Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Tag Team

My most recent creation, Fatum, was co-authored.  I went into it with an open mind, fully anticipating a few creative differences along the way, never daring to imagine the ease with which the partnership has flowed. Aside from having an amazingly talented writer in my corner,  I now have a constant cheerleader, a motivator, and someone to auto check your grammar (which for me is huge).  There is somebody constantly pushing me to finish up a scene, someone to bounce my crazy ideas off of, and someone to reign that often dark imagination of mine in.

But today, I hit the jackpot in benefits. "REVISION MASTER"

See Lindsay and I hit revision mode, a set of minor tweaks to an already thorough pre-submission edit we accomplished last week.  Editing 260 pages can seem like a daunting process, and after a few reads, everything blurs into one jumbled mess of words.  That's when I hand it off with a little tracked comment about how I can't get this sentence to flow or how I am sick of looking at the same character flaw, but am at a loss at how to fix it.  She picks it up, her brain in sync with mine, and polishes it, takes what I was struggling to get out and pours it onto the page with relative ease. I find myself eternally grateful, often relieved, and sometimes a tad bit jealous of her skill :)

The give and take we have is invaluable and has made the revision process not only quick, but actually enjoyable. What would have taken me weeks on my own, we have accomplished in mere days without so much as even a minor freak out.

So what about you, what do you find most valuable about your critique partners when faced with revisions?

8 comments:

  1. That is so awesome!

    As for my CP's, I love how they read through and give me suggestions for how to make a section flow better, or a different word to use to convey the same meaning, but with more impact. And of course, I think it's wonderful when they find the typos I've missed :-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. You are very fortunate Trisha. I have an awesome partner as well, and our relationship with words is awesome. She catches things my eyes miss.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Co-authoring sounds crazy fun :) In critiques, I'm usually the one correcting grammar and working on sentence flow, so I really value a partner who's more of a 'big picture' critiquer.

    ReplyDelete
  4. It's great that you have such an awesome partner, Trisha! I think what I get the most from crit partners is a detached perspective. Sometimes a story gets a little close when it's all you've been working on for weeks. Having that 'other' person there to point out the things we might be screwing up is totally valuable.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sounds like a match made in writing heaven! Can't wait to read your work!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I feel the exact same way. This process has been awesome - mostly because you're always there to pick up the pieces when I break something in our MS! Here's to hoping that book #2 will be just as much fun (FYI, that was completely rhetorical. . . I know it will be:)

    ReplyDelete
  7. That's awesome, Trisha! I can imagine how gratifying that must feel to collaborate on the same story. I've always thought it'd be fun to do.

    ReplyDelete
  8. I just got some new CPs and we are just getting to know one another. So far all of their comments and help have been tremendous. I love their honesty and their ability to be cheerleaders as well to pull the best out of me and keep me creatively flowing.

    ReplyDelete