a dog.
Does someone living close by have a dog you could introduce? Just to see if the reaction was 1)run away; 2) I will kill the intruder; or 3) I will find your clean laundry and use it as a litter box.
Pat Gaffney has Louise, who I think is a boxer mix. Lovely dog. Louise gets along fine with cats (Pat’s cat is Thelma), but Lionel tends to disappear into the bedroom whenever Louise comes over. I don’t think he’s afraid, he’s just not a dog person. Cat.
Probably avoid you for a year or two.
Get two. They’re small.
Wow! Now, there are two llamas? How did I miss that? Did Bob’s dog die, too? Or does he just want another dog? Good luck with the dog hunt. There’s treasure??!!!
There’s a lot there that is incomprehensible because we don’t know where THPP is going, but it’s fascinating that you can pass things back and forth without completely losing track of what’s going on. Thanks for sharing all that. I could not read that tiny little paragraph, but I assume it will show up in the book.
Jan, At least on my tablet and with my browser, I could enlarge it to readability. Provided no big clues, however.
The second llama doesn’t show up until HPP. Bob’s dog is fine.
OK! I’m glad Bob’s dog is OK.
So fun that all we care about is the dog. Can’t wait for pics. When there’s a dog to take pics of.
In the meantime, you could send us pictures of Lionel. Some of us are cat people.
YES.
So this morning, while I was deeply, deeply asleep, Paul pocket dialled me, which startled me out of one of the best sleeps I’ve had in ages. I was so asleep I couldn’t figure out why the alarm was still going off even after I pushed the button. Then I realized and scrambled to find my phone, which was in the bathroom. After calling him back and determining the world was not ending, I let the dogs out, grabbed my phone and wandered into the kitchen where I opened my email.
I opened the Argh email for this post and instead of A Day in the Life of a Collaboration, my brain read A Life: A Day of Celebration. Yup, my brain even put that colon in there. I had a small freak out thinking someone had died and then my eyes cleared enough to realize that Celebration doesn’t have that many Os in it.
It was a day of scares before 6:30.
Hope you were able to go back to sleep.
Oh, no. By the time I got the dogs back in Paul was on his way home and that was it for sleep. A 7:30 bedtime is calling my name, though.
Yes! The thing I am most excited about is that you are getting a dog… I think.
But it is fun to see the collaboration in action too.
I enjoyed it, but I agree The Collaboration Texts would probably not be a super-readable book. As *footnotes* however, e.g. in a special edition, a selection of the texts would be hilarious. 🙂
Happy you’re opening space for another dog. <3
A wonderful suggestion!
A DOG!! Yay!
I’m not a writer and I don’t work with authors, but I do work with editors and these wandering conversations are so familiar to me. I’ve often walked away from a loud (on my part) discussion on text and image placement and felt like I’d been part of a comedy scene. The best part about those times were they happened with someone I respect and admire who is able to take my guff and roll with it. Others tried to work with this editor and these projects and got ulcers. We just keep on laughing (and yelling). Good times!
I loved my doctor of almost 30 years because she took the announcements of wonder cures with a grain of salt and always told it to me straight. But some of the clerks at the desk said some of her patients didn’t like her because she didn’t sugarcoat her advice. So I guess we need to find someone who speaks our language in all working relationships.
I noticed the dog proliferation and also the plural llamas, although the latter plural might be a figure of speech. I hope that you and Bob each in due course end up with dogs that will bring you happiness.
“(why do I never have time to clean? because I don’t want to clean)” A line that resonates with me. Although I recall that in college and grad school (and even in my childhood bedroom) I was relatively neat because I had limited living space to use for all purposes (and, true, a lot less stuff to put in said space).
I hope you find the good dog you deserve, Jenny.
I am totally with you on the no time to clean front.
The posts are still funny, even if not all of them should be
included in the eventual anthology of texts. It could be like
Steinbeck’s “Journal of a Novel” about “East of Eden.”
Off topic: I saw an interesting segment on NHK’s Science View this morning on pains caused by the weather, mostly through changing barometric pressure. I used to get weather headaches fairly frequently (then they mostly stopped for some reason), and my mother used to get them the day before I did (even after we lived hundreds of miles apart and we had not communicated about her headache). A Japanese scientist has some plausible ideas and supporting evidence, although not conclusive proof, on what likely is causing such headaches, and also more serious pains such as some migraines and body aches.
Folks here have mentioned weather-related migraines, so I thought this might be of interest. (If this episode is no longer live, it is probably viewable on the NHK site’s archive or through YouTube. )
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/2015289/
I have had a migraine since Thanksgiving, which beats my previous personal best of 9 days running. Yes, our weather has been up and down a lot. Sigh.
As someone who has read a great many Complete Letters of [19c author] and a few Complete Letters of [18c or 19c political radical] not for scholarly reasons but purely for pleasure, I would happily read all 600,000 words.
Tell Me Lies ebook is 2.99 today at Amazon and possibly elsewhere. I think it’s today only, and unfortunately I just found out. I think I may somehow have missed reading it. Description unfamiliar.
Patrick, it’s one of my favorites, about a small town, and all the secrets everyone is concealing. The FMC’s husband is murdered, and she becomes a suspect. Her best friend is distracted, and keeping something from her. Her grandmother in the care home was a wild woman. Her High School one-night stand returns to town, and complicates things. All the characters are unusual and quirky. Oh, and her daughter wants a DOG.
Jan, I definitely somehow missed it, but I’ve got it now. Hurray, a new-to-me Crusie and I don’t even have to wait for HPP to appear. (Although I’m eager to see how Max takes out his pursuers from the HPP sample.)
Don’t sell those texts short. For those who know the background, they’re hysterical. Book? Maybe not. But I add my vote to making them a permanent section of the blog.
I could do that. I have a feeling they’re more interesting after you’ve read the book, though.
What a fun blog.
Reading this thread, enjoying you and Bob’s collaborative efforts and chuckling through all of the comments have put me in a lovely end-of-day mood 🫠.
Book maybe not but I laughed out loud many times.
For years Bob had 2 dogs – Cool Gus & Maggie. Cool Gus died a while ago. I’m guessing Maggie needs a companion.
Sure the texts could be a book. It’s all in the editing. Kill the tedious work parts and not your darlings.
I’ve always wanted two dogs but i keep getting rescues who want to be an only child. Maybe I should pay attention to what they’re telling me.
Hope your dog finds you soon.
If I even think of getting a dog- all I have to do is remember that I now live where it snows and I hate walking in the snow. I used to have 2 cocker spaniels in my 20; that was 50 yrs ago. Then in my 40’s, after kids entered my life we had Cats, cats, cats. Loved them, so cuddly so fun playing with each other. I would get another cat but it would have to empty its own litter box- Ten years ago I decided not to take care of anyone or thing except me!
BTW I love this series. I’ve read all your books and loved all of them but this is now my favorite set.
If your cat goes outside , you only have to change the litterbox when it is vey cold or wet.
But then you have to clean up the dead birds and animals it tries to feed you.
So, what are you going to name you’re dog?
I always adopt rescues, so they always have names. One I met that I fell in love with was Allora but she’s a beagle, a truly adorable breed that would go after Lionel. Also very young, but a perfect beagle. I love beagles, they’re so down to earth about life: run, bark, chase cat, repeat.