BookLife

Here’s the tenth and final interview on collaboration.  This series celebrates collaborative creativity in honor of the Shared Worlds summer camp, which challenges teenagers to build and share imaginary worlds.

Marcia Muller‘s first novel, Edwin of the Iron Shoes, introduced the world to the private detective Sharon Cone.  Muller has written more than 35 novels and seven short story collections.  Her most recent novels, Burn Out and Locked In, both feature McCone – a female private investigator who cleared trail for the likes of Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone and Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski.  Muller received the honor of Grand Master from the Mystery Writers of America (MWA) in 2005.

Also a MWA Grand Master, Bill Pronzini is best known for detective fiction, though he writes mysteries and westerns as well.  He has edited or co-edited more than 100 anthologies.  Pronzini’s Nameless detective series began with The Snatch in 1971 and continued last year with Schemers.  The 35th novel in the series, Betrayers, is due out in July 2010.

Over the years, Pronzini has collaborated with John Lutz, Collin Wilcox, and Marcia Muller, among others.  Together, Pronzini and Muller have co-written Beyond the Grave, The Lighthouse, and Double.  Below they talk about collaboration and that unique third voice that is neither his nor hers.

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What are the benefits of collaborating on fiction writing?  How do you do it?  When does it work?  How does it positively affect the final product?

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Bill Pronzini: I’ve collaborated with a number of different writers over the years, including my wife, Marcia Muller, and have generally found the experiences to be highly rewarding.  For one thing, collaboration eases the loneliness of the long-distance writer.  For another, it’s easier for two heads to work out a fictional plot progression than it is for one.  And for a third, it allows two individuals to create a “third voice” when blending of the styles and visions of each.  No collaborative novel or short story in which I’ve been involved reads the same as it would have if I’d written it solo, or if my partner had written it solo.  In some cases, when the collaboration has worked at its best, the third voice is superior to both mine and my partner’s.

As to the mechanics of collaboration, it all depends on the individuals involved.  Some prefer a single method; I’ve done the deed in just about every way imaginable, depending on who I was working with and on what type of project.  Alternate pages, chapters, and sections.   Alternate drafts of an entire manuscript.  Series fiction in which my partner and I established a storyline and then each wrote the sections dealing with our individual characters.  In most cases, whether writing series or non-series fiction, the plot has to be worked out ahead of time; but on a few occasions, as literary exercises, friends and I have written short stories without anything other than the simplest of situations in mind:  one member of the team writing a single page and leaving the other to carry on, sometimes in the middle of a sentence, on the next page.   But I wouldn’t recommend this method; while it has led to a few published stories, it has also led to some unsalable time-wasters.

Marcia Muller: I have had only one collaborator–my husband, Bill Pronzini.  However, our three collaborative novels and numerous short stories encompass the full range of the types of collaboration.  Double is an example of alternating chapters using established series characters, in this case Bill’s “Nameless” detective and my Sharon McCone.  Beyond the Grave also uses series characters (John Quincannon and Sabina Carpenter), but in alternating sections.  In The Lighthouse, we utilize a third-person voice which is neither his nor mine.  The latter was particularly challenging because we were traveling into previously uncharted territory.  The stories are a mixture of all three approaches.

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Can you share some advice (and maybe some words of caution) for fiction writers setting out to collaborate?

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Marcia Muller: Collaborating is a real pleasure for us:  it stimulates ideas, makes the writing easier (but not easy, never easy), makes working time less lonely.  Trust is a necessity, as is compromise.  We gladly cede control over a project to whomever wishes to hold the reins.  Advice for would-be collaborators:  make sure you have resolved the above issues before you begin, and be willing to resolve differences again and again.

Bill Pronzini: Two pieces of advice for potential collaborators:  First, trust is a must.  If you don’t have complete trust in your partner’s skills, instincts, vision, etc., chances are there’ll be conflicts that will hamper and affect the quality of the work.  And second, a corollary to the trust issue:  Before beginning a joint project, make sure you and your partner are willing to compromise on any differences of opinion that might crop up, and then decide on which of you will have the final say once the work is completed or nearing completion and stick to that decision.  No collaboration can be successful when both partners end up fighting over control of the finished product.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.  Jones is a frequent contributor to Clarkesworld Magazine.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

Here’s the sixth interview on collaboration.  This series celebrates collaborative creativity in honor of the Shared Worlds summer camp, which challenges teenagers to build and share imaginary worlds.

Neither Christine Matthews nor Robert J. Randisi likes to collaborate.  Their second co-authored novel The Masks of Auntie Laveau, begins with one protagonist saying to the other, “’Don’t you dare bring me back to this wicked place again.’” It’s easy enough to imagine Matthews saying these very same words to Randisi.

Yet, Matthews and Randisi, who are husband and wife, have collaborated on three novels and a growing number of other projects.  That’s right.  They don’t like it, but they’ve done it, and they keep on doing it.  Why?  I’m not sure.  But they sure do it well.

