Anyone who knows me will know that I'm very, very private about my writing. Obviously, there is always the matter of getting it out there for people to read once it's done but I hardly ever let people read my work while it's in being made or at least pre-first draft. This is something that I learned while being my friend Akire's prose staffer in MLF I think; she'd always tell us that you have to at least get to the first draft before you can edit something because how can you edit something that (in the fact of writing) doesn't exist?
Given that, I'm also very averse to things like talking about (much more "editing") story concepts--if you want me to take a looksie, write it down instead of telling me everything about it. Execution is what matters because execution is on the page. It's not just about what is written about, but how it is written. Perhaps needless to say, I'm not a very collaborate-y person. I'm not the kind of person who would co-write anything with anyone.
However, while thinking about Sugar, Spell It Out I really only had one person in mind to do illustrations and that was my friend Trizha--I am a hooj fan of her work (both comics and paintings) and I think it really fit with the tone that I'm going for. So yeah! Today, we caught up and were very productive. Obviously, for the actual thing we'll be doing everything alone--I'll be writing stuff and sending it to her for the illustration aspect but we decided to practice "collab-ing" anyway because we wanted more practice and also, Trizh isn't a very collab-y person either.
So, yeah we headed to Exile for lunch and we did a writing/drawing exercise thing where I'd write something for 20 minutes and she'd draw, then we'd switch around and she'd illustrate what I wrote and I'd do an ekphrasis on what she drew. We got around 2 rounds of switching before the food came. I think the reason why this has worked so well is most probably because a) we're both very introverted people (although it may not show) and b) we're doing different things so we don't really clash. Also, I've realized I don't feel bad at all about collabs when they're for the sake of creating the work and making something as opposed to talking about work so you end up with like, a huge council of concept-editors. :)) Anywho, here are some photos of Trizh's drawings and a bit of my writing dribble. I'm alright with sharing this because I don't think I'm going to use it for anything major. This exercise was really fun; I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who's looking to get a bit creative and push the mini-envelope.
"The rosary hangs from my mother's hands. I lean in to kiss her cheek and she presses the back of her hand to my forehead, as if checking for a fever. "Bless you," she says, trying for the life of her to find out what is wrong with me."
*All drawings by Trizha Ko
It never occurred to me that doing it that way was an introverted way of collab-ing. I've personally always done this :))
ReplyDeleteIsn't the point to work away from each other enough to not impede on the other person's creative process? And being close enough to have your muses going in the same direction? It seems a lot more difficult to be working on the exact same thing with someone at the exact same time.
I don't know. Maybe I'm bad collab-ing. XD
Hey, Angie. Well I think it's introverted in that a lot of people collaborate and sort of get involved in each other's parts of the project. Like I mentioned in the post, it mostly depends on what the person is doing. Like if we were writing a comic for Trizh, then we'd definitely have to get together as artist/writer (like what Carlos and Raph are doing) but since it's my work and the graphic design Trizh is doing is illustrative and I'm basically asking her to come on the team of this project, then I suppose it really works for us to work apart.
DeleteSo... yeah. :) I think you're right about working on one same thing with soemone being difficult which is why I'm pretty averse to collabs where it's not clear who is in charge. Like, this is my book so Trizh is doing this for me and if ever she comes uot with a picture book and asks me to do an ekphrasis for her or something then I definitely would. But co-writing something...mleh. I don't think I'm ever going to do that. :))
And I'm not sure there's even such a thing as bad collab-ing. =))