The Art of Collaboration
Oftentimes a great idea requires expertise that you don’t possess. Or money. Or perspective. Or content. Or everything. Bringing others on board can help solve these problems, but it can also provide you with headaches in parts of your head you didn’t know you had. Here’s how I have succeeded, and failed, in collaborating.
When To Collaborate
I am a writer — aka “The Idea Guy” — and am constantly mining new nuggets of inspiration from underneath the neglectfully overgrown forest of hair on my head. Any good creator has, as Ernest Hemingway once said, a “built in, shock-proof, shit detector” that allows them to filter through both their own ideas as well as other people’s to discern the “shit from the Shinola.” If an idea makes it past this detector, it must pass through another series of tests until finally it reaches a pivotal moment: Can I do this by myself?
If the answer is yes, great! The idea is likely simple enough to succeed, poorly drawn out enough to fail, or I am become death, destroyer of worlds — temporarily some kind of renaissance-millennial capable of mastering any skill, like being the most terrifyingly annoying person to talk to at high school reunions.
If the answer is no, there is work to be done. It is important to clearly define which aspects of the project I must outsource. Bringing someone else on board is inherently a compromise because along with their expertise comes their beliefs, style, attitudes, work habits, and communication techniques (hey sorry I never responded to your emails lol, it was sitting as a draft this whole time and I just noticed it never sent! My bad!). With all that coming into play, it’s rare that their ideas about my vision are seamlessly indistinguishable from my own. Outlining the aspects of the project that will be in their control is essential to keeping a tidy workflow and providing a framework to handle disagreements. Back to that in a second.
Concrete vs. Concept
Attempting to collaborate without a concrete body of content already in existence is a mistake I have made countless times. For example, I once met a writer at a poetry slam and we were quite impressed with each other’s work. I proposed that we collaborate on a chapbook comprised of all new material and gave it a title that had been bouncing around my brain for a few weeks. Sure, she said, sounds great! That evening I emailed her an invitation to a Google Drive folder named “Devlin + (Name)’s REAL BOOK” after I had added a couple pieces I had written the week before.
The folder sits in my Google Drive to this day, completely unchanged.
Why? Because I went to her with a concept. I didn’t come to her with a roster of poems, an overarching set of themes, potential cover-art, a deadline, and a number of pieces I’d want her to contribute. I came to her with a verbal proposal. If you’ve ever drunkenly made plans with someone you never see and bail on them the next day after you wake up, you’ll know exactly why a verbal proposal is never as good as concrete plans (deepest inner voice asks earnestly: what are those?).
Don’t make needless Google Drive folders like I did. If you realize you cannot actualize an idea fully by yourself, do as much of it as you can before you get other people involved. Or, make it clear that you’re still conceptualizing and ideate together with the tacit understanding that it is no longer solely your idea. A tangible product helps convince people that you’re serious, that they must be serious, and allows them to shop the idea and decide if it’s something they’d be interested in taking as seriously as you do.
Sometimes it’s necessary to bring people on from the beginning: an idea broad enough and bold enough that one mind alone cannot develop it quickly or sharply enough to make the desired impact. In these instances, come as prepared as possible and pitch the idea in a setting that is equipped to produce tangible progress in the first meeting. If the people you go to can help you, get started right away to galvanize the new team. If they can’t, you’ve got more work to do.
Disagreements
I defer to my Improv Comedy mentor, Steven Bogart, on this one. In a scene where two strong-willed actors are duking it out for laughs and glory, what happens when they reach an impasse during a scene?
“Don’t be afraid to lose.”
Timelines
I told a friend of mine the title of this article and she said “Oh, you mean slowly getting frustrated while the other person does nothing and then doing it all yourself at the last minute?”
I said “Yes.”
A close friend and collaborator of mine, who has probably wanted to kill me on more than one occasion, once called me from overseas as he was going to sleep the night before our project was set to debut in front of a live audience (‘twas a golden 3:45pm in Boston where I was living).
He says to me “Devlin, I’ve had enough. Let’s just cancel the whole fucking thing. You can just phone in and we can read some excerpts from our book [the event was our book’s opening at a venue called De School in Amsterdam, which I could not attend due to imminent family tragedy]. If you want we can release it later [the project was basically just us talking] but I have truly had enough. With my condition [serious, medical] I simply cannot handle the stress of waiting for you to finish this anymore. I have barely heard any of the audio and I am just sick of it.”
I somehow talked him into letting me have it ready for him by the time he work up, which I did, and it played for the audience.
The lesson here is this: Set deadlines. Follow them.
(Listen here)
Communication
The true key to collaboration is ample communication. If someone I am working with isn’t consistently reaching out to me (or vice versa) with little questions, comments, and updates, I start to wonder about how seriously they are taking the project.
Three keys to communication:
- Honesty
- Consistency
- Timeliness
If I don’t like the new font for the album art, I say so. If I emailed someone three times and they haven’t responded, I try a phone call. If I take more than three days to respond to somebody, I explain why and automatically include a status update with an excerpt if possible. The times I have run into trouble in collaboration are when one or more of these aspects of communication are missing on their end or mine.
Written for Advo, a field guide for adulting. Got some good advice worth sharing? Click here to submit! Check us out on our other platforms:
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Need help figuring out how to pitch your idea to collaborators? Try this article on how to pitch a shutout.
