Years and years ago I had some poetry published, as had a friend. So he and I decided to try our hand at a novel. When it came my turn I changed the wording to make it sound like one voice. He objected,, so I told him to edit it. We never gave a thought to writing it as two people sharing an adventure, he died before we finished the third chapter. His daughter recently called asking if I wanted the chapters we’d finished. I told her to keep them…it wasn’t much fun without her Dad’s input. Years before a bunch of us at work would write with the idea of writing whoever was next into a corner. We could write as little as a word or as much as a chapter of so many words. That went pretty well until the ladies were writing a romance novel and the guys were turning it into an adventure story. It ended up dying on someone’s desk. I have the pages…on a long dead computer. We never gave a thought to combining the two stories into one, which would have been fairly easy with just a little editing….with more than twenty people contributing it was a bit of a nightmare, but workable with one editor. It was fun while it lasted….in a weird, adventurously, crazy way.

When you talk about voice its good to remember that there are two kinds of voice.

There is the author's voice which reveals the bias and beliefs of the author. It may change over time based on life experience. Sometimes it can be heard by reading a single work. With other authors, it may require reading an entire body of works to get it.

Then there is the narrative voice. That's the narrator of the tale. It can be the author and/or any number of characters. And, it can change within the tale. LL did that several times. I think "Treasure Mountain" is a good example.

But, you kind of stand the author's voice on its head when there are multiple authors. It's not that unusual for two authors to work together. But it seems like a work with 20 or more authors would almost be a little schizophrenic. That may not be a bad thing, but certainly, it would be unusual.

What we needed was a single editor, but never really gave it a thought. It basically died of being pulled in too many directions. It was fun though.

Hey, if you can find a little fun in a day, it can go from a so-so day to a really good day. And, a day worth remembering as you have. Thanks for sharing.

Whenever I have co-written with someone else we have always agreed that there would be a "lead author" who has the final say. It's best of they don't throw their weight around but it's always good to have clear rules. It never became a bone of contention ... possibly because there were clear rules.

That makes good sense. But, can you imagine being the lead writer of a crew of 20? Seems like that would be like trying to herd cats.

I think I see this a lot with James Patterson. Every time I turn around, I see a book "by James Patterson with (enter a name)." I wonder how much of James Patterson really goes into these books. Or does he just play the part of a "super" editor" or coach?

Yeah, he's apparently written some books with Bill Clinton. Did Bill write the stories and have James edit and clean things up? Does Bill come up with ideas and have James write them?

peter