Dismantling Money

If you want a career in any creative field, you have to let go of a lot of entrenched attitudes, especially about money.

The first, most widely held, most pernicious myth is, "You can't make a living as a cartoonist/painter/dancer/musician/mime/writer/etc..."

Friends, relatives, strangers in line at the supermarket will tell you that, especially when you're young. I haven't had a day job in over fifteen years, and a 'helpful' soul in line with me at the bank the other day kept insisting I had to have some other way of making my living. She wanted to know what my 'real' job was.

Yes, many are called and few are chosen. Who says you can't be one of the few?

Yes, you will have to work hard. At something you love and would probably do all day for free anyway.

Yes, you have to be innovative and proactive. There are no listings in the want ads for ballerinas and sculptors. You'll have to find your own ways in to those worlds, or create your own job. Show some gumption!

But it can be done. People *do* it.

It takes faith, courage, determination, plenty of hard work and creativity, and the ability to ignore those who say it can't be done.

True Story: In my late twenties, my mom saw that I travelled a lot and didn't have a 'real' job. She also knows I'm too honest for a life of crime.

So she reached the only natural conclusion.

A series of conversations followed.

"Mom, I'm not a secret agent."

"That's okay. I know you couldn't tell me if you were."

"But I'm not."

"I understand. Just so long as it's our government."

"Mom, seriously. I'm not a secret agent."

"Fine. Operative. Asset. Whatever they're calling it these days..."

After all, everyone knows you can't make a living from art!

Paying the Bills In Style

This weekend I did a macaw that I rather liked...

Making a living in a creative field demands a certain commando flexibility, certainly at first. The early days for me were like being dropped behind enemy lines with a knife between my teeth and a mission to commit general mayhem.

Before I reached the point of just drawing pictures, I supplemented my art revenue, I taught fencing and self-defense (not together, obviously), was a roller-skating disco-dancing waiter, a porn store clerk, an apartment remodeler and (for six hellish months I can only chalk up to a quarter-life crisis) a mortgage banker. That's in addition to the usual round of waiting tables, tending bar and assorted other shit jobs.

Every now and then it occurs to me that it's been years since I worried about having to get a 'real' job. When your day job is doing a few of these babies a week, life is pretty sweet indeed.

I'm putting together a graphic novel package in the next few months. That means I'll have a chance to do another run at the comics page post that blogger ate. More to come...

I Do Love My Funny Heads

I did some Christmas caricatures. It was a lot of fun, and great to flex those particular drawing muscles again.




I would've posted these earlier, if blogger hadn't made me tear my hair out and run away during the old/new transition...

Is This Thing ON?

For some reason, blogger's been locking me out of this one.

I'm still posting, but most over on my writing blog. I'm in the process of doing a first draft right now on the newest novel, so my posts track the progress and any side-thoughts that come up in the book's creation. So far, it's a lot of fun.

Of course, at 16,000 words, I'm still in the honeymoon phase. We'll see how I like it at 75,000 when I'm sure it'll never be finished and that if I do finish it, it'll be the suckiest suck that ever sucked. Bet the blogging will be fun then!

I hope blogger lets *this* one publish....

Buzzy Bee Busy Bee

Yet another of my usual promises to post more-- soon! Really. I mean it this time. I know I said that those other times, but this time it's for real. C'mon baby, you know I wouldn't do you like that...

Of course, I'm not the only blogger to go dark around the holidays. I'm just one of the few not on any sort of holiday.

The changes Agent Anne suggested have been written and rewritten, and the Poison Door is stronger for it. That goes out in the email tomorrow.

Comics are being drawn. More or less. I love them, so of course give in only sparingly to those forbidden desires that so easily engulf my world.

My reading pile is falling. Rapidly. It got pretty tall there, since I write the sort of stuff I love to read, but reading the sort of stuff I write stuffs me up. It's awfully hard to listen to the unique voice inside me when I'm also trying to do cut-rate Dennis Lehane impressions.

The next book has started clawing its way out from under my skin. More on that in another post.

And despite the nastiest, wettest, coldest damn summer in seven decades, people keep coming in for their warm weather tattoo fix. Which means nights with my hand on ice and cold drinks pressed to my forehead. Big deal.

And I'm told that somewhere in there, I gave some lovely people presents and received wrapped packages from them as well. I understand food may have been involved.

Ah, I'll sleep when I'm dead.

Ain't That a Kick in the Head

Wow. So this morning, I got myself an agent. A mighty fine one too: Anne Hawkins, of John Hawkins Associates. I've been dancing a happy little Snoopydance all over the walls today, no surprise.

From Miss Snark, The Rejector, Lit Soup, and others, I hear this is supposed to be a long, hard drudge of a process. For me, not so much. I sent out six queries, got one immediate request for an exclusive three weeks to read the full manuscript. And I've still got a week and a half left before that deadline. It's a pretty enthusiastic 'yes' on both sides!

Of course, I wrote three novels in two years before I had something good enough to show. And I was pretty careful in my choice of queries, too. The Poison Door is an odd beast: hardboiled noir full of two-fisted action, but with an offbeat literary bent. No point querying agents who rep cozies, or police procedurals, or Carl Hiassen-style madcap hijinx.

Incidentally, I haven't forgotten to follow up my comics pages post. I've just been busy. The pages themselves are done, but the wee essay on how they got that way will have to wait for the next free minute I get.

Patience, gentle readers...

How to Make Comics - Fun!

Starting some pages for a new graphic novel, so I thought I'd take the time to document the process.

First, my supplies:

cardstock,

a blue pencil (non-photo blue, or pthalo blue light some art supply stores call it),

a kneaded eraser so I don't leave crumbs,

a lapboard (I got Cool Dog in CHina years ago and he's still hanging in there),

and last, but certainly no least,

a comfy chair. :-D

I start by blocking out the story. It's a sort of push and pull between the words I'll be using and their placement on the page and the action/shots/moments I just *have* to show. A lot of this happens in my head. A lot changes here, so the drawing at this point is raw scribbles, circles and squares, stick figures.

Now, here we are at the end of this stage. My page is blocked out and the scribbles developed into roughs. This took about two hours for all four pages, but that's a heckuva lot to upload with a dial-up modem, so I just loaded two...

Now, here I am another couple hours later, with the pencils I'll be inking over. Some would consider these still pretty loose, others quite tight. For me, the big question is, 'can I look at them and see what I'm supposed to do with the inks?' That's it.

Note that the guy's head (his name is Sam) changes a LOT on that one page. I felt Sam needed more anger and confrontation, less resignation. After all, it's conflict that drives stories...

I'll post more as the inks come in...