Cookies and Collaboration

Long has it been since Krispy and I have paid attention to our sorely neglected co-novel baby. We are bad, bad parents.

However, we have been collaborating on a Holiday Cookie these past couple of weeks, and it's going quite well if I do say so myself. We've collaborated before on a sack of pennies as well as numerous other bits and bobs, cookies and crumbs, and cracktastic alternate universe high school melodramas. (Just kidding about that last—that was with another friend, although still containing Krispy's characters.)

But in our defense (as though something were attacking us besides our parental consciences), some of our co-novel characters appear in this Holiday Cookie, and by some, I mean one, and that one is a member of our novel's supporting cast. (Incidentally, this same character also appears in Krispy's Nanowrimo story, playing a slightly bigger role than in our novel.) So what if our current cookie endeavor is a multiple-world-crossover of questionable alternate universality? At least we're getting to know someone a little better, and see how he reacts under pressure and behaves in general. Chronologically speaking, this takes place a good many years decades centuries after the events in our co-novel and while I suppose that a few hundred years might make a difference in one's character and personality, I'm going to ignore that thought right now.

Collaboration this time is a wee bit different than how we wrote (and should still be writing, if only Krispy would freakin' write the next drabble) our Penny Drabble, wherein we took turns writing a section at a time, taking things in random directions to see where the other would run with it. For our Holiday Cookie, we've been writing different scenes simultaneously (and said scenes are more or less happening around the same time), consulting each other as necessary for information concerning settings, character whereabouts and interactions, etc.

Perhaps by the time we actually finish planning and plotting our novel, we will have smoothed out a few of the kinks, ironed some of the wrinkles, and sandpapered away the most awkward bumps of figuring out how to actually write it. I have the feeling (take no bets, please, for my feelings are as fleeting as they are fickle) that our novel will require a combination of both Penny Drabbles and Holiday Cookie techniques along with inventing some brand spanking new co-authorial anything-goes literary kung fu.

We will be co-author kung fu masters by the time we're through. Masters.