The tortoise or the hare?

Some people look at the number of words Bree and I kick out and think we must be very efficient.  They assume that being a team means we must run at twice the normal speed, logging in words double-time.  Unfortunately, that’s not really the way it works.

“How do you guys write?”  It’s one of the most common questions we get, and completely understandable.  Most people are used to viewing fiction writing as a solo venture–one artist in an office, tapping away at a typewriter or computer.  And, for the majority of authors, that could be the case.

So there’s plenty of confusion that comes into play when you look at teams.  I know a handful of teams and, as far as I can tell, they all operate differently.  Some only consult during the development and plotting process, and then one author writes the book.  Others trade off chapters or acts.

Then there’s us.

We’re definitely not far more efficient than your average solo writer, and that’s because we don’t really write at different times.  We both sit down together (even if we’re in different places) and work on a manuscript.  The way we do this is to trade it back and forth constantly.  Sometimes one of us will add a paragraph, sometimes a number of pages.  Once, Bree even added only a single word.  (I will never let her live that down.)

But, because the manuscript is being tossed back and forth so much, it spends a lot of its time in transit.  We’d never get anything done if we did this with one project at a time, so we get several going at a time and work on them simultaneously.

At the moment, we’re working on two 15k short stories for Changeling (a brand new series I love), the sequel to Crux, the fourth Red Rock Pass book, the next novella in our Mystic Valley series, and the first book in a new paranormal series we’ve been developing.  That’s six manuscripts.  Six heroes and six heroines…

Six opportunities to get confused and screw up your characterization.

But that’s another blog post.  LOL