I’m experiencing the same insights with Tim, the voice actor who is turning the Boone Series into audiobooks, that I did with Alex, the illustrator of my children’s books. Both of them, capable artists in their own right, bring out facets of my work I didn’t know were there. It’s immensely gratifying in addition to being fun as hell.
For Alex, our first collaboration was Father and Sister Radish and the Rose Colored Glasses, and I entered our partnership with some ideas about what I wanted the visual art to look like. Her ideas were better in every case, and brought nuance and perspective to the story that didn’t exist before she interacted with the text. Fortunately, I quickly realized that I needed to get out of her way and let her work, and the six books we have done together are richer for the pooled creativity.
Tim is having the same effect on Boone’s story with his decisions about pausing, emphasis, and tone. Having learned from my experience with Alex, I let the man work and the result adds layers to Boone’s journey. I’m mostly along for the ride and I’m enjoying every minute of it.
The initial decisions were the critical ones, as it turned out in both cases. Several artists were available to choose from, and attending closely to that first phase has paid off handsomely.
This has occurred over and over again for me: in Tai Chi, getting the feet right allows the weight shifts and movements of the body and arms to happen smoothly and makes it possible to turn a series of positions into one long smooth move. When I was teaching teens to build a cabin, the most important decisions involved the foundation. Once that was solid and square, everything flowed from a firm base. Playing my dulcimer requires, first and foremost, a correct grip of the hammers and a centered stance.
Finding a good place to stand and allowing things to develop from there, either alone or in collaboration, serves me well when I can maintain the self discipline to attend to those two things. Interesting notion, that sometimes discipline involves letting go.