Creativity is a Team Effort

It seems to me that many people view writing as a solitary effort. Sure, many people understand the need to hire an editor and perhaps a publisher, if you don’t want to self publish, or any other exterior force for actually producing your work, but when it comes to the actual writing, and more specifically the creative process, people tend to view it as something that occurs in a personal vacuum. I know many years ago I did as well. I believed that the mark of a truly creative person was the ability to fabricate something resembling both insanity and genius within the vacuum of their own mind. But as I have learned, that simply isn’t the case for two very important reasons. While I plan on covering both of these, at the moment I want to focus on only one, something I like to call “communal creativity”.

When I was doing my undergraduate studies, I had a whole host of ideas constantly. I was in a new town studying new things and being exposed to new ideas and people. I had ideas for stories, plans for businesses, and random ramblings about exciting RPG mechanics. The problem was that I was quite terrible at organization and to be frank, my memory isn’t a finely knit quilt of memories but a tattered patchwork of flashes being held together by loose threads. Any time I had an idea I would rush to write it down somewhere, a random word document, a scribble on my hand if I was lucky enough to have a pen. For some insane reason, If I found myself out and about when the idea struck, I would call a friend hoping that they wouldn’t pick up the call so that I could leave them a voice mail to remind me of my “brilliant” idea. And thankfully they all called me crazy and gifted me a giant pad filled with various sticky notes for me to carry around.

And that is what my ideas have become, loads of crumpled sticky notes. They are like raw carbon, they are unrefined primary resources littered around my workspace and my mind. Carbon that is waiting for that perfect pressure to shape it and transform it into something you can properly propose with. And while I can certainly apply that pressure, with pain, labor, stress, self-doubt, and embarrassment…I have always found it much more fun, and the end product much better, when I do it over coffee with a good friend of mine.

I typically would do this with one friend in particular who I had bonded with over roleplaying games such as Pathfinder. For that reason, and for their privacy, I’ll be referring to them as their character name, Arkan. Arkan and I turned out to be socially very different from one another (not to be confused with incompatible) but when it came to our sense of creativity they were incredibly harmonic. This didn’t mean that we were just completely in agreement and ecstatic about whatever the other said. Rather, it meant that we could take the other’s initial idea and reflect our own additions back at them in a manner that just felt natural. An idea would bounce between us like the dot in an arduous game of pong. We would recommend, debate, speculate. We would do this for hours all over coffee and kolaches. To us, we weren’t in a coffee shop, it was a refinery and this was our refining process. We would enter with a raw idea, a one-sentence thought for an adventure, a vague character for a book, a hair-brained business scheme. And we would leave with a three-hour-long perilous journey at the ready, a truly unique and crazy first act to a novel, and entire lean business ideas on how far we could make a thousand bucks really go. And even now, although we have graduated and gone separate ways, we still call each other and rave about ideas or critique new movies and stories to better refine our own skills.

Arkan is more than just a friend he is my creative partner and I can honestly say that my ideas would not be anywhere near a level of quality I’d be happy with if it weren't for my interactions with him. An idea you intend to share shouldn’t just be exposed to your mind when it is expected to interact with so many others. The varied experiences and perspectives of every person you run your concepts by can further enrich them in ways you perhaps would have never conceived. However, there is always room for caution.

Just as well as you can say “two heads are better than one” or “many hands make lighter work” you can say “too many cooks spoil the broth.” I consider myself lucky to have, as a partner, someone with not only a similar creative mind to my own but also someone who is highly analytical and logical. But the truth of the matter is that not everyone thinks in a manner harmonious to you and your visions and, let’s be honest, not everyone thinks or analyzes at the same level of quality. While I will always recommend sharing your work for the purpose of refinement it is essential to be picky with who and how many you are doing this with.

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