Christine Matthews is the penname of Marthayn Pelegrimas, a prolific writer of speculative short fiction.  As Christine Matthews, she is the co-author with Robert J. Randisi of three mystery novels featuring Gil and Claire Hunt and the author of the story collection, Gentle Insanities and Other States of Mind.

The author of more than 540 books, Robert J. Randisi writes across the genres, though he is probably best known these days as the founding president of The Private Eye Writers of America and as the author of the Rat Pack Mysteries.

In 1982, Randisi created The Gunsmith action-western series and, under the name J. R. Roberts, has written at least a novel a month ever since.  Though he claims that no one has read every book he has written, including himself, he does point to The Ham Reporter as a personal favorite.  The Ham Reporter tells the story of Bat Masterson in the years after the legendary lawman left the Wild West to become a sports writer back East.

Below, Matthews and Randisi talk about the benefits and the pitfalls of collaborative fiction writing.

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What are the benefits of collaborating on fiction writing?  How do you do it?  When does it work?  How does it positively affect the final product?

Robert J. Randisi: The benefits depend on who you’re collaborating with. If you are working with someone more famous than you, then you benefit from that.  However, if you’re writing with someone less known than you, then the benefit is theirs, not yours. If you’re working with a celebrity, your benefit is their celebrity.  Their benefit is your writing skill and experience.

How you do it again depends on who you do it with.  With another writer you’ll try to split the writing 50-50. With the three books I’ve done with Christine Matthews we worked differently on each book.  Sometimes one person would just write until they got stuck, then pass it on.  Other times one person would be in charge and call the tune. Sometimes one person plots, the other writes, or both plot and one writes

It works when you respect each other’s input.

And if you respect each other’s input it positively affects the final outcome.

Christine Matthews: The obvious benefit is having to only do half the work.  Since I live and work with a writing maniac, we decided from the start that he’d have to work at my speed. We sat down to plot the book (loosely) and I started writing it.  When I hit the wall…or was just bored…I tossed it over to Bob.  Because of his photographic memory and the fact that I’m only human, I would type over his pages into my computer so I could get a feel for where he was going with the story and to edit.  When that was finished, I’d start writing from that point.  Back and forth we went until the books were done. Since our styles are so similar, we can’t tell which parts I wrote and which are his. Our two brains affected the book positively in the plotting. Sitting down and talking through the story was the most fun.

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Can you share some advice (and maybe some words of caution) for fiction writers setting out to collaborate?

Robert J. Randisi: First, I don’t know why you’d set out to collaborate. I’ve written with Christine Matthews because we are a couple, we live together, and I didn’t know what we could share that would be more personal. Other couples may feel the same.

But I don’t think I’ve ever known a writer who “set out” to collaborate. It’s almost like hanging wallpaper–a deal breaker for relationships.

Christine Matthews: To be honest, I don’t really see any advantage to collaborating, other than efficiency (if you work well as a team) and sharing the load. I think it can cause more problems than pleasures. Writing is a solitary endeavor…at least it should be.  So unless you have great love for your partner or an over abundance of patience… don’t.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.  Jones is a frequent contributor to Clarkesworld Magazine.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

Here’s the third mini-interview on collaboration.  This series celebrates collaborative creativity in honor of the Shared Worlds summer camp, which challenges teenagers to build and share imaginary worlds.

Whether writing together or alone, Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear tell great big stories of native North Americans, of adventure and romance, and of rich characters and compelling situations.  And they do so with seemingly unerring historical accuracy.

Before writing full-time, Kathleen O’Neal Gear served as the State Historian of Wyoming and as the Archaeologist for Wyoming.  Since the mid-1980s she has written numerous novels alone and dozens with W. Michael Gear.

Also a trained anthropologist, W. Michael Gear worked as a field archaeologist in the 1970s and 1980s.  He sold his first novel in 1987 and has since written more than a dozen alone and even more with Kathleen O’Neal Gear.

There most recent novels are Children of the Dawnland, a young adult novel, and The Coming of the Storm, which is the first in the Contact: The Battle for America series.

Below, the Gears share some advice on how to work well as a writing team.

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Jones:  What are the benefits of collaboration?

Kathleen O’Neal Gear:   Having two imaginations weaving the same story can create magic, and that’s the primary benefit of collaboration.   When everything is flowing, there’s a tangible energy you just don’t get when you write alone.

W. Michael Gear:   Having Kathleen evaluate everything I write helps keep perspective on the novel. There have been times I was so profound I just knew what I’d written was going to rock the Pulitzer committee back on its heels and redefine Western literature.  Kathy, of course, returned the draft all marked up in red with a note saying:  “This is real fecal material.”  Though, she used a much shorter noun of Anglo-Saxon derivation.  That fact is if I was so brilliant that I lost her, I’d lose the reader, too.  Time to rewrite for clarity.

