Collaboration: Nah, yeah

Imagine you’re a fly on the wall in the writers’ room for The Last of Us. Even awesome, what if you’re one of the writers toughing it out, deciding if Ellie lives or Joel carks it, and how to reckon with Abby before she does anyone in?

Putting in the yards with others can be ace in the right environment. Collaboration is like a marriage—it needs love (for the creative output), commitment (to finish the project), trust (in each other’s competence).

It needs time, attention, communication, patience, tolerance, generosity, respect, fondness, admiration, constructive feedback, compromise, play… Think of them as dunking biscuits for a good cuppa.

All those dunked bickies that contribute to a successful relationship are crucial to a writerly or editing partnership. You can’t write or edit with someone you think is a boofhead, damn right. You gotta respect them. You can’t create a quality output if you don’t believe in it or have a shared sense of meaning, and you’re totally not going “You beauty!” about it.

I am a pig or a boar in the Asian horoscope. I am a giver. Warm-hearted and open. Sentimental to the bone. I work straight and love with all I have. I approach collaborations the same way.

But I choose wisely. I don’t collaborate with everyone and their mum. It’s like dating—not everyone is for you. I never collaborate ‘blind’.

Like dating, I do my research. I look to see if they’ll give it a fair go and are confident in their craft. I ask the right questions and get a handle on them. I build rapport and I am authentic, my true self. I know early if I want to progress things, or if I need an exit strategy for a gracefully ending.

Here are seven questions you can ask yourself when considering a collaboration:

What do you know of the person—their reputation, the quality of their work, their work ethics, for example? Don’t just give their name a once over, do your research, especially if you don’t know the person from a bar of soap. Get your hands on some of their projects and see if the person is a good sort for what you mean to achieve.
Is there chemistry? Yeah, like the kiss test. Not literally, of course, but literally is okay if it works for both of you. If you don’t like raw onions (I don’t) and they’ve gobbled a bucketful of raw onions and you can smell them 10 streets away… just saying. So this is not really about raw onions, but it is about raw onions if you can’t stand them (like me) and you and your collab mate must literally work together in proximity… Listen to your gut (or your nose): do they feel (smell) right?
What do you know about how they work with others? If you’ve seen them whinge about (or crack the shits at) another person and you went, ‘Hang on a tick,’ and felt scratchy about it, know that nothing will stop them from doing the same thing to you.
Are you invested in the project?—as in, do you reckon the project is the bee’s knees? If you’re meh about it, dear gods, for both your sakes, take a hard pass.
Are you compatible? Yeah, like, workwise. If you’re headless chooking and they’re a sloth or cracking tinnies as you slog… or maybe you’re an insomniac dragon slayer and they have narcolepsy (think Homer Simpson), then, crikey—you’ll be cranky at each other, hissy fits every which way about deadlines and who’s dead weight. No bludgers in a collaboration; everyone’s gotta pull their weight. Else the bloody project will become a stinker and you’ll want to crawl into a catacomb and die, or you’ll be blasting all projects and collaborators to Point Nemo or an exoplanet.
Have you set guidelines about how you’ll work together? Before anyone arcs up, say, mate, let’s get some rules about how we’ll work together, as in who does what when.
Is there a decisionmaker? It might help if someone—usually the originator of the project—goes, no worries, let’s do it. Sometimes, you need to make up-front decisions (with input from all collaborators) that keep the integrity of the project e.g. which publishers to approach etc.

Simply put, it’s the whole shebang: do your research, then you can only enter a collaboration in good faith. Ace if it works, stuff it if it doesn’t.

Some things go down the gurgler and it’s not your fault. Know when to pack it in if the project goes bush and you’re stuck with a dog’s breakfast. Doesn’t mean you’re a galah that you can do bugger all about it. Just do a u-ey, don’t make a scene.

Best case scenario? The collab is sweet as. More heads are better than one. Remember the writers’ room for The Last of Us? You can get heaps done in a whopper partnership.