Writing Alone and Other Group Activities

Introduction

Introduction

Writing tends to be a private process for many. Whether we’re squeamish about someone watching over our shoulder as we work, or we need to work up a great deal of courage to share our polished draft, we are pouring a piece of ourselves into our creations. And this is work best done, we’ve told ourselves, alone. After all, we spend hours alone at the keyboard researching, revising, creating, rereading. Perhaps because of this, writing is often thought of as a solitary activity.

But perhaps we don’t spend enough time talking about the solidarity of writing. Emphasis should be placed on the trust we put in beta readers, editors, agents, publishers, readers, and friends. In these ways, writing truly is a group activity. There is always a waiting audience if we venture out of our comfort zone.

But can we take that one step further?

The authors and contributors of Writing Alone and Other Group Activities surely thought so.

In the pages that follow, you will find the spoils of our labor; a selection put together by three teams during a group writing competition. Each week, we’d receive a prompt, for which we had 72 hours to work together to produce a story. The short stories within the pages of this book span an array of genres and styles. They will introduce you to a host of new characters and take you, sometimes literally, to the end of the world and beyond. In total we faced five prompts, and each team chose their four favorite stories. As you read, we’ll intersperse the work with our reflections, thoughts, and advice.

In addition to the stories, we thought it would be important to share our experiences working in groups in order for our readers to truly understand the unique challenge of collaborative writing. Our experiences are just as much a part of the work. As Cayce Osborne, from SUblime SUperscribes, explains, “When I look at [these stories] I see the people I worked with and the ideas we shared, and that’s a success in and of itself, regardless of how the story was judged.”

“I’m proud of my contribution in each,” Wayne Hills agrees, “but also pleased, and a little humbled, to be associated with such a talented group.”

Between the stories, you’ll find sections dedicated to the authors’ fears, frustrations, strategies, and successes. We offer up what we have learned should you ever decide to try this for yourself.

As you read, we hope that ultimately you’ll see that though the process was different and had a learning curve, we created ideas and stories that we never could have conceived alone, and we learned more about ourselves and writing along the way. S W Fox, from Sneaky Little Scribes, attributes the team structure—the roles and obligations—to allow diving deeper and focusing on “what matters most.”

We do however realize, as intriguing as the process may be, collaborative writing isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay. We recognize that even if our work has a solo creator, writing is and always will be to some degree a group process. Our agents, editors, publishers, and anyone whose advice we seek prior to publication help to shape our final product, or sometimes ensure it gets completed at all. Our relationships may be complex, sometimes unsatisfying, unifying, elating, or disappointing, but they all drive us in our journeys as authors.

The last section of our book is a collection of essays dedicated to all the people in our writing lives. The ones who lift us up, push us down, and drive us forward. That guy in the writing workshop who criticized us unfairly. The advisor that convinced us to never give up. The friends who are always ready to read. The awkward real-life writing groups, and the ones we hope we never leave.

If there’s one thing we hope this collection of stories, reflections, and essays makes clear, it is that as a writer, you are never truly alone.

Meagan Noel Hart

March 2020

“Writing collaboratively is like baking a cake. The writers are the ingredients, each playing a role and adding a certain flavor or texture, allowing the cake/story to rise. But each cake also needs a baker to stir the ingredients together evenly and put them in the oven so it can cook properly. In this sense, every story needs a baker as well. A leader who will oversee and make sure everything is added at the right time and cooked at the right temperature, so you don’t end up with a soggy pile of disappointment that no one would want to (metaphorically) eat, or (actually) read.”

—Cayce Osborne