Collaboration Conflagration

 Though some writers like the writers of The Expanse or Cindy Borgne with Legacy Outlaws have collaborated with a partner to write, it's never really worked out well for me.  When it comes to writing, I'm pretty stubborn and independent and just want to do things my own way for good or ill.  When I have worked with other authors on things like We Are Now with Neil Vogler and Sean Craven or Indie Writers Monthly with Briane Pagel, Rusty Webb, Sandra Ulbrich Almazan, and...some other guy, they gave me the freedom to do my own thing and they would do their own thing.  Which did work and in the case of We Are Now there was a publisher to ultimately decide on stuff or settle any disputes.

With We Are Now, my disputes were with the publisher & editor.  First I was going to just do a bunch of stories that became Dark Origins, Tales of the Scarlet Knight Volume 0.  But they said I couldn't do connected stories.  So I wrote 20-some separate stories of 1000 words or less.  Then they didn't like a couple of those and I had to write a different one to tie into the title and stuff.  And then I found out they let Neil and Sean do connected stories.  Grrrrr...

The follow up Deadly Sins there were more authors but we could all do our separate thing as long as it involved the seven deadly sins.  That time they let me do connected ones that I wrote all in one day at an Arby's in Roseville.  That became Mortal Sins, which I guess I unpublished to maybe try as a Vella thing eventually but I haven't gotten around to it.  Anyway, they didn't really give me as hard a time about that and I think whatever notes they did give me I just did the bare minimum because I didn't care.  And in a few months they were out of business anyway, so whatever.

Anyway, back in October, some authors of books similar to my Eric Filler ones approached me to join a Discord group.  And then they pitched the idea that we all write a book in a series.  It sounded like a neat idea to do some cross-promotion.  

But for me where it all fell down was when they insisted on a common setting.  They wanted some kind of hotel.  A hotel...somewhere.  And then some people wanted beaches and some wanted skiing, so then we wound up with three actual hotels that were supposed to each be autonomous complexes and yet were only miles apart.  Which didn't really make sense.  

And in pretty unimaginative fashion, someone's idea for the main building was a 20-story skyscraper in the middle of nowhere that would have hotel rooms on top of a casino and a spa on the roof.  Oh, and it was built in the 19th Century.  Um...what?  I tried to find some information on Google on buildings of that size back before 1900 but they were just about all office buildings or monuments or cathedrals.  Generally, I don't think they built hotels that size and why would you build it like that in the middle of nowhere?  The skyscraper thing is more for a place like New York or Las Vegas where you don't have a ton of horizontal space so you build vertically.  Since this wasn't in a city, why would they pile everything up instead of spreading it out?

This was one of the first problems.  Really the problem was they wanted this common setting but no one really wanted to define it.  Like where it was.  It would be helpful to know what part of the world this might be in and what kind of trees it has and all that.  But no one really wanted to do that.  Some people would basically virtue signal by saying, "I can work with anything!" or "I don't need a lot of details!"

I suggested that instead of one hotel we have hotels all over the world, thereby allowing everyone some autonomy to do what they want.  Which would have worked fine for me because I wouldn't have needed to deal with indecisive people on details.  But of course someone has to whine that they don't want that.  They want it to be like Coffee & Cigarettes!  Eye roll. So of course my workable idea got shot down so we could spend days and days hand-wringing over this stupid setting.

A lot of the problem was something I mentioned a while back when I talked about Mystery Science Theater 3000 and how they appointed Michael J Nelson the "Head Writer."  When you have a bunch of writers, it's good to have someone in charge to herd the cats.  When I did that We Are Now thing, the publisher's editor was the one in charge, herding the cats.  But with this, there wasn't anyone to take charge, so there was a lot of back-and-forth and not accomplishing a lot.

Though they hadn't definitively decided much, I started work on my story because I didn't have anything else ready to work on.  I made the mistake to mention it and some things I had done.  And every single little thing got shouted down.  Even something simple like the idea that since it's a fancy resort place all the amenities should be free.  What was wrong with that--other than I came up with it?

Someone mentioned an idea for a story about two fishermen who go to this hotel and I said, "Maybe they could get a Groupon for the place."  And then someone else had to swoop in and say, "Maybe they get a gift card!"  And the person writing the story was like, "A gift card is a great idea!"  Like it was so radically different from what I said. Eye roll.  

It felt that they wanted me to be just a ghostwriter on this thing, a hired gun to just do what he was told to do.  Which might have been fine if they were paying me.  But they weren't and I've been doing this stuff longer than most of them, so why should I just sit back and take orders from them?

So I just quit and decided to change the names and do things on my own.  I liked the story I was writing and didn't really want to abandon it or make a bunch of dumb changes.  And then I thought how to make it into my own series.  It probably won't do as well without the cross-promotions.

Anyway, that's why I've really steered clear from collaborations.  It's like the old song says, "I got to be meeee...!"  Inevitably working with other people you're going to have people who want to force their ideas down my throat and Grumpy Bulldog don't play dat.  And in this instance we had a lot of the other problems with groups where people sabotage ideas that aren't theirs or are too wishy-washy or only agree to things suggested by their clique.  It's just a pain in the ass.

In interviews they sometimes ask if you prefer to work alone or in groups and my real answer would be I prefer to work alone but that's not the answer they want.  They want you to say you work great in groups, but for me groups are almost always limiting.  And this was just another example.  

But obviously some people make it work.  And others don't.  It's like in music there are solo artists and bands and they can be equally successful.  To each his/her own.