Better Than Pie

Happy Thanksgiving Week, Swoonies!

You have no idea how thankful we are for every single one of you. So for you, some sweet swoon…

Now, I (Lo) get to take over the blog today with a post that PQ hasn’t read yet. Whee!! A secret love letter to my girl!

The question that Christina and I get asked most often is “how does co-authoring work?” What comes after this question varies, but we’ve heard, “It must be hard!” or “I am way too much of a control freak to write with someone!” or “What happens if one of you is stuck?”

The truth is, I am a control freak, and it is hard sometimes, and there are times where one of us is stuck when the other is flying. But, as it is in any type of collaboration, we do it because it’s ultimately more awesome than not.

So how does it work?

We’ll have an idea. We talk and talk and talk and get excited enough that we decide to Make It Happen. So, we outline. We divide the book into scenes. We assign the scenes. We write, we edit, we edit, we edit. And throughout all of this, we talk. Every day. Sometimes five times a day. Sometimes more than that, and sometimes we send each other pictures of swoony boys Very Deep Passages From Very Serious Poetry.

If one of us is stuck, we talk it out, we write garbage (and then sometimes throw away thousands of words that aren’t working), we make playlists, we send pictures of swoony boys inspirational pictures of beautiful landscapes.  If we’re still stuck, we just write something else. We’re not easy on each other and we never say, “Take a weekend off, go relax.” Forget that  noise. Go read a book and get ideas. Write a drabble. WRITE SOMETHING. We deal with it the same way that any other solo author would deal with block, which is to say we slam it over the head with a 2×4 (like if a zombie walked into our yard!)

Here’s the best part: Writing can be kind of lonely, and community is everything. [I really could write an entire post about the community of YA peeps] But I have this one awesome person – one of the closest people in my life – who I can call at any time of day (literally, if I’m up at 3am, odds are good that she is, too) and who knows exactly what I’m feeling at that minute. If I’m frustrated, she gets it. If I’m sad, she gets it. If I’m bursting with giggles, she totally gets it and tells me I’m a pervert. If I am scared, excited, over-thinking – she gets it and because what I’m writing is what she’s writing, too, she never gets sick of talking about it.

The one deal we’ve made is that only one of us can be emo at a time. If she’s feeling delicate, I have to suck it up and be the pillar. If I’m feeling neurotic, she has to buckle down and get me sane again. There was one day during revisions where we were both emotional disasters and I told her, “I CANNOT HANDLE YOUR EMO BUT YOU HAVE TO HANDLE MINE,” and she sent me a picture of her in her jammies. I mean, come ON. How am I supposed to not melt at the cute?

I’m thankful for a lot of things in my life – I have a life that is pretty darn close to perfect – and one thing that rises up in that pile of good things is Christina. PQ,I’m so glad we decided to brave the world of fic and find each other. What would I do without you?

Happy Gobble Day, I heart you.

It all started here:

Love,
Lolo

Now tell me, Swoonies, what are you thankful for?