Perfect Partners

I attended an RWA conference this last week. I taught a class about conflict with my writing partner, Shayla Black. I was surprised that at the end of the session what most people wanted to talk about wasn’t emotional conflict – it was collaboration.
Though seriously – there’s some emotional conflict in that topic.

So I thought I would talk a little about the beauty and pit falls of collaboration.

First off, if you choose to collaborate, pick your partner wisely. You will be married to this person for the rest of your life. There is no divorce in the self-published writer marriage. You get a joint bank account and start an LLC. Your names are tied together. You have to trust this person.

For Shayla and myself, we dove tail nicely. We were friends for about a year and a half before we got the brilliant notion to write Their Virgin Captive. It happened—as most good things happen—over a pitcher of margaritas. We quickly learned that while we value the same general things when it comes to a story, we also had some differences. I love to have a clever external plot and she pushed me to find more conflict to push the story along.

We plotted out that first book and decided that this would be a fun way to test out the self pub waters because we couldn’t think of a single New York house that would be insane enough to buy a book about a virgin, three brothers, a stalker and moose all set in Alaska. We were pretty sure readers wouldn’t buy it, either, but the story was in our collective brains and wanted out.

So we tried several methods. The collective writing thing didn’t work for us. Nor did writing every other chapter. Though we have similar values, our styles can be very different and that first draft would have ended up creating a new bi-polar model for novel writing. We finally realized that my strength was speed so I bang out the first draft and Shayla massages it with her well manicured editing fingers.

What I’ve also realized about writing partnerships is that there’s always the calm, patient one and then there’s the crazy bitch. I was deeply disturbed to realize I was the cra cra one. I am the one who must be talked off the ledge. I am the one who requires copious amounts of liquor and the promise of pretty shoes to calm down during the editing process because my every single word is not precious.

It’s odd since I always thought I was totally sane. That’s the other thing a good partner can do for you. They can make you see that you are not as sane as you thought – and that’s okay because she’s the one who is always ready with the martini.

Partnership is hard. Make no mistakes about it. There is conflict. We don’t always agree. We can both be difficult. We have to put our friendship aside sometimes and deal with one another as business associates. But at the end of the day, I’m not alone. I don’t have to shoulder the whole burden.

In an industry know for its solitary nature – that might be best reason to collaborate—to share the ups and downs, to celebrate and mourn, to never be alone. And now that I’m writing the words I realize I am not just talking about a business, I’m talking about family. If you jump into the collaborative waters, a family is exactly what you could find.

Lexi Blake writes erotic romance. Her latest book, On Her Master’s Secret Service will be out in May.

And her newest collaboration with Shayla Black, Their Virgin Princess is out now.

https://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-theirvirginprincessmastersofmenagebook4-1046805-146.html