All art is collaborative

It takes a team to create

Photo by Nicole Baster on Unsplash

Last week, I went to an art class and drew a strawberry (or from my angle, the leaves on a strawberry). The drawing was passable. And I certainly got into a state of flow in the process.

But the best and most surprising part?

Working in a group, including a 7-year-old and someone seven decades on from her. Marking an artwork together.

It went like this:

I made my strawberry green-leaves drawing. I passed the strawberry to the person next to me, who chose to draw a different angle of the luscious red strawberry. As did her neighbour. So we ended up with 3 different strawberry views on one piece of paper.

Then it came back to me to pull them all together into one whole gorgeous artwork.

No one artists’s work stood out. They each added something. They merged into a bigger truth of strawberriness.

Collaboration’s trending

In the same vein, I heard on the radio about a new fiction book set in a Manhattan apartment in the early days of the pandemic lockdown, “Fourteen Days: A Collaborative Novel. ” Edited by authors Margaret Attwood and Douglas Preston, it was co-written by 36 celebrated authors, including John Grisham and Celeste Ng (plus the editors). And only if you peek to the end do you find out who wrote what.

I’ll be reading this book! I find it fascinating to see how such different, accomplished writers can keep a story going when they usually write in very different styles and genres.

You’re probably aware that there’s quite a history of writers collaborating with fellow writers and other creatives (like illustrators), for example:

• Collating anthologies

• Creating film and TV screenplays

• Co-authoring

• Ghostwriting

• Making comic books

• Translating

• Writing a book within a “shared universe”

Embrace the fun of collaborating

During the week, I also attended workshops with other writers discussing tactics and techniques. And I was reminded how much we all build on each other’s creativity:

• The templates we create from others’ viral posts

• The ChatGPT prompts we borrow

• The headlines that grab us, and we adapt

• The new vocabulary we pick up from a pro

• The research AI does for us so generously

It’s a creative feast, fuelled by diverse talents and tendencies. And this feast feeds us.

So my takeaway is to just accept that

• Artists steal (as Austin Kleon reminds us)

• Writers team up

• Being a creator doesn’t have to feel lonely

• When you need to, reach out.

The creative spark you need is just a friend away.