Writers Collaborating – AKA Escaping the Muck

I’ve told you before that even though writing can be solitary, often at its best, it is collaborative.

For me, I love it when my writer friends tell me about a concept they have been working on, or send me a couple pages of a new story and I dive into it and send back ideas for them to use (or not) in their story. And of course because it’s new and the beginnings of world-building, it’s full of excitement and energy.

But what is even more important sometimes is when a writer gets stuck in a story and can’t seem to pull their way out of the muck. At times like these, reaching out to a writer friend and telling them you need help is like a lifeline.

I am writing a new book and I got a few chapters in and it came to a screeching halt. And I pushed forward getting myself even more stuck than before. So I reached out to one of my critique partners and she literally was like, why don’t you do this? And it was so beautiful in its simplicity that I could have kicked myself for not thinking of it myself!

But that’s what collaboration is about. And then when another one of my writer friends read the first few chapters and I mentioned what writer friend A told me, she built on it even more for me, adding in some conflict for me.

Yahoo! And I am now moving forward with the story thanks to collaboration. So don’t believe it when you hear that writing has to be solitary.

So. Not. True.