Holy cow! Two in two weeks?! The deuce, you say! We do say! And it’s a special Shared Desk as we’ve recorded our panel at the Write by the Rails meeting that included a panel discussion with couples that collaborated on their writings. Joined by local authors Nick and Stacia Kelly, Tee and Pip share stories and approaches on how they make a collaboration work and also share advice on how to keep collaborations successful.
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00:00 — Introduction
- Flying solo in the opening…
- Throwing in a special episode without making it special…
- Hooking up with Nick and Stacia Kelly (and yeah, Tee trips up on her name a bit in the introduction…)
- Quick Announcement — Tee & Pip will be working the York County Library on JULY 30!!!
- Teasing the next special guest for The Shared Desk…
2:47 — Collaborating Couples (with Nick & Stacia Kelly)
- Recording LIVE from the Write by the Rails writing group here in Manassas, VA
- Sadly, we can’t enact the “Bar Panel” rule here…
- Who’s on the panel tonight?
- Nick Kelly, Science Fiction author (introducing his first book this month)
- Stacia Kelly, fiction and non-fiction author
- ..and us.
- What’s the collaboration process between us?
- Stacia got an idea, but wanted to write with her husband, Nick.
- Nick works more with the nitty-gritty, not so well on the romance…
- Nic and Stacia discover their differences in how they write.
- The truth of successful collaboration, and how marrying your writing partner is not the sure-fire solution to a great process.
- Pip and Tee talk a bit about Discovery Writing.
- When you do the open idea sessions, all four of us need to write it down!
- Pip & Tee flinch over the “Red Pen” experience with Harper Voyager.
- How does collaboration go with people outside the writing experience?
- Editorial pains
- Working with cover artists
- Okay, Tee could get behind the “Hot Tub” sessions….
- Working on the covers of Kindred & Wings and Dawn’s Early Light…
- When Collaborations go wrong…
- Stacia stands alone as the writer amongst the experts. Let the madness commence!
- Tee finally reveals the story behind his first story…and it is as epic as the story itself….
- Pip’s “bad experience” was actually not that bad.
- Facing the worst-case scenario as a married couple.
- The panel goes deep into having an Exit Plan and the importance of communication.
- Mad props to Delilah S. Dawson for coming through…
- Unexpected Collaborations
- Working with book bloggers on blog tours
- Collaborating with other authors in your worlds
- Spending some quality time on Jack Mangan and his influence on The Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences….
- What you need for a solid collaboration — Trust, Communications, and an Editorial Timeline
40:45 — Questions from the Audience
- How do you divide responsibilities between yourselves?
- Pip and Tee evolve their collaborative process from when they went from a podcast-for-pay to a series from Harper Voyager and Ace.
- Pip & Tee’s biggest argument
- Stacia makes Nick put on a “special suit” for working out fight scenes.
- Nick breaks down their writing process using a musical analogy.
- How did Pip and Tee first meet?
- Meeting online
- Everybody wanted to collaborate with Tee because…
- The open honesty from New Zealand
- Do you all do your own editing?
- Why hiring an editor is so important.
- Stacia’s editing resource — http://autocrit.com
- But you should still edit your own drafts before going to an editor.
- When is the editing done?
- The little discoveries when you go deep into editing
- What an editor should never say to a writer…
- How many Beta Readers do you have?
- What to expect from Beta Readers
- What are you doing when you’re not writing?
- It’s a wide field of expertise.
- Tee’s suggestion: A social media panel for writers (with a quick tangent on John Scalzi)
- A quick discussion on Hootsuite and other strategies in social media
- ….and that’s all from us here at Write By the Rails!
Find us on Twitter at either Tee’s or Pip’s account, leave us a voicemail or question for the show at 703.791.1701, or leave us a comment here at the blog.
Enjoy the ride
and we’ll catch you later.