Co-Authoring Via Long Distance

Co-authoring is hard yards, there is no denying that, but so utterly rewarding. The old adage of two minds are better than one, really does ring true.

Collaborating and writing a story that is cohesive and appealing is challenging and we congratulate those that attempt to do so. We feel rather proud of ourselves that we have worked together as a team and respected each others writing, styles and ability. There's no room for huge egos here and maintaining a mutual goal to complete a well produced novel is what we have aimed to do.

Our first initial thoughts between us, were how to do this? Being so far in distance from each other. Thank goodness for technology, what a marvel it is. We decided to use the obvious writing program in Word and it worked well, copying and pasting then exchanging via email.

It was a constant exercise with back and forth writing, although it began well, we soon saw there were some glitches. Differing font styles and sizes and then margin and indentation differences. Hm... some frustration crept upon us.

Next, we decided to each write a page or two, then save the document and send via email. The recipient could then view the latest addition to the story and open the document to continue on. Well, many emails and messages transpired through this wonderful process and our minds so active with ideas and we wondered often where this cosy mystery story would end up. Neither of us knew what the other would be writing next and that was the most exciting part of writing Sleuths By Chance. Perhaps the unknown was what led us to continue on and never give up on our writing dream.