Since the first people drew on the walls of caves, art has been a collaborative effort. The creative talents of one has helped nourish the creative talents of another. One inspires two, two inspire ten, and in the end there is this vast community of people connected by a love and passion that drives them beyond reason. And it’s when people cherish that web of creativity that amazing things happen.

That is an (unedited) excerpt from one of my very first correspondences with artist Martin Abel. I was, at the time, trying to explain why I, a complete and total stranger, was so willing to assist him in his endeavor to help his then-girlfriend (now fiancée) Hannah return to Australia. At this point, I wasn’t even thinking of asking him to illustrate Of Sirens and Sand, because the project was honestly of a much smaller scale, as this was a mere few days after its extremely humble inception.

My primary aim was the butterfly effect of creative efforts, pushing forth influence in time, but as I look back now at this small chuck of text, I realize that I predicted my own future, in a way I hadn’t considered: a creative loop. Martin’s artwork had certainly been an influence on me, but after the ball got rolling on our friendship, I found myself in his shoes, with my writing influencing him. And so the cycle went, eventually turning into a maelstrom of ideas flowing freely between us. The lines I wrote were the ones Martin inked; the lines he drew became the ones I scrawled. This is an experience I emphatically wish upon every kind soul who wishes to create.

What this has fostered for us is an environment of constant sharing. He peers into my journals, and I into his sketchbooks. As such, I get to see those rough drawings that the (unfortunate) public will probably never get to see. This causes the occasional friendly battle between us, over ideas that I simply cannot bear to see him give the axe. “But I can’t even remember why I drew this!” he’ll say. “The knowledge of inspiration fades, but not the power of what it forged,” I’ll fire back. And so it goes. Sometimes I win this war, sometimes I do not. Ultimately, this is his artwork and his choice. I am, after all, just giving him private feedback, nothing more than my own opinion. However, it does make me think about the nature of this whole interpersonal creative process, and the path of creativity in general.

What I am really saying to Martin when we have this debate is this: Don’t give up on that particular piece, concept, or idea simply because you don’t understand where it currently fits into your scheme of things. Perhaps you aren’t the person who is supposed to figure it out.

When I bought his sketch “Message in a Bottle” from him in 2008, he didn’t even want to let the piece see the light of day, let alone be sold. Hannah (having returned to Australia) pretty much twisted his arm into doing so. The minute I saw the piece, I had to have it; I connected with it right away. When it arrived, I saw that its actual title, penciled at the top of the page, was “Rest Your Soul.” My mind was already at work. Shortly thereafter, I wrote a poem by the same name which eventually morphed into one of the major components of Of Sirens and Sand. Of course, I didn’t know it at the time, but that was a key point in the evolution of the book.

When I sent a copy of that poem back to Martin, it was only then that he began to understand what his sketch had meant, just as I had to see his sketch for me to begin to fully comprehend what the ideas in my own head were leading me toward. It took two of us to solve these particular mysteries. This experience is a major reason why I believe that you need to open yourself up to the very real possibility that your work will connect with someone else, even if you don’t understand yourself just how.

The other night, Martin and I got into this discussion once more. Looking to explain further why I thought he shouldn’t abandon a particular piece, I finally compared it to a rock:

Your work sits before you, a seemingly dull piece of stone. You look at it from every angle and fail to find any redeeming value. You are tempted to declare the endeavor a complete loss and throw the seemingly useless rock aside as so much creative garbage. But something, or someone, tells you to keep at it. You pick up the chisel and mallet, proceeding to work on the idea. You continue to chip away at it, until suddenly the thing bursts open, bright with glistening crystals. Somewhere, in the middle of what once seemed so dull and ordinary, there lies brilliant meaning. See what you would have lost if you had abandoned your efforts?

One can give the counter argument: But what if you get to the middle of the stone and find no geode awaits you? Is this a waste of time? I contend that it is not. I had several ideas which did not make the final cut of Of Sirens and Sand. However, many of those ideas that did were constructed of the remnants that came from chiseling away at those ideas that didn’t. (In fact, many of the ideas were from a wholly different project, a prior attempt at a one act play.) Breaking apart the big ideas into their components many times allowed me to discover small crystals that would fit into the picture I was composing. Sure, I hadn’t hit a mother lode, but these small concepts added up and sometimes lead me to put together pieces I would not have otherwise considered.

It is my belief that if something comes out of your mind, you should not discard it. Perhaps it doesn’t fit into the project at hand, but it fits somewhere, for someone. That sketch you did, just sitting in your car on a cliff overlooking the sea, the one that you didn’t believe amounted to anything, might just be what becomes the keystone of an entire imagined universe, or the start of an incredible friendship.