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Collaborative Writing Workshop
During Birmingham’s Artsfest, which is the UK’s largest free arts festival, Iain and I ran a Collaborative Writing Workshop. We were housed in the Council House, so we enjoyed some gentle background music from a guitarist performing in Victoria Square. The participants who turned up had a variety of expectations. Some were writers that we…
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All Good Things Come To An End
At some point, any collaboration must come to an end. Your novel is published and is selling and you’ve done everything you reasonably can to help promote the book and those sales. What happens next? Perhaps the first thing to do is take the time to evaluate the success of the collaboration. Actually, no, the…
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Clovenhoof Reading in Waterstones
On 8 September, Heide Goody and Iain Grant read from their new Satan-in-suburbia novel at Waterstones bookshop in Birmingham. The event, part of Birmingham’s Artsfest weekend, was well-attended and followed by some book signings and a photo opportunity. Clovenhoof (not available in Waterstones at the moment, oddly enough) is available to buy on Kindle or…
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Clovenhoof Launch Party
On 8 September, Pigeon Park Press held a party for the launch of Heide Goody and Iain Grant’s comic novel, Clovenhoof. The launch was a celebration of the hard work and effort that went into this unique collaborative novel. Clovenhoof, in which Satan loses his job as Lord of Hell and is relocated to suburban…
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Selling your collaborative novel
To be a writer is to be a salesperson. Writing is a respected profession but no one is going to fall at your feet, begging to publish or even read your work, just because you’ve written something. Once your novel is complete, you will have to sell it yourself. That might initially be to an…
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Should collaborative writers self-publish?
There’s a lot of information out there about the pros and cons of self-publishing your novel versus taking your novel to publication through the traditional route. I would, however, like to discuss it here and then reflect on the implications it specifically has for the collaborative writer. Advantages of self-publishing 1. Control This is the…
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Do collaborative writers need a pre-nuptial agreement?
It rarely does one good to be pessimistic but the tangled and seemingly endless relationship that is collaborative writing is even more complicated than I might have suggested in other blogs. The road to publishing success is not evenly paved and there are legal, technical and even moral potholes to negotiate. I’m not going to…
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When is a novelist’s job complete?
Yes, when is a novelist’s job complete? That’s a tricky, almost unanswerable question, up there with ‘what is the sound of one hand clapping?’ or Bishop Berkeley’s old chestnut about the tree falling and no one being around to hear it. It’s an important question and doubly important for collaborators because you need to know…
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The Pros and Cons of Collaborative Editing
Pro #1 – Four eyes are better than two In the editing and rewriting stages of a novel, there are distinct advantages and disadvantages to working with a collaborative partner. In many ways, two heads are better than one. More specifically, four eyes are better than two. One of the key qualities of a…
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What type of writer are you?
Maybe you found someone that you’re thinking of collaborating with? Can you be sure that you both approach things the same way? Try our fun quiz and see how your scores stack up! Question 1 – how often do you write? A: Daily. I sometimes find myself writing when common sense says that I should…