Thursday, July 11, 2019

A Love Letter To Collaborative Writing - Guest Blogger O.E. Tearmann


A Love Letter To Collaborative Writing
O.E. Tearmann


Psst. Check this: O.E. Tearman is the writer of the queer cyberpunk series Aces High, Jokers Wild.

But O.E. Tearmann has no birth certificate. No social security number. No junk mail gets addressed to them. O.E. Tearmann is actually two writers in a trenchcoat; one cis woman and one gender fluid person. And we started writing together because we love to play with words. 

I’m not kidding here. We started writing because we both liked to write. These books started as a collaborative play-by-post game, way back when. We got our fears and our hopes, our joys (along with some jollies) and our pain out through our characters. We played with words.

And it was one of the best things that ever happened to me.
I know a lot of terrible things are said about collaborations. It’s one of the reasons we decided to write under a pen-name: we didn’t want the nasty cachet of a co-authored book. And finding that person you just click with is hard work.

But here’s the thing: a healthy collaboration can drive you to heights you didn’t know you could reach.

Here’s the setup: 

One bubbly bisexual cis woman. Friendly, outgoing, trained in the sciences. Acts confident to the point of exuberance. Talks faster and faster the happier she is.

Goes home after a setback, hides her face in a pillow and sobs silently. Comes from a family ridden with the issues of intergenerational poverty, anxiety-depression disorders, and genetic conditions. Deals with anxiety that can leave her a shaking mess. Desperately tries to be good enough in the eyes of those around her.

One thoughtful gender fluid person. Well-read and well-versed in literature. Obliquely sassy. Quietly competent. They can tell you anything you ever wanted to know about a pocketful of fandom’s and they know Norse mythology up, down and backward.

They can tell you what depression feels like. They know how dark it can get behind your eyes. They know that sometimes even the body you’re in seems like the enemy, and the world just asks too much.

Somehow, these two odd birds met. The chipper girl with the two-bright eyes sat down next to the warily watching person at a geeky event and started chattering away. And the stories started coming out. Shapeshifters. Other Worlds. Grand battles. Wonders.

Telling stories together was a lifeline through shitty jobs, through family problems and bad days. It was a place to dance with dreams, to stop being ourselves or let some part of our psyches out for some cathartic exercise. Under the auspices of chatting about our games, we celebrated each other’s successes and talked to each other through our troubles. 

As 2016 grew difficult, the stories we told got a little darker. We worked out our fears on the page. Both of us felt the despair of wanting to do something valuable. Neither of us are built for going to rallies, calling politicians or yelling at political opponents.
But we needed to do something real. 

So we decided to take what we’d written and turn it in a story that would keep the hopes of the people like us alive.

This is the thing about good collaborations: it’s a way to complement one another’s strengths. Both people in this collaboration found in the other person something they needed. 

The girl looked confident, but she never would have had the courage to start getting serious about fiction writing if her buddy hadn’t gotten her into stories she fell in love with.

The person was a great writer, but depression could bring them low for months, unable to put down words that were intended for publication and came weighted with the exhausting pressure of judgment. They needed that weight off their backs to enjoy writing again.

The girl had been taught to do ‘important work’ and not to ‘waste time’. She wrote carefully researched non-fiction essays for public consumption. She never would have had the courage to write fiction for sale if her friend hadn’t shown her it was valid.

The person had trouble valuing their work, no matter how much they’d put into it. Old pain and old failure made it hard for them to believe they could ever do work worth publishing. They never would have considered turning the stacks and stacks of stories into a serious book if their friend hadn’t grabbed their shoulders and gushed ‘dude, do you realize we have something seriously good here? We could really do something with this!’ Since the day we said that we've put out two queer, hopeful cyberpunk books about a crazy found family and their fight for democracy in an America you wish you didn't recognize. We've gotten a publishing deal with Amphibian Press, and put out an audiobook. And we never would have done it without one another.

Tearmann is the Irish Gaelic word for the concept of a safe harbor or sanctuary. And that’s what collaboration can be: a safe place to explore ourselves and our dreams together. A safe harbor. A sanctuary. As we batted first drafts, second drafts and proofreads, cover designs and blurbs back and forth between us, we always knew one thing: No matter what, we were safe to try things. We were safe, in each other’s company.

To readers: if you’re feeling stuck, think about doing some collaboration. What you get out of it might surprise you.

To my co-writer: Thanks. For all of it. I didn’t just get good stories out of this. I got an amazing friend.

And also: Dude! We wrote A Book! We're writing A Series!

Dude. We rock!



Thank you to O.E. Tearmann for guest blogging for us. We certainly do appreciate it and their story.

As always - Breaking Rules Publishing continues to accept submissions in all genres from writers around the world. Please email us at info@breakingrulespublishing.com.




You can find more about Breaking Rules Publishing - The Scribe Magazine as well as the Short Story Book Project on our website at www.breakingrulespublishing.com.



No comments:

Post a Comment

Have you taken a moment to check out the most recent issue of  The Scribe or Horror magazines. The Scribe Magazine - October 2020 Issue $1...