: Where can I find co-authors willing to share writing duties for a fiction novel? Writing has turned out to be lonely profession. After a successful career of working with collaborative teams

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You can join this group www.facebook.com/groups/coauthorsforum/ at Facebook and send your request for a coauthor.

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Something you may want to consider is participating in different writer's forums or online groups where writers discuss story ideas and other topics. One that I tend to frequent is the Writer's Café at Kindle Boards.

If you find a group or community where you feel comfortable, you can choose to post a message soliciting feedback or interest from other writers while providing some basic information on your book idea. Be prepared to share at the very least the genre, your anticipated story length, timelines for completion, etc.

It will also be helpful if you have an idea of what you have in mind for the working relationship before you go into this. For example, will you be writing the portion of the story that details the protagonist's perspective while the other person writes from the antagonist's perspective? Are you planning to write the bulk of the book yourself and looking for someone to do the rewriting and revisions? Will you collaborate using online tools like Google Docs, or will you send a Word document back and forth, or will you each write your parts independently and then merge them later? Give it some thought and make sure you have a game plan on how you want to approach this project.

Basically, you need to break this down like you would a technology project. Identify your goals and objectives, develop a project timeline, and assign roles and responsibilities!

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I don't have any experience with cowriting, so take my advice with a grain of salt. But I have two thoughts:

First: If you're relatively new to writing (it sounds like you have yet to write your first novel), then I think there's probably a period of self-discovery and learning ahead of you.

If your coauthor says "let's do X", but you don't have the experience and confidence to know if that's right, how would you handle that? It would be hard.

It feels like it would be valuable to learn all the parts yourself first.

The counter argument, of course, would be that two people could learn together. And I think that argument has merit, too.

Second: I've been in three different critique groups, and one of the things I've learned is that nearly all writers work at different speeds, accelerate in their learning at different rates, and have different goals. The result is the most critique groups either fall apart or have a regular exchange of members as some leave and new ones join.

If you find writing to be lonely, and coauthoring doesn't work out, another idea might be to start a regular critique group of writers at roughly the same stage to coach each other and give each other feedback. If your coauthor bails on you, you've got problems. If a critique group member bails, it's no big deal.

Also, some writers do "write-ins" at local coffee shops. One way that works is to plan 3 hours at the coffee shop. Start with 15 minutes of socializing, then everyone writes for 45 minutes. Then repeat each hour.

I've found local writers a few different ways:

taking local writing classes (moderate)
attending local science fiction conventions (cheap)
attending local writing conventions (expensive)
looking on meetup (free)

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I am a writer too (although not published... yet). I use a site called Wattpad (wattpad.co.uk).

It is a writing and reading community where you can communicate with other writers. I find it a very enjoyable website to be a part of. My account name on there is MISThomas.

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