We’ve kicked off 2020 with a renewed sense of purpose and a new writing plan. Because we write collaboratively, we’ve had to develop our own specific methodology over the last six years. Keys to our past writing successes have been fairly regular business and brainstorming meetings, clearly designated roles for each work-in-progress, and of course, feedback between the three of us. The last two years we haven’t done such a good job with any of them (for a variety of reasons). This has led to a marked lack of progress on all our projects. We’ve let them sit, to our overall detriment, but there have been some upsides.

When you write twisty, turny plots with a plethora of characters and a bunch of made-up locations, it can make for an excellent story but if you stop working on it, you can easily lose the thread and the details. Once that happens, it’s easy to introduce plot holes into your story. Characters and places can be subtly changed, timelines shift, and events get mixed. It’s a frustrating endeavor to pick it all back up, dust it off, and try and catch the elusive bits that made exciting for you in the first place. You cannot stop writing! For once you do, it’s hard to pick it back up. Anne is having to re-read the entirety of our crime thriller manuscript in order to re-familiarize herself with the material. It’s been a while. It’s been slow-going. She’s taking notes, in the hopes of getting the details right and maintaining continuity.

It hasn’t been all bad. For one, it’s refreshing to open an older project and realize that your writing is actually quite good. Did we write that? Maybe we can do this. The re-read has also allowed Anne to identify a few ways to improve on the plot, as well as some fine-tuning of a few place names and descriptions and fixing a few formatting errors. For now, it will be key to keep the momentum going. Because we really don’t want to have to do this all again.

Anne will continue to work on Enoch. Nancy is working on our new paranormal thriller, Area 25. Eric is working with Nancy on the new project. He is also finishing up school, so we don’t expect much writing from him until his program is complete in March.

We appreciate you all sticking with us. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. We hope your new year is off to a good start.

Best wishes,

Anne, Nancy, and Eric