Creative collaboration : On working through
Hey everyone!
I’ve worked with a lot of people over the course of 12 years that I’ve been a professional. And I’ve been fortunate that I have worked with some amazing people (and continue to work with more) and a lot of those are immensely creative people.
In June I worked with Charu (who I have worked with many times before) and Anurati and Sana (first time collaborators) on a game that we finished and submitted at the end of the month. Also Kahran and I worked on combining poetry with AI generated videos. So it was a month of a lot of exploration and creative collaboration. Which meant that I’ve had some thoughts about stuff I’ve learnt about myself, about the process of collaborating and about other people. So here are 7 things I’ve learnt about creative collaborations.
Creative collaboration is like harmonizing. You don’t want to sing the same notes, but you also don’t want to sing completely different notes. I.e., its good if you have different visions from each other, but only if they are slightly different. You can’t have one person trying to make titanic and another trying to make inception.
Differences of focus are great. When one person is obsessed with the character’s tone, and another is focused on lore, its not about trying to get both to agree on “what is more important”, but rather that both having differences is actually great for the final artifact.
Don’t solve all problems with just the hammer I have, build a toolkit. Whether by borrowing, or by delegating, when I feel stuck on something, its always good to rotate the problem out to my collaborators.
Ego is the worst. Creative ego is even worse. The best things can turn to nothing because of creative blowups. And often times, it is when the imposter syndrome meets ego and mind starts worrying about “securing” its position in the dynamic rather than focusing on making something amazing.
What I make is the most valuable part of this equation. Of the collaborations. No matter how much I like someone, if I don’t like the “thing” that I make with them, I can’t have a collaborative relationship with them. Sometimes the thing is something intangible. But for me, in most cases, it is very valuable to have made something tangible and incredible.
Low stakes, small creative experimental collaborations are amazing to test out the dynamic I have with someone. And also to preserve my relationship with the person, in case things dont go as well as we might have initially planned, or our styles dont match.
#6 does not mean that I won’t still need to take leaps of faith.
And it is the last one that has been the hardest and possibly what I am learning to do more and more often now. Honestly, creative work feels vulnerable to put out there. As a very wise author friend of mine said, “When we do client work, we know that there is worth in the work because there is some monetary value attached to it, but when it is our own work, all the worth becomes attached to identity”.
And as someone who has struggled to call myself “creative” despite years of working in the domain, it is refreshing to not feel a surge of imposter syndrome feelings when calling myself creative. Writing this article. This is such a trial by fire, putting myself in situations which would have otherwise given rise to Imposter feelings, and then not getting them.
Well, I was so late in publishing this one that I’d need to already start thinking about the next one, but I’m glad that I wrote this. See ya next month!