Collaborative writing isn’t anything new to me. I’ve done group projects in the past, a majority of which were quite successful; I had to take a whole class on group dynamics as a communications major; I like to collaborate with strangers on the internet for what should be my next story idea. The things Rebecca Ingalls talks about isn’t anything eye-opening to me (no pun intended).
There are many things that I look forward to in a collaboration, especially when it comes to collaborative writing. It usually means less work for me in an academic setting, and I have been lucky enough to have group mates who can shoulder their responsibilities without us having to harp on them. But I love building ideas off of others. Usually this happens when I’m talking to friends and/or strangers on the internet where we occupy the same community space. Somebody throws out one interesting idea in the group chat, and then suddenly several of us are on that idea like vultures to a corpse (in a good way.) Conflict rarely arises when such things occur, and if it did, because we all want to see an idea to its creation, it’s easy to make compromises.
Group brainstorming is such a fun thing to do when you enjoy the topic at hand. Some of my best story ideas had come from me workshopping it with others and having it be edited by others. Collaboration can turn a shitty first draft into, well, a not so shitty second draft, and honestly? That’s enough for me!
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