George Lucas slaved over the first Star Wars drafts for several years. In all, there were four official drafts and countless smaller changes along the way. He showed the drafts to many, many people. Colleagues even reshaped some of the characters before production. As you can imagine, the first drafts and plot points were not much like the final film.
About eight years ago, I became a full-time professional writer. I left a job in the print industry and decided to write full-time. Before that moment, I had some marginal success writing for The Times Picayune, New Orleans' daily. But, as one would do, I believed I could make it, despite the fact that a "feature" for the Times-Picayune paid a mere $200.00 and took not a small amount of time to write.
Writing for me was excruciating, as it was (is?) for Lucas. What I wrote was never good enough. I filled my head with mentors who would scream things like, "It opens too much like a TV news story" and "Is this even an article? WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?!" I tried mightily to participate in mail-lists for draft critiques. Considering what I had already implanted into my head, you can imagine those far away voices didn't sit well with me. Bereft of their cues that come with in-person communications, these quasi-anonymous "thoughts," all sounded like screeds. Everyone hated what I was doing. Really! What am I thinking?
Yet I managed to soldier on for about two years. Toward the end of it all, I won placement in a Best Of contest, I had written for all kinds of magazines, and was even paid a cool $1000.00 for a single article. It seems I achieved, at least, moderate success.
But I did it in complete solitude. I read a lot of books about writing and so many of them enforced the idea that writers were intensely solitary creatures. What's more, they wanted to be solitary and only the good writers kept completely to themselves. Those murals of collaborating writers in Barnes & Noble? Lies!
George Lucas' endeavors, as I have seen now, were (are?) much more collaborative. Yes, it's his film. Yes, it's his story. But many people helped him along the way to create the movies that shaped millions of minds. They challenged him. They disagreed with him. They made him reconsider his babies. And while there were many, many nights of excruciating mental pain, everyone helped him to make a better story.
Collaboration worked.
I am simply much more sociable than I was eight years ago. I don't take things as personally as I once did and aren't as quick to blame inherent personal defects as a problem's cause. Certainly part of this has come from the time I ran my own business and networked with hundreds of people. Were I a "professional writer" today, I would collaborate. Indeed, I do it now for all manner of things.
We are all better for collaboration. Get out of your offices and rooms and go talk to people. Everything and anything said can help you see things for the better.
