They say there are no coincidences in life.
One thing’s for sure, coincidences can, and do have ‘Consequences’
A Tale of ‘Consequences’
Anjali Alford and Jennie Griffiths, co-founders of Collab Writers, a collaborative writing community that launched in London last week, took their mutual passion of ‘writing’ and collaborated on a crime noir work of fiction called ‘Consequences.’ It’s a tale of twins; murderous female characters, Sylvie and Betty who go on a murderous rampage of victims that society won’t miss. There are plenty of twists and turns as the characters try to thwart each other’s plans.
With your help their book can be published off one of Collab Writers’ publishing arms, Dark Art Books in the summer of 2019. Please read their story below and support their Kickstarter campaign to grow Collab Writers and get their collaborative work out there:
They met in the changing rooms at a gym, of all places. The antithesis of where you’d expect writers to be hanging out! Both used lockers in the same area, Anjali always taking an even numbered locker, and Jennie an odd numbered one. As one does, they got chatting, went for coffee and discovered a shared love of writing. Both were independently working on novels, and had been for some time. Their lives were about to change and they made a pact to meet every Saturday to work on their respective novels. Some days would be productive, others less so.
Anjali: “One day I mentioned the Victorian parlour game ‘Consequences’ to Jennie and suggested that we write a work of fiction together. I explained how the parlour game worked – that one person wrote a line, would cover it up and the next person would write a line. We talked about how we might bring the game back to life and mix it up a bit by seeing what the other had written.”
Jennie: “We discussed how we would each write one of the two female protagonists, so that the book would be told from two perspectives.”
Anjali: “The following week, I wrote the prologue to kick off the story. Jennie replied the same day. From that first day there was a wonderful buzz around our writing. It was unique and exciting…It wasn’t like anything I’d read before and I read a lot! The game of Consequences was set in motion.”
Jennie: “From the get go, the experience of writing together was fun. We would eagerly await one another’s missives, wondering what was coming next. It was a bit like waiting for a letter from a pen pal as a kid, just quicker!”
Anjali: “We’re not the first writers to collaborate, but we might be the first to write a novel off the back of the old parlour game. We had both suffered from writer’s block and found it difficult to motivate ourselves. There’s no room for procrastination because you don’t want to let your partner down.”
Jennie: “What we also loved about writing together was that we managed to complete a novel between us. We speak to so many writers who have written a few chapters of a book, or want to start one.”
Anjali: “If I hadn’t met Jennie, I think my ideas and writing fragments about the twins would still be in a folder under the bed, along with my other writing.”
Commute 2 create
The book was written mostly whilst travelling to work, often on phones. Jennie would email her latest ‘reaction’ to what Anjali had written and vice versa. The missives were named ‘instalments’. It was usually one or two paragraphs long, sometimes longer. If either was pushed for time, one or two sentences would come back. Seeing what the other had written always sparked creativity.
365 days later…..
The book was written in one calendar year, in 2015. After that, the editing began. Consequences is currently with an editor in the States and will be back to begin the book design and publishing process early next year. With ‘Consequences’ completed Anjali and Jennie can finally call themselves the writers they’ve always been. They had to collaborate to earn that label.
And, it’s not all about us. In a future blog we will tell you more about the birth of Collab Writers, to bring other creatives together to collaborate to create, like we have. Please do join us and follow us on Twitter @collab_writers. We are setting up Collab Writers to help others to get their work out there.
Keep up the good work and Connect – Collaborate – Create.
Collab Writers 