Writing as a Team

TJ and I are polar opposites, always have been. He's loud and outgoing and doesn't take crap from anybody. I'm quiet and shy and am easily mowed over by those with louder mouths than mine.


His strengths complement my weaknesses, and visa versa. Whatever we're doing, we have an odd way of fitting together our unique ways of seeing the world.


So when we started writing together, we had our ups and downs. He makes my plots more complex, thinks through all the character backgrounds, and asks hundreds of questions about why I planned it such-and-such a way.


We swap the documents back and forth, each of us adding to what the other one has put in. Sometimes he completely scraps my ideas and rewrites the scene entirely, but it always ends up better.


For me, writing first drafts is the most difficult part of writing. Planning, editing, formatting, uploading, marketing--I enjoy all of those parts of the publishing process, but the writing of the first draft is excruciatingly painful. I run out of ideas or my plot lines feel stilted and the dialogue is forced and the characters don't make any sense.


But now that TJ and I are working together, I move at a much faster pace. I write for about week and then I get stuck, so I pass it back to him and he writes for a week or so. When he sends it back to me, I have all sorts of fresh ideas to add to the story to fill it out.


Best part is the conversations we have. We have long discussions about the world, the magic, the characters, the plots. Of course we often talk ourselves into circles and can't remember all the things we decided.


Right now we're working on two projects at once--BREAKING ANGELINA (aka B.A.) and TAKING CHANCES (aka T.C.). B.A. is almost done, maybe 5 more scenes to write (it had been two more scenes, but we recently decided to add 2 more story threads to the bigger story line.


Although B.A. will be finished first, T.C. will actually be released first because B.A. is a side story about some side characters within the world. We want you to get a better grasp of the main characters Emma & Jason before we delve into the side stories.


So here's too many more books and years of writing together. I can't even begin to say how thankful I am for my new writing partner.