If you make art, you always have collaborators.
One of my favorite essays is from Leonard E. Read titled I, Pencil. It’s a short essay written from the first-person perspective of a pencil, and all of the people and processes involved in its creation.
Of course, if you use a pencil to make art, you’re inheriting all of those collaborators—plus (I suppose) the pencil itself. It’s our art, yes, but we owe a debt of gratitude to those collaborators I think.
The reason I like to think this way is that it sort of takes the pressure off. Much like having a genius, it suggests that the creation process has already begun—you’re just playing your part in it now.
People talk about staring at a blank page, fearing the first mark, but of course the page is part of the creation! Many others collaborated to contribute it. The page is not the beginning, but the middle.
If I believe that I’m simply moving a creation along in its journey, I can do so with the same care but without the same apprehension. It’s not even the end of the journey—the audience contributes that.
If you read the essay I hope that it imparts the same thing to you that it did to me: so many people have a hand in almost everything that we cherish, and we can consider all of them wonderful collaborators.