Co-Authoring 101

I've written three novels, one of them with a co-author. If you've ever been tempted to work with a friend or colleague on a manuscript, you should know a few things before starting out.

I never intended to work with a co-author. How did it come about? Oddly enough, I had a dream about a boy who goes on a fabulous adventure. I emailed a friend of mine, a writer, about the dream and he wrote back saying, "That's no dream, honey. That's the plot of a novel." He went on to loosely outline the first half of a book. I read the message, loved his idea and, on a whim, asked him to co-author the book with me. He agreed, I wrote the first chapter and we were on our way.

Here are some recommendations for successful co-authoring:

Do some advance planning before sitting down to write. I don't necessarily mean writing an outline, because many writers, including me, lose the spark of inspiration when the whole book is laid out in advance. Instead, get together and throw ideas around, especially if you're writing a fantasy or paranormal title. You need to know what the rules are, what's off limits and how far you can go with the story.

Set a timetable for completion. My co-author and I took a year to write our novel, but we could've done it in half that time. One of us would sit on it for weeks, then it would languish on another's desk for awhile. Being accountable to each other for delivering work on time can help eliminate the procrastination that can plague writers.

Take turns writing chapters. This, for me, was the best part of co-authoring. I'd write a chapter, send it to my partner and then, a few days (or weeks) later, I'd get a chapter back from him (via email). It was so much fun to see where he had taken our characters. Oftentimes, he went in a direction I hadn't forseen. I was always surprised and delighted and excited to read the next installment of our story, which gave me a nudge of inspiration.

Explain foreshadowing. If you've deliberately set up something, be it an event or a character trait or whatever, tell your co-author about it.

At the end of a chapter, do a short outline of what you envision happening next. This can be as simple as a few lines, questions or suggestions, just to give the other person a heads-up about what you were thinking when you wrote X.

Respect each other and keep your egos in check. This is one of the most difficult parts of co-authoring. Remember, this story doesn't belong to you, it belongs to both of you. Any disagreements about story, plotting, characters or editing must be worked out to your mutual satisfaction.

Lean on each other. One of the best things about co-authoring is the ability to lean on each other when the rejections start coming. You'll get plenty of them, no matter how good you are. It's invaluable to have someone who really understands what it's like.

Those are my suggestions about successful co-authoring. What are yours?

Miss Snark

A chorus of grief is rising from the ranks of hopeful authors out there. Miss Snark is discontinuing her blog. For those of you who don't know Miss Snark, she is an anonymous literary agent who, for the past two years, has been writing a blog for those of us who are in the process of starting a novel, finishing a novel, trying to get an agent and trying to get published. Her advice and insider knowledge has been invaluable, and she will be missed.

Wildfire thoughts

Until last Wednesday, I'd never seen with my own eyes a landscape ravaged by forest fire. It's really quite something, the black ash covering the earth, smoulding spots of heat and smoke, charred matchsticks where an ancient forest had once stood.

Before the 1,100 firefighters subdued this fire, it engulfed 85,000 acres of wilderness, taking 140 homes and cabins with it. Oddly enough, it didn't even make the national news. To the world, it didn't exist. To us, this was "the big one," feared by residents and cabin owners on Minnesota's Gunflint Trail, which runs along the border between Minnesota and Canada. Several years earlier, we experienced what everyone in this area calls The Blowdown, incredible straight-line winds that toppled thousands of trees, most of which still layed on the forest floor like kindling, waiting for a spark to ignite them.

Steve and I saw its first plumes of smoke when were walking our 120-pound Malamute, Tundra, on a county road near our cabin. We knew immediately it was a forest fire, but had no way of knowing that the very spot where we were standing would be incinerated by a 200-foot wall of flame just a few days later.

We hopped in the car and drove to the nearby Gunflint Lodge, a fabulous, historic resort built in 1928 by Justine Kerfoot, a young woman who was determined to make a life for herself and her mother in the wilderness. We stood on the lodge's dock and watched the planes dipping onto the lake's surface, filling up their holding tanks and soaring away to douse the flames with water. Then we headed for home, 120 miles away.

Over the next few days, we held our breath and listened to the fire reports via an Internet stream from the town's tiny local radio station (three employees strong), hoping the blaze wouldn't turn toward our cabin.

I should say a few words about this cabin, here. We searched for five years before finally buying the property on Iron Lake. Steve has been painstakingly building the cabin's interior by hand, making the cabinets himself, pounding every nail in the tongue-and-groove pine siding, gathering stones for the fireplace exterior. He built a magnificent tile shower and even put in a jaccuzzi for me. Quite a labor of love, that.

It's a place of solitude and socialness. I love bringing a gaggle of friends up for a weekend of playing in the water and the woods in the summer or skiing on the pristine trails through the wilderness in winter. But just as much, I love sitting by myself, reading or writing, as Steve putzes around doing little projects. I get some of my best writing done there.

The idea of losing our retreat to fire was devastating to us.

So we held our breath and hoped. For the first few days of the fire, we were safe. It was headed away from our cabin. The whole area had been evacuated, so we were on edge, knowing the winds could change at any moment and turn that fire toward us. On Thursday night, it happened. The fire beat a path through the woods directly to our door. As we were listening to the report that morning, we heard the information officer say: "The fire has consumed the campground on Iron Lake." We both went cold. The campground is a half mile away from our cabin.

Then we got word that all of the cabins on our road were saved by the Herculean efforts of teams of firefighters, who stood there with hoses as the wall of flame approached. Unbelievable.

A few days passed, they lifted the evacuation order and we drove up there in a hurry to see what was what. We had no idea how close we came to losing it all. We had fire on our property, above and below the cabin. Trees were on fire, the flames licking dangerously close to the house itself.

Now, the danger has passed, but the devastation remains.Instead of traveling through a pristine forest to get to our cabin, now we must drive through a charred landscape of cinders and ash. It will serve as a longlasting reminder of how close we came to losing it all and how lucky we are to have been spared.

This weekend we'll sit on our deck and toast our good fortune, never again taking for granted a moment in this lovely place.