Trials and Tribulations of Co-Authoring

The Trials and Tribulations of Co-Authoring

It’s hard to find somebody you like well enough to share with them everything you hold dear. For me, my most prized possession happens to be my writing. Many times now I’ve tried to indulge in either a Co-Authoring project, or one which would hold various Authors, for different parts of the stories. Pursuing these projects never gets me anywhere, and there’s never any gain in mixing my work with that of my friend’s. When I do get involved writing styles tend to clash, word-choice becomes sporadic, and there’s no flow whatsoever in the shared story. These are the woes of a Co-Author whom is given his own story to critique, marked with the work of another Author; someone he can’t get along with, when communicating through a single note book.

This last fall my friend and I set out to start a Co-Authored book. I don’t know why we originally thought it was a smart idea. He’s more of a nonsensical poet, than a truly talented writer. I’d go as far as to say that we were one of the worst combinations possible. When his sometimes half-brained poetic ramblings began mixing with my more formatted writing, the product was disaster. It’s even worse that we were writing this story with so little direction. So we had character maps, and plot lines, but other than that-we never talked about the story. We’d just hand it back and forth every day in the same notebook, wondering who would give up first.

Only twenty-three pages in, it seems that he’s given up half way through a page, and it’s been that way since mid-October, so I assume our Co-Authoring project formerly titled “Project Zero” is dead. Perhaps we’ll write a collection of alike-poetry one day, but I really don’t see our project moving past “Zero” status. This reminds me of fifth grade, when I had four separate notebooks; I was trying to juggle each of them, writing separate stories with separate people. I finished one story, but it was so mediocre that I didn’t even transfer it onto the computer.

It’s too bad that these things never work out for some people. The idea of Co-Authoring itself is a bold and compromising one. I know there are a lot of authors who have successfully joint with other successful writers to form super-collaborations. So it is possible. There are many cases where it’s worked in such a way that the writing flows as if only one person were writing it. Perhaps one day I’ll pursue another adventure in Co-Authoring, but I really don’t think it’s my thing.