As I write this, Derek Murphy is finishing up the cover to my novel, The Page Turners: Economy of Fear.

Rich Lauzon is putting the final touches on the illustrations for my first children's book, Rocket Princess vs. Snaggletooth the Dragon.

My interior designer Caroline Frechette is about to finish up the interiors for the Economy of Fear paperback.

Dominic Bercier and I are planning a dinner so that we can talk email list building, blogging, and art.

On top of that, my Write Along Radio podcast co-host, Catherine Brunelle, has just published her recording of a performance of A City's Worth, a short story I wrote for our latest podcast writing challenge.

I listened to Catherine's recording of A City's Worth during my lunch break today... and I was blown away.

It was a story I wasn't all that pleased with upon completion, and yet Catherine's voice, forming my words, separated the story from me, and it became something else.

Something separate from me.

Through Catherine's performance, the story transformed into something unique, alive, and special. It became it's own entity, a thing that was neither mine, nor Catherine's.

I listened to the story with anticipation, curious as to what would happen next, despite having written the story.

This is the magic of collaboration.

There is a line in the Nine Inch Nails song, "Head like a Hole", where Trent Reznor sings, "I'd rather die, than give you control".

This is the anthem of the artist who wishes to maintain control over his art.

It is my anthem. Maintaining control of my art is essential to me.

And yet listening to Catherine's reading of my story was a wonderful reminder that I (like YOU, my friend in writing) must never underestimate the beauty, magic, and power of giving up control. Of letting go. Of turning "my" story into "our" story, or "their" story, the reader's story. 

There were moments while listening to Catherine perform my story where I stopped listening to my words completely, and simply lost myself in the magical tones of Catherine's voice. The art I was enjoying wasn't the story, it was the performance. It was the way Catherine delivered my words, forming and shaping them in her mouth in ways so different from how I had done so myself while reading back the story during the drafting.

That's the magic of collaboration: sharing the best of yourself with the best of someone else in order to create something separate from both of you.

And that is also an example art at its best.

As artists, we live for the moment when something we created leaves us and becomes its own thing. It's own entity.

That's the goal we should all be striving for.

We don't write to create something that justifies our lives, or proves to all the naysayer that we were right, that we could do it, that we are oh-so-smart, that we matter, etc, etc. etc.

The real goal is to create something separate from ourselves.

The goal is to give birth to a child that will live it's own life utterly divorced from ourselves and our aspirations, anxieties, and petty dreams.

And that is why collaboration is so magical.

It's magical for the very same reason that it takes two people to create a human being.

It's magical because letting go is scary.

It's magical because giving yourself over to another person is both the ultimate act of freedom and the ultimate act of vulnerability.