Hello

[thomryng.livejournal.com]

I don't quite know if this is the proper forum or not.

Some of you know me (at least through this LiveJournal thingy), and for those of you who don't... well, I'm a writer. Some of my poetry can be found on pallid_mask. I'm primarily a playwright, a poet, and a (mostly failed) short story writer trying to break into something of novel length.

And therein lies my problem.

I'm writing a collaborative novel (more specifically, a planned series of four novels) with my partner. Trouble is, so far I've done virtually all of the actual writing work. I know she can be a very good (and prolific) writer, and when we talk about the project, she's enthusiastic and full of really good ideas.

But she can't seem to write a thing. It might be a time issue, except that I know she's writing for an online RPG.

What to do? I don't want to drop her from the project, but I can't keep waiting for her to fulfill her project obligations - I really think it's holding me up and draining my enthusiasm for the project.

Any thoughts?

Comments

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

If you've built up a corpus of work which needs her input before you can go forward, why not offer to help with the RPG stuff so freeing her time to get back to your joint project?

Re:

[thomryng.livejournal.com]

It's a good thought.

Unfortunately, her RPG is based on a series of books that I've not read (Jordan's Wheel of Time), so I'm not sure there's a whole lot I can contribute.

As I understand it, she's working on character sketches and backstories for her RPG - more or less the same thing I'm waiting for her to do on our joint project. She's vaguely mentioned repurposing some of her RPG materials, but I've seen not a whiff of it. And it's been literally months.

Re:

[nyarbaggytep.livejournal.com]

Urgh! Wheel of Time!
Frivolous suggestions:
1 - Give her better reading material so she gives up on the Wheel of Time stuff as a bad idea.
2 - Sabotage her job so she gets sacked and has more time to write.
3 - Kill her and steal her skin.

Serious suggestion:
Talk to her and try to figure out what is actually stopping her doing this work. Is she as enthusiastic about it as she says she is, if so she needs to prove it. Is she scared of what you will say about her work? Is she actually uninterested in the project and being too polite to say so? Does she need deadlines to achieve anything?

Even hobby projects need a degree of planning, get her to sit down with you and work out what she can realistically do by when. If it is not quick enough for you ask her how she'd feel about getting someone else involved as well/instead.

Good Luck!

[wulfboy.livejournal.com]

P'raps she involves the creative side but is intimidated by the actual writing-stuff-down-bit? All that blank paper staring up at you . . . I had a point, but I lost it. I think it was something about there being different types of collaboration, and even if you do the actual writing she's still part of the project if "all she does" is come up with stuff for you to write about.