Long Distance Collaboration

 

My creative partner lives in Virgina. She's a writer and an artist, just like me and her Auntie Sara who lives back here in Iowa. Thanks to technology, the miles between us really don't matter all that much. We just coordinate by text message and when we're both a "go" ~ I flip open my laptop, she props up her IPad, we each grab a handful of markers and some paper and we are ready to go.

 

This week we are writing stories. We decide on a subject, we toss about dialogue and ideas and since I write faster than she does ~ I take copious notes and she draws the illustrations. You'd be surprised how fast the stories come together.

 

 

 

 

Once we get the story mapped out, I type it up and send it off to her so the next time we chat we can continue with both of us reading what we've done so far from the printed copies. We resort to the ancient and yet highly reliable mode of correspondence ~ snail mail ~ because she likes to get letters. And I like to send them. In a couple of weeks we'll do face-time on the Internet again and let our imaginations chart the  continuing course of our story.

 

I love sending her mail.
And I love our online chats....


 

....which always, always, always include a visit with Auntie Sara the Hamster, not to be mistaken for the taller human-being type person in Iowa in whose honor she was named. Just like my little creative partner, my granddaughter ~ both Auntie Sara's are cute. 

 

But I do think the one with whiskers that lives in Virginia wiggles her nose faster.