I know. I know. You would think that by now we’d have got the message. We aren’t in control. You would think that after over ten years of working together on different projects we would have learned this. But we haven’t. We live in our own little bubble, believing that this time, this time, we have things sorted. We have a plan, we’ve started editing and yet … something isn’t quite right. Only to find that that one tiny thing that isn’t quite right means that we have to go back to the beginning and start over again.
So, I’m not going to say it. That this time we have it right, because I know full well that the moment I utter those cursed words something will happen. And another character will raise their hand up with an “but I don’t belong here” and we’ll be back at square one. Frankly, at this rate it’ll be a miracle if we haven’t both torn our hair out by the end of this! But regardless, we love it – strange people that we are!
And that’s been our week. Charlotte’s back from her holiday, she’s been getting back into the swing of things and I’ve been revising for a job interview. One which, if I get it, will mean better working hours for me so that Charlotte and I can actually communicate rather than both of us scrambling for what little spare time we have between our respective jobs. Yes, we talk and there isn’t a day that goes by where we don’t exchange some communication. But weeks like this we realise that we need a little more time.
Well, more time and to win the lottery … but as our numbers are yet to come up, this is the best that we can do! Working around our jobs and making things work for us. Thankfully, this time our characters decided to throw us for a loop over the weekend – which makes a nice change. Usually it’s on a Monday and we’re trying to scrabble for those few precious hours through which to talk out the latest earth shattering development.
It isn’t ideal, but it’s making the best of this situation and somehow – and don’t ask me how because I honestly don’t know – we seem to have managed it so far. Sure, there are times when we’ll be crying at one another because this character has suddenly hit us with an explosion of feels and we don’t know where to put it. Or times when a character (yeah, I’m looking at you Tom!) does something so ground shattering that we want to throttle them or simply tell the other ‘I’m done. I’m out’ because no amount of time out is going to resolve that one!
But we don’t. We don’t because honestly? We love it. Despite the fact that we’ve not had much time, and the last few weeks neither of us have had a lot of time to sit down and devote as much time as we need to to our work, we still believe in this. So yes, we’ve had a weekend where it’s like ‘omg this changes everything ever’ but that was Saturday morning. It’s Sunday afternoon now and we can both sit back and say ‘our work is better for this change’. It feels better and suddenly, we can see the magic happening.
Maybe we could do without the hours of editing that we’re both going to have to do to make this change work, to salvage some of our more painful chapters. But if we have to re-write it? It’ll be more than worth it in the end. And with a little luck, next week will be better, I’ll have had my interview – so fingers crossed for us that finally, finally we can both work the same hours of the day. And if not? We’ll carry on, I mean … we’ve managed this long I’m sure we can last a little while longer!
~ Clara
Charlotte and Clara 