The Cartoon Diary Project:
Approximately one year (and a few hundred drawings) in the life of a cartoonist
Greetings: by day, I toil as a copywriter living a perfectly normal, certifiably suburban (married, two kids, house, minivan, slightly elevated blood pressure) existence in a northern Cincinnati suburb. Copywriting is an interesting, if not fairly noble career, yet for me, it can only earn the status of day-job. The reason? I am also a cartoonist.
Luckily for me, rejection is an aphrodisiac. Being a cartoonist isn’t a career, it’s an affliction. Without cure. The only palliative treatment? Publication. (And in my peculiar case mostly in The New Yorker.
It’s been written that cartoons are the “parallel universe” of The New Yorker. And if that’s true, then cartoonists exist in fixed orbit around the mother planet, where once a week, more or less, they shuffle in, and submit their cartoons to the cartoon editor.
It is a ritual as old the magazine. Masters and neophytes make the trek to the editorial offices (now in a magnificent edifice at 4 Times Square) to bare the very scrapings of their creative fiber. These meetings are the tempering process by which chaff is not only separated from wheat; it is also processed, reconstituted, often evacuated, and occasionally accepted. Then, in the fullness of time, these scribbles blossom from the printed page as the near-miraculous cartoons that define The New Yorker. I heard they have lunch, too.
This meeting is as much a part of the process as the cartoons themselves. Except I have never attended an art meeting. (More on that later.)
Since 2000 I have submitted approximately a trillion cartoons to The New Yorker.
Of these cartoons probably about 43 or so (and still hopefully counting) have been purchased. These odds seem astronomical unless you think like a sperm. Then they’re pretty good.
I have only one rule. Never give up. That’s another reason for the CDP. Following publication in The Great Big Book of Every Goddam New Yorker Cartoon Ever Published, I’ve decided to become more pro-active in charting my progress. I might even show up at 4 Time Square on of these Tuesdays.
So if there is any interest in the actual mental sausage-making process of creating cartoons and where the hell this stuff bubbles up from, by jingo, the CDP, (as it will now often referred to) might just be your ticket to Internet amusement. My blog pain, your gain.
Finally, a seal of approval from Bob Mankoff, cartoon editor at The New Yorker—
“There are good good cartoonists. There are good bad cartoