(#4) collaborate good times, come on! 🥑

If anyone knows collaboration, it’s the International Olympic Committee.

Can you imagine getting over a hundred nations to work together on anything?

Literally anything?

Their massive 2021 rebrand “was created by Canadian Agency Hulse & Durrell in collaboration with the IOC and a team of international artists, typographers and designers.” (source)

It took a team of ten people to give the Olympics a makeover.

For the IOC, that’s small potatoes.

But for a single author, that kind of collaboration takes patience, diligence, and communication.

And if you’re in the authorsphere at all, you’ve seen the fruit that yields.

When you’re serious about publishing—indie or trad, career or side gig or hobby—there are four kinds of co-conspirators you should definitely be scouting:

Editors, beta readers, artists, and other authors.

What do you get when you put those four kinds of people in one room?

Community.

Editors will sharpen your stories, scenes, and sentences.

Beta readers will show you where your story hits hardest.

Artists will turn your mental vision into a very tangible reality.

And other authors will know all about the ups and downs of making [all of the above] happen.

My best advice for aspiring authors—i.e., people like 2021 me—is this:

Find the people who believe in art like you do.

Then lift them up.

Join conversations. Start conversations. Cheerlead. Commiserate.

Your writing and your creative life will thank you for it.

Next time: let’s get down to brass tacks.

Share this with an author who’s ready for short, practical tips like the ones I’ll be sharing in my next newsletter—and an editing discount!

Got questions about right writing rites? Reply to this email with your query; I might include it in a future Bite.

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