By Linda Sherwood and Teri Brown
It’s finished, but not quite right. Unsure of what the problem is, Linda passes it to her writing partner, Teri, to take a look. After looking it over, Teri passes it back with a few suggestions. A pretty normal day at the office for most, but Teri and Linda are separated by over 2,000 miles. They work “side by side” in a virtual office with the help of the Internet.
Teri and Linda met in an online community for new and beginning writers. By becoming partners, the solitary life of the writer was history. Linda may be writing her weekly newspaper articles while Teri is writing a chapter in her fiction novel, but neither is alone in their work. Teri can stop and ask Linda how to spell a word and Linda can ask Teri for input on a tough lead.
Email and instant messages allow us to work together even when working on individual projects. The relationship has helped us to achieve even more than we could do alone. One example is this article, which began as the brainchild of one of us, although we aren’t exactly sure which one of us anymore. In forming writing partnerships, we’ve found the best thing to look for is someone opposite you in terms of writing abilities, but similar in other ways.
In our case, it’s Teri who develops the idea or the dialogue and Linda who puts the commas and periods in their proper places. For Joy Thomas and Karen Hertzberg the ability to utilize one anothers talents can account for a large part of their success in their efforts to create Coffee House for Writers, an online community for writers.
While the idea for Coffee House for Writers originated with Karen, who is the editor of the site, Joy plays an integral part of the operation. The pair teamed up in 1998 when Joy volunteered to moderate a workshop for Karen. This year, Joy became articles editor at the Web site and began to work on its newsletter, Fiction Fix.
“By taking over the content side of the newsletter, I freed Karen up to do some great marketing work on behalf of Fiction Fix, and as a result, our subscriber rate has doubled,” said Joy. “Our joint work on Fiction Fix really showcases how an Internet partnership can flourish.”
While finding someone who complements your writing style is a great goal when developing writing partnerships, sometimes you just get lucky. When Helen Hegener, editor of Home Education Magazine, needed an articles editor she didn’t have to look very far. Kim O’Hara, a contributor to the magazine, was only a click away.
“We worked on a few things for a year or two, and I was impressed with her obvious ability and sparkling personality – which comes through even via email!” said Helen about how Kim began her job as articles editor for HEM, a monthly print magazine for homeschoolers. “I think mostly through she was the right person, in the right place at the right time, when we needed a good articles editor.”
Though separated by miles they have formed a working relationship that is both efficient and successful. Even after a year, both prefer working via e-mail then actually having a side by side relationship. As Kim puts it, “It allows near-instant transmission, receipt upon the convenience of the recipient, a record of what was sent, and a way of copying the previous correspondence and responding to relevant pieces as needed.”
Though Kim and Helen have never had any trouble in their working relationship, Helen admits that she has seen problems develop in other collaborations. “I’ve known many relationships between other people trying to work together online which just didn’t workout, often resulting in harsh words and hurt feelings. Usually one partner or the other isn’t openly communicative, which leads to misunderstandings. One really must be clear about needs and expectations when email is your only tool for communication.”
Collaborating online offers greater flexibility for writers and more efficient use of time than many face-to-face collaborations. Despite living just four hours apart, Angela Adair-Hoy and M.J. Rose chose to do most of their work online rather than in person when writing their book, Secrets of our Success.
“Online collaboration is much faster,” said Angela. “Our book took only five weeks to write. If we were meeting to get it written, this would have taken much longer.”
M.J. agrees. “In the past, I have collaborated with several people on screenplays and found it a difficult process. Sitting in a room with a computer, one of us got to talk, the other to write. It was never fair.”
While online relationships like these are bound to become more common place, sometimes there is no substitute for a real phone conversation. No one understands the high excitement of an acceptance better than another writer. Be sure to pick up the phone and share your joys and triumphs the old-fashioned way. In the end, it will make your online relationship that much stronger.
