The romance of ISIG II

Rob likes to quote Mercedes Lackey, "If you don't have to write, don't." He says that's why I'm the real writer in the family, while he's more of a writing hobby-ist.

Of course, this causes some friction when collaborating. Since this is my vocation and my passion, I tend to be the go-getter, pushing, writing, forging ahead on the next idea--and dragging my poor husband along.

There are days our collaboration goes like this:

Me: (shouting from my study across the hall to Rob in his study): "We got another story for ISIG! It's pretty good. What do you think?"

Rob: (dragging himself from the news he's reading on the Internet, mental gears grinding from paradigm shifting without a clutch) "Did you shoot it my way?"

Me: (holding back my impatience. I've already screened five stories--can't he look at just one?) "Yes! Two hours ago. You haven't looked at it yet?"

Rob: (holding his tongue. In the last two hours, he's gotten home changed out of uniform, played with the kids, eaten, and had just settled down to read his newsgroups.) "I'll get to it tonight."

And he did, sometimes. Sometimes, we replayed the whole scene over again the next day.

Then there were those dangerous nights I'd bring the laptop to bed. "Hey, honey, what do you think of this?" I'd ask, then I'd read a snippet without noticing he was still engrossed in his book. On the flip side, many a time he's started reading me a funny scene from his book as I was struggling with a paragraph from my own scenes.

So we struggle with timing and with where in the priority list our writing belongs.

When it comes to the actual collaboration, however, there's no one better than Rob, but that's tomorrow's topic.

Learn more about Karina and Rob and all the ISIG collaborators at http://isigsf.tripod.com.