Jones:  How do you do it?

Kathleen O’Neal Gear:  We discuss plot every morning over breakfast.  What are the characters doing today?  What’s the major obstacle each person will face?  What’s the goal for this chapter?  At night, we read each other’s work, make suggestions, then the other takes over and starts rewriting. We end up handing the manuscript back and forth until we’re both happy with it.

W. Michael Gear:  While the above sounds technically correct, I tell the reader that all the parts they liked were written by Kathy.  Anything they thought was clunky, ponderous, or dull was my contribution.

Beyond the storytelling, each novel is a serious attempt to educate the American people that they have a stunning fifteen-thousand year cultural heritage.  Right here.  On our continent.  We argue about which archaeological data should be included and the best way to interpret our nation’s cultural heritage.  Many of the novels are used as texts, or supplemental texts, in university courses, so we have to be right.

Jones:  When does collaboration work?  How does it positively affect the final product?

Kathleen O’Neal Gear:  It works especially well for character creation.  Since we’re a male-female team, our characters undergo an interesting process of definition.  Each becomes a blend of masculine and feminine traits that, we think, results in a more realistic character.  Every woman, after all, has a male side, and every man has a female side.  That’s what makes people interesting.

W. Michael Gear:  A writer is always so close to his material that all he can see are the trees in front of him–and they look just fine. Having co-author forces him to step back and really look at the forest.  That’s when the bare spots become visible and the densely worded thickets can be thinned.  We want the reader to fall seamlessly into our characters’ world and become so engrossed they don’t come out until the final page.

Jones:  Can you share some advice (and maybe words of caution) for fiction writers setting out to collaborate?

Kathleen O’Neal Gear:  If you’re a couple, beware.  True collaboration requires that you give up your ego.  You have to trust your partner’s talent.  If he or she says there’s something wrong with the story, then there is.  Fix it.

W. Michael Gear:  This is a bigger subject than we have space for here. Most collaborations get in trouble when one party isn’t perceived as doing his share of the work.  Work out in advance who does what, and by when. Put it in writing, and pay particular attention to the contract. Co-authoring a book is a business agreement. Treat it like one. Anticipate everything: illness, death, divorce, responsibilities for promotion, pay-out, agencies, responsibilities for revisions, who has editorial contact, how to handle legal disputes–and a hundred other details.  Relying on a co-author’s good will and verbal assurances only ends up making lawyers rich.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.  Jones is a frequent contributor to Clarkesworld Magazine.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp for teenagers that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.

A week or so ago, I asked a bunch of writers to share some of the best advice they’ve received and how they’ve used it.  At the same time I asked them to share some of the worst, the weirdest, or the least helpful advice they’ve encountered over the years.

I got a range of responses, as you can imagine.

“Write What You Know,” however, appeared more often than any other piece of “worst” advice.  It’s the sort of advice that has been around long enough to pick up some baggage.  Folks arguing for it tend to cite a need for authenticity and folks arguing against it tend to point toward the limitations of what a single person knows.

Below, a writer of fantasy, a writer of historical fiction, and a writer of anthropological science fiction each discuss whether writers ought to “write what you know” or “write what you don’t know” or somewhere in between….  That is to say, these three writers talk about how they’ve navigated the advice: “Write What You Know.”

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Don Bassingthwaite is the author of The Doom of Kings and The Killing Song, among other fantasy novels.

Bassingthwaite: A high school English teacher wrote on a journal entry (which I’d written as a fantasy story) “Show me the magic of the real world.” There’s also the oft-cited advice “Write what you know.” No to both counts! Why write the real world if you don’t want? How do you write what you know when you write science fiction or fantasy? I say learn to write what you don’t know.

Johnny D. Boggs is the author of Killstraight and Northfield, among other western and historical novels.

Boggs: It’s kind of the cliche: Write what you know. OK, but I write historical fiction. If I write what I know, you’re going to have a really boring novel. I write about what intrigues me, what interests me, stories I want to tell. Now, I may not know a whole lot about that subject when I start researching, but I try to learn as much as I can to tell a compelling story. But when I’m done with that book and have moved on to the next project, don’t ask me anything about that earlier book. Chances are, I’ve forgotten most of it. Know it? I don’t think so.

Michael Bishop is the author of Brittle Innings and the editor of A Cross of Centuries: Twenty-five Imaginative Tales about the Christ, among other works of science fiction.

Bishop: The worst advice I’ve ever received about writing is a little harder to pinpoint, but “Write what you know” has to come near the top. You see, the answer to writing about stuff you don’t know about does not lie in giving up trying to do so but instead in learning about what you don’t know either through direct personal experience or focused research.

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Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and part-time professor.  Jones is a frequent contributor to Clarkesworld Magainze.  He is also the director of Shared Worlds, a creative writing and world-building camp that he and Jeff VanderMeer designed in 2006.