Co-Writing Interview with LS Reinholt and Minerva Cerridwen
Having recently edited a co-written book got me thinking about co-writing in general, so I decided to talk with some folks who have co-written stories and books. Here’s the first interview!
DV: Tell me a little about each of you.
Hi! We are LS Reinholt and Minerva Cerridwen, and together we share one brain cell. It’s lucky we bumped into each other online 10 years ago, otherwise that poor cell would probably have been very confused.
LS Reinholt (any pronouns) is a writer and teacher from Denmark. Her first short story, “The Durga”, was published in Women of the Wild: an anthology by MADA Books in 2017. She enjoys science fiction and fantasy, as books, movies and games, whenever she can find the time.
Minerva Cerridwen (xe or she) is a writer from Belgium who used to work as a pharmacist. Xyr queer fairy tale novella The Dragon of Ynys was published by Atthis Arts in 2020. Xe also likes baking, drawing, yoga, and learning languages.
DV: Tell me about your co-writing process. (Do you send a file back and forth, work in a shared Google Doc (or other), take turns, work at the same time, etc.?)
We started out writing in emails, where we’d send each other a few paragraphs, lines or just words at a time and then piece them together later. But soon we discovered the convenience of Google Docs and since then we have seized every chance we had to meet up in a document, taking turns writing and using the chat and comments to make suggestions, plan, and distract each other thoroughly.
In many ways, it is like sitting in the same room and working together, sharing virtual tea and snacks. But at the same time we can be carrying on two or even three separate conversations with each other, discussing content in the comments while sharing news in the chat and sending memes on Messenger.
When planning a story, we’ll start by throwing ideas around, until we have a rough outline for how the story should go. We will, of course, deviate wildly from this as we go along, but it is still very helpful. Then we will list the needed characters and divide them between us. The main characters are usually the easiest, since we both have our own style and our own strengths, which we know pretty well by now. As we move down to the minor characters, we often focus on who they’ll be interacting with (we prefer writing dialogue with each other rather than ‘talking to ourselves’), and on dividing up the workload. However, sometimes we will assign a character to the one of us who doesn’t suit their style, just to see what happens. We have been known to surprise ourselves that way, and we like to think it avoids us getting too predictable.
Once the characters have been divided, we mostly stick to them as we would in a roleplay. The main character’s inner thoughts will be written by “their” writer, and the actions and dialogue will be decided by the corresponding writer too (after discussing the options when needed). But when we’re not on a deadline, it can be more fun not to plan everything and instead just dive in and write. The responses will be all the more natural when they are truly spontaneous, and the editing round that follows will take care of any accidental inconsistencies.
DV: What do you love best about co-writing?
The spontaneity mentioned above, as well as the inside jokes that result from it. We just have a lot of fun. We also complement each other well: when one of us is more focused on the plot, the other will take care of descriptions and timelines, and when punctuation becomes a distraction from just getting the words out as fast as possible before they fly away, the other will fill in all the commas where necessary.
It’s also great to be able to bounce ideas off each other, even if it’s for stories that we don’t end up writing together. We are each other’s best editor, because we know so well what the other probably intended to say that we can figure out quickly what to tweak in the other’s writing to bring the real meaning across on the page.
DV: What aspects of co-writing cause you difficulty?
The hardest part is to find time to be in a document together with enough focus to get anything done. We can usually manage to align our schedules three evenings a week, with the intention to work a couple of hours, but even then it’s a question of both having the energy and focus to get as much done as we’d like.
DV: Where can we find your co-written work?
Five Minutes at Hotel Stormcove is an anthology set in a fictional hotel that, through the ages, has turned into a shelter for those who need it. Our short story “Dragon in the Cove” has a cute little dragon that likes to take baths in teacups.
Our co-writing once started with Sherlock Holmes stories, so if you like those, we would advise you to look to Sherlock Holmes: Adventures in the Realms of Steampunk: Mechanical Men and Otherworldly Endeavours, which contains our story “The Adventure of the Purloined Piston Valve”. We also wrote a short essay for the same publisher about our co-writing, which was published in Sherlock Holmes is Everywhere!
If you like queer horror, we have a co-written short story in both of the anthologies from Artemisia’s Axe (the publishing part of Haunted Bouncy Castle in Glasgow): “The Lost” in Neon Horror, and “The Bound Heart” in Skulls & Spells.
We have been working on a full science fiction novel for quite some years now. Hopefully we will have news about that soon!
All the news about our upcoming publications can be found on Minerva’s website: https://minervacerridwen.wordpress.com/, and on our social media.
Twitter: @LS_Reinholt & @minerva_cerr
Facebook: LS Reinholt & Minerva Cerridwen
Instagram: L.S.Reinholt & Minerva_Cerridwen
Thanks, LS and Minerva!
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