Krissie and Jenny collaborated with Eileen on a novel about three sisters called The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes, so of course we asked Eileen to be the first to post about collaborating, and she was great enough to give us this for our website debut. Thank you, Eileen!

It was the best of times, it was the…oh, you get it. What did I learn about collaboration? I learned that if possible, make sure you have a peacemaker on board(yes, Krissie. I’m talking about you). Because if you decide to join with other authors in a combined project, you’re probably going to choose people you respect; people you know have strong voices and sharp minds, which means strong views. And since there’s a good chance you have strong views, too, it’s nice to have somebody there to see both sides(and remind you that it’s a beautiful day outside). It’s an even bigger benefit if this person can stand back and offer a nicely timed compromise.
Let’s face it. By the very nature of our occupations, we’re control freaks. We can barely abide letting an editor loose in our prepositional phrases. Imagine how it feels when another author has at your characters—even if you’ve just invited her to do it. And just wait until you see your character through her character’s eyes. (“How dare your character call my character controlling and immature? Just because she holds her breath until your character agrees with her. And my character is right, you know. Your character is a bit of a slut.”) Not to mention what happens when you get your fingers all over her character (“What do you mean, your character is not in the least sluttish? I just put her in fishnets and feathers. You can’t expect me to change that.”) I bet she can.
And that doesn’t even take into account the discussions on things like structure and theme and pacing. And most important of all, editing. How are you going to do it, who has final say, what happens if one of you has a serious aversion to any word that has more than six syllables, when the other person just knows that no other word but hyperdysfunctionality will do.
The good news is that all that leads to brainstorming. And brainstorming is fun. It’s a rush, especially when shared with really sharp, really smart brains that belong to people with strong views.( (“What about if I change the fishnets to buckskins and we set this in 1860? Don’t you think your character would make a great Ojibwe?”) I adored that part the most. There’s just nothing like the feeling of your brain on full throttle as you spin ideas with good—and brilliant—friends.
Oh, and one more thing? Never. Ever. Try and settle a major dispute over email. If you’re really feeling passionate (“Okay, so not Ojibwe. Settle down”), you tend to overwrite the email, and without the nonverbal clues so important in a conversation—and a real aversion to emoticons—you’re going to end up taking about four weeks longer to solve what should have been settled in a single conversation. Then again, you might want to make that a conference call. That way the peacemaker can weigh in (“Why couldn’t she just be going to a costume party?”). See how easy that is?