Book Review: Making Collaboration a Habit

I recently finished reading: The Collaborative Habit by Twyla Tharp. While I cannot highly recommend the book, I do recommend the practice of collaboration.

The work of creative people has often been seen to be a lone endeavor - the writer huddled up in front of a keyboard, a painter alone in the studio, an illustrator hunched over a drawing table. I am sure you get the idea. 

While is is true that all artists do need to spend some time alone making their work the reality is that the work would not come forth without a great deal of collaboration.

What do I mean? Artists talk to others, look at others work, hang out with others, listen to others, plan with others, are accountable to others, party with others at opening and the list goes on.

I can think of no single artist who reached their fame while working in a vacuum. None.

Artists residencies a form of collaboration. Read more here about a long term residency program in Hawaii. Sadly this one will be closing soon, but maybe the story will inspire more like it.

Here is one excellent quote from The Collaborative Habit:

"Collaborators aren't born, they're made. Or, to be more precise, built, a day at a time, through practice, through attention, through discipline, through passion and commitment–and, most of all, through habit."

What do you do to build collaboration into your daily creative practice?