Sharing Spaces

This week we were asked: Who would you select as a writing partner if you were simply going to share studio space? Who would you choose if your writing partner would also be your co-author on the same manuscript?

Wow, that is a tough one!

I have never co-written with anyone, although I really must get my act together and finish the story of which my grandson proposed the premise to me. It’s a really great idea and I when I have worked on it, it came along pretty well. I have most of it in my head, ready to go. Just Wednesday morning I just had to sit down at the computer and add to a scene, even though another story should have had my full attention. Anyone who writes can understand what I mean.

However, I can’t write it with my grandson. As a teenage boy, he really doesn’t want to write a ‘romance’, plus the fact that he thought I was being too ‘wordy’. We’ll see how it comes out.

Most people know that my first earnest foray into the world of public writing found me composing song lyrics. Even though I took a very nice award, any attempt I made at having anyone collaborate to write music to them has fallen flat. If you don’t know, it is next to impossible to break into the songwriting business. It’s WHO you know, probably more than in any other business. There are stories of people who have worked for famous singers &/or songwriters for years before they had the nerve to even ask the bosses to listen to any of their songs, it’s that touchy. And most singers and songwriters treat lyrics without melodies like the plague; they won’t go near them.

A few years ago I was at a performing arts school’s rehearsal and heard a lovely young woman sing a Broadway song, which had been hitherto unknown by me. I was blown away and the next day when I heard the song at the actual recital, lightning struck me: I wanted to write a musical based on the life of someone I knew. With that in my head, I asked my friend and former guest, Diane Davis, if she’d be willing to write the music. She agreed and asked if I wanted help with the lyrics. That plan has, so far, not come to fruition. I think that although I had to stop and seriously consider the possibility of collaboration, if she lived nearby we may have been able to pull it off. Who knows? We might yet, but as far as a story is concerned, I don’t think I can have someone adding or changing it. I have enough trouble keeping my characters in line and in sync with my ideas, so I can’t imagine adding someone else’s ‘voice’ into the mix.

I wouldn’t mind sharing space with a number of good writers. I like The Hound and all of the Foxes, and would love to have them around.

I’d like to share space with Stephen King; I would love to share space with Parnell Hall, Gretchen Archer, Rosie Genova, Mary Janice Davidson….I could go on and on.

But that’s the problem: I would go on and on!

I’d never get any work done, nor would I let the other writers get any work done. It would be much to interesting to have the Hound, the Foxes, the writers I mentioned, (or so many others), that I would not stop talking or asking them to talk about anything and everything.

I know myself all too well!

A nice support group or another writer with whom I could be mutually supportive and do honest critiquing would be a bonus, I believe. But as far as I can tell, it is nearly as hard as finding a true friend or someone worth marrying.

Speaking of finding someone worth marrying, the one I found has been supportive of my writings. And comes this Sunday, we will be celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary. Like writing, it’s been work. Like writing, it’s been a joy and also a compulsion. Like writing, there are things that I wish we had researched or edited before we went to ‘print’.
And, like writing, the story really never ends.