An only child, I didn't learn to
collaborate very well (i.e., share the work and the credit) until I got married the second time (and there's ongoing debate about how well I do that even now). Thus, the concept of creative collaboration has always interested me. I'll focus here on one instance of collaboration, the writing of
Marijuana is Safer - So Why Are We Driving People to Drink? by Steve Fox, Paul Armentano, and Mason Tvert, with a Foreword by Norm Stamper, former Chief of the Seattle Police Department. It's a very credible book, clearly and persuasively written.
I interviewed Steve Fox, Director of State Campaigns for the Marijuana Policy Project, and a graduate of Tufts University and Boston College Law School. I asked him about the actual logistics of coordinating the inputs of three authors.
All in all, Fox told me, the writing was a very smooth collaborative process. One of the keys, he said, was their decision to divide up the chapters, with Armentano taking the first three "background" chapters, as well as the chapters related to history, myths, traditional arguments for reform and their vision of the future. Fox himself took the lead on the remaining chapters, as well as the introduction, which was written ahead of time for the purpose of trying to sell the book to a publisher, he explained. Tvert provided significant input and review, and he also drafted the appendix about how to spread the message more widely.
Fox continued:
The most challenging -- or at least time-consuming -- part of the collaborative process was the back-and-forth over edits. This was made all the more interesting by the fact that the three authors were living in Washington, DC, Colorado and northern California and were not together in person once during the entire writing of the book. All we can say is, thank goodness for Track Changes! This allowed us to circulate the chapters among the authors, with suggested changes included. It was then up to the original author of the chapter to accept the suggested changes or to defend the original wording.
I wondered if there were creative differences at any point, and Fox said that, in almost all cases, "these differences of opinion were settled amicably." (Does that "almost" speak volumes about the unique challenges of collaboration?)
As this is a book about a topic that continues to be controversial, I suspected it might have been a challenge to get published. I asked Fox. His response:
It certainly was a challenge getting this book published. In fact, it may never have happened but for a serendipitous situation. Back in 2006, Paul and I had shopped the book around to about a dozen publishers, including Chelsea Green. But it was rejected or ignored across the board, so we basically let the dream die. About a year later, I was working at Fenton Communications and coincidentally ended up running an account with Chelsea Green to promote Naomi Wolf's End of America. When that contract was completely fulfilled, I sent a quick email to Margo Baldwin, president of Chelsea Green, with whom I now had a good relationship, to see whether she would be interested in looking over the book proposal. She agreed.
But even then, according to Fox, the Chelsea Green staff wasn't sure that the book would have a broad audience. Which I find a bit odd, with the topic of legalizing marijuana in the news nearly every day. But publishers tend to be fiscally conservative, even the progressive independent ones, and have to be convinced there will be a sufficient market. At the first staff meeting to discuss the book, Fox told me, they decided they did not want to invest in it.
Again, based on my relationship with Margo, I essentially appealed the decision and urged them to reconsider, arguing that marijuana policy reform was becoming a more significant issue in the political world. The Chelsea Green team revisited the issue and decided they would take a chance on the book. Given that Chelsea Green ordered a second printing just six weeks after the initial publication of the book, we assume they feel like they made the right decision.
Added Fox, "perhaps the success of our book will cause independent (and perhaps even larger) publishers to be more optimistic about non-mainstream proposals." (And by the way, using a vaporizer is much healthier than smoking.)
* Here's a post with some different takes on the collaboration process in fiction: Ripley Patton - Experiments in Collaboration.
