Should You Get A Writing Exchange Partner?

So as of today, I’m still holding out hope that I will actually be able to visit my writing exchange partner, Gudrun from “Secret Life of an Expat” in France next week, despite Mother Nature trying to keep us apart through the rather curious device of volcanic ash. And that got me to thinking that some of you might be considering taking on a writing exchange partner, so here are my thoughts on that subject:

Why Are Writing Exchange Partners Beyond Awesome?

There are some writers who don’t believe in showing anyone their work until it’s finished, or at least decent. I used to be one of those writers, but I’ve completely changed my mind on that subject. I get so much more work done, knowing that at least one other person is going to read it and give me feedback. It’s also hard for either of us to skip more than a few days without the other partner sending an electronic nudge. It took me 18 months to write 32 CANDLES on my own. It took me three and a half months to finish my last rough draft with someone holding me accountable for pages. You do the math.

How Do You Find A Writing Partner?

Well, Gudrun and I actually met over the course of several “Finishing School” classes at the beyond wonderful Writing Pad, which assigns you a writing exchange partner for each five-week session. But we didn’t actually get assigned as each other’s writing exchange partners, until after we had known each other for a year or so. We were friends beforehand, but we REALLY clicked as writing partners, and when the class ended, we went on exchanging pages. That was back in 2008. So if you don’t already know other writers, I would suggest hitting a writing class to find your potential exchange partner.

How Do You Know If A Person Will Make A Good Exchange Partner?

That’s actually simple. You’ve got to really like his or her writing — I mean really like it, to the point that you’re willing to read anything that s/he gives you to read. If you find someone whose writing you like like that and who feels the same way about your writing, then propose a writing exchange. It also helps to be friends. I talk to Gudrun more online than any other person I know, including my husband, so yeah, you’ve got to get along.

How Do You Organize A Writing Exchange?

Well, I’m sure other writers do this differently, but here’s Gudrun’s and my process:

We write a rough draft, which the other person is only allowed to praise, underlining the bits we particularly like, making comments throughout, and writing a small note at the end of each day’s pages. This basically keeps us going to the end of our rough. Then for all of our other drafts, we still say what we like, but we also give constructive feedback. This is why you really have to like the other person’s writing, because you read it over and over until your partner’s done with it.

Our technical agreement is that we write every single day, but with babies, new husbands, life, stepchildren and what not, if we get five days in we’re happy. At first we sent pages at the end of every day, but now that we’ve been doing this for a while and can trust each other to write on a regular basis, we only send pages when we’ve finished a full chapter. The biggest part of a successful writing exchange partnership is making rules and sticking to them, but keeping them fluid, so that your writing practice flourishes no matter what life throws at you.

So those are my thoughts on having a writing exchange partner, which I would frankly recommend to anyone looking to finish a longer work. If any of you want, have or would never even consider a writing exchange partners, let me know your thoughts on the practice in the comments.

Photo Credit: bass_nroll


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Teenage Wish Fulfillment [Yay!!!!!]

It’s weird, because a lot of 32 CANDLES is about reconciling what you wanted as a teenager with what you get as an adult. Well, I can still remember reading excerpts and features on books in Essence as a teenager, and hoping that one day one of my books would make it into my favorite magazine.

Well, Essence remains my favorite magazine. Where else can you find ideas for both natural and relaxed hair, fashion tips for all body types, and features on black women, praised for being everything from glamorous babes to savvy nerds?

Still, I’m pretty sure it was the teenage me that screamed and acted a fool when my editor, Dawn Davis, told me that 32 CANDLES would be featured as Essence Book Club’s Book of the Month for their July Issue, which will hit newsstands in mid-June.

My father is still fond of telling me that “If you can dream it, you can make it come true.” Sometimes it feels like I’ve been fighting him on this proclamation all of my life. But the older I get, the more I believe.

And I just might tell my daughter the same.

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About Your Lifetime Calling [Again]

While doing research for this post, I found this old post, which I published on Fierce and Nerdy in December 2008 about two months before I got my agent, three months before Molly Ringwald’s lawyers told me I couldn’t use my original title (Molly Ringwald Ending), and five months before I got my book deal with HarperCollins. And I thought you guys might find it of some use:

So the other day The Anonymous Smithie from My, You Really Have Put On Weight hepped her readers to this fantastic New Yorker piece written by Malcolm Gladwell, which I think every artists should read yesterday.

It’s framed by the story of Ben Fountain, a lawyer, who leaves his job to write full-time and finds literary success with a well-reviewed book of stories set in Haiti … over 18 years after he quit. The article then goes on to talk about the many, many artists who have found success later in life:

Yes, there was Orson Welles, peaking as a director at twenty-five. But then there was Alfred Hitchcock, who made “Dial M for Murder,” “Rear Window,” “To Catch a Thief,” “The Trouble with Harry,” “Vertigo,” “North by Northwest,” and “Psycho”—one of the greatest runs by a director in history—between his fifty-fourth and sixty-first birthdays. Mark Twain published “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” at forty-nine. Daniel Defoe wrote “Robinson Crusoe” at fifty-eight.

The thing is these aren’t just flash in the pan examples. For every wunderkind like Jonathan Safran Foer, there is a Ben Fountain.

Art, contrary to popular belief, does not belong to the young. Let me say that again, because if you like me, sometimes get down about having not “made it” by now and feel yourself looking into a bleak future in which you might never fully “make it” the way you want to, you may need to hear it again.

Art does not belong to the young. You don’t have to be a genius from an early age to be a good artist. In fact, success later in life might make you a better artist. I really like Jonathan Safran Foer’s work, but I think he has a lot of trouble with writing women beautifully but not very well. At least that’s what I took away from his second novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

On the opposite side of that spectrum is Junot Diaz. I read his first collection of short stories, Drown, in 1996, and could not wait to read his first novel, which everyone in the literary world seemed to be awaiting with baited breath. That novel, The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao wasn’t published until late 2007. It is an instant classic, that seems to touch everyone who reads it. Every single woman in this novel is written so beautifully and well that it is damn near heart-breaking. And I’d challenge readers to list a better-written mother-daughter relationship than the one in this book. It’s filled with such terrible love, that I suddenly did not mind having to wait over a decade for it.

The Brief and Wonderous Life of Oscar Wao won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Junot Diaz is 39, and if he wants to spend a decade on his next novel, I think he should go right on ahead.

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