Collaboration and creativity

I’ve always liked to collaborate. I’d much rather sing with other people than sing alone. I’ve been working creatively with my husband Tom for well over a decade now. I’ve co-written with various people along the way.  My blogging is held in part by my being part of a wider blogging community, where ideas flow between people. I think the idea of the lone creative isn’t true, it’s just that not everyone acknowledges their creative family, or the people enabling them to do the work.  Humans don’t exist in isolation and therefore cannot actually create in isolation either. We’re all held by our societies, and family histories and we all depend on people who make our food, clothes, electricity and so forth.

I’ve been collaborating intensively with one person for a couple of months now. I’m committed to two ambitious projects, and smaller side projects keep opening up. What’s particularly interesting about this collaboration is that it’s changing all of my work, not just the bits I’m co-writing.

I note that my ideas flow more easily, and I have a lot more of them. My imagination feels like a trim, lively sort of creature as it bounces about inside my head. I’m more relaxed about what I do, and more confident and that’s showing up in all sorts of ways.  I’m getting feedback from people who are involved with my work and can see the difference in other projects, too. I’m faster. Things that would have taken a couple of hours now fall into place in one, or less.

I like myself more as an author right now than I have done in the last twenty years. Oddly, I feel like I’m finding my voice – something I thought I’d done a long time ago. I’m also finding out, week by week, what a Nimue/Abbey voice sounds like, and what kind of stories that might lead to. It’s like nothing I’ve ever done before, and at the same time, it feels like coming home.

I’ve been sharing posts here that are me responding to Abbey’s ideas. Over on the Hopeless Maine blog, I’ve got pieces where his words and mine are much more interwoven, and the stories come from both of us.

https://hopelessvendetta.wordpress.com/2021/04/30/and-the-dead-eat-the-living/