Tag Team Writing
BY AARON LAZAR
I thought it couldn’t be done.
Write a piece with another author? Someone who has a
distinctly different voice than mine? No way! We’d clash. We’d
argue. Neither of us would be satisfied, and the end result
would be disastrous, a muddied representation of watered down
prose.
I based this prejudice on the
experiences I’ve had at a standards drafting conference.
Standards need to be written clearly and concisely. Right?
Wrong!
These tomes are lengthy,
comprehensive, and full of language that doesn’t soothe the
soul of any beast, let alone a regular Joe or Jill. Peppered
with acronyms and obtuse phraseology, they are tough to read
at best. I’ve sat through a number of meetings for my “day
job” where committees of fifty men and women tried to edit via
projected spreadsheets and documents. It can be torture!
Frequently, six or seven
well-intentioned members will grandstand. Sometimes for HOURS.
And all for the want of “le mot juste.” Usually, however, it’s
never for the “right” word, it’s more for “me too-ism.” I
become tempted to lay my head down on the desk and let it all
wash over me in a flurry of agony. But I don’t. I pay
attention and try to contribute, like a good doobie. Finally,
when the eight hours have passed, I return to my hotel room
and delight in writing another chapter in the LeGarde Mystery
Series, thrilled to be alone to compose to my heart’s content,
without other wannabe writers messing around with my prose.
So, when a friend of mine
asked for help with her query letter, I thought, “Sure!” But I
didn’t expect it would be done “live.” I thought we’d edit and
attach recommendations via email, like we normally do. This
time, however, she suggested that we actually get together to
do this, on one computer, face-to-face. My instincts roared up
into a tsunami. No way! I thought. I had massive doubts and
began to type up something on my own.
She arrived shortly
thereafter, with her own query written in advance. Aha! I
thought. She has the same reservations about this dubious
process.
For those of you who are
unfamiliar with a query letter, it’s basically a one-page
pitch that writers send to potential publishers or agents. It
needs to have a short paragraph that regales your book in such
an eloquent, witty style that the publisher has no choice but
to immediately snap you up with a hefty advance! It’s
impossible to do, especially if you are writing about your own
book. I know. I’ve tried. For days. For weeks. Although my
current publisher is competent and has been decent to me, I’m
currently trying to hook a big time player who’s in the mass
media stream. Finally, a fellow writer helped me with my own
query and I wound up with a gorgeous paragraph, neatly
crafted, that I didn’t write. Oh well.
My friend arrived. We sat down
at my computer and began. After a few false starts, we began
to meld our paragraphs, taking the phrases we favored from
each other’s drafts. It started to work! What resulted was a
“brainstorming-for-two” session. In the past, my experiences
with brainstorming have been confined to engineering team
activities involving problem solving or research and design.
What normally happened in this environment was that “no
thoughts were judged.” Ideas were floated up, bandied about,
and recorded. One idea built on another. And another.
Sometimes, if the team was lucky, some supremely unusual and
fantastic combination of ideas resulted in innovation.
And so, my friend and I
brainstormed. I typed up silly phrases that danced around the
topics. She tossed out words and phrases. We built on the
words, wending our way toward those jump-off-the-page, dynamic
sentences. Together, we isolated the choicest phrases. It
sang! It was lyrical! It was the best darned one paragraph
synopsis I’d ever read!
My misgivings were all for
naught. My instincts were flawed. It can work! Tag team
writing can be successful. At least in this venue.
So, once again, the Lord keeps
me humble. Oh yeah... and so do all those rejection letters!
Double Forte', the first in Aaron Paul Lazar's LeGarde
series, was published in January 2005.
Upstaged, number two, is now available for purchase. With
eight books under his belt, Mr. Lazar is currently working on
the ninth book in
the series. After writing in the early morning hours, he
works as an electrophotographic engineer at NexPress Solutions
in Rochester, New York.
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