A new challenge: co-writing a novel

I'm co-writing a book!

Well, not yet actually. But soon.

My amazing alpha reader Marie and I have decided to combine our respective marginal talents and attempt to write a novel together.

Has anyone ever tried this? Any advice?

Our current plan is to write a YA romance (fantasy or sci fi) with two POVs. I will write one and she will write the other. Otherwise, we have no idea what it will be about. Or how we will go about organizing ourselves. Or how to merge our different styles. Or what happens if we both want to write the same POV.

Luckily Marie and I have been good friends since middle school, so our friendship is solid enough to handle this. And I think we are both going to learn a lot about writing.

The best thing about co-writing a novel so far (considering we haven't even started) is the excitement. I'm always excited when beginning a new project, but now that excitement is intensified because I can hear/see her excitement. It all combines into a kind of excitement frenzy that made me want to blog about it.

But seriously--both Marie and I have written a few novels. We know what a big undertaking it is. And we know that writing together will present a series of challenges that we haven't encountered before. I'm eager to get a sense of some of those challenges. So if you've ever co-written a novel, I would love suck all the advice out of you that you are willing to share.

Favorite Books Blogfest

Teralyn Rose Pilgrim at A Writer's Journey is hosting a favorite books blogfest. The mission is to:

1. Pick your top five favorite books.

2. Between June 20 and 22, write one line of what each book is about and one line about why you liked it. Think of it as a twitter pitch for other people's work. Semi-colons are cheating, but you can use them anyway.

3. Go to other blogs and discuss the books.

In doing this, I discovered that I'm not very talented at writing blurbs. My mind doesn't like to distill my various thought bubbles into a coherent sentence. Part of the reason could be my taste in books. Regardless, I gave it a try.

1. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

A mutated gene weaves it’s way though eight generations of a Greek family to find its way into Cal: a hermaphrodite struggling to find his identity while growing up in Detroit.

The beautiful language and fascinating narrator caused me to flip back to the front page and start reading again after I finished this book for the first time--and then I immediately read it a third time.

2. Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk

Tender Branson, the only passenger on a plane that is about to crash into the Australian outback, recounts the story of his life as a member of the repressive Creedish Death Cult and murder suspect.

One of the reasons I love this book--and most of Palahniuk’s early novels--is that it resists being contained in a blurb.

3. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

All of Clarissa Dalloway’s attention is on preparing for her party that evening, until her husband is invited by another woman to a brunch and a past lover suddenly arrives, ripping her out of her careful life and into the memories that transpired to get her there.

Language. Sentences that you read twice because you want to linger in their beauty.

4. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Katniss is forced to fight to the death in an annual televised spectacle.

Plot, placing and Peeta.

5. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

Sayuri shares a hidden world as she transforms from a young impoverished girl into a celebrated geisha of Japan.

Voice.

Honorable Mentions--because it they have no place on this list.

It made me think--and it made me feel--and it made me struggle with language in a way I never had before.

Because when I read it last week, I could not stop giggling.

Go back to the linkey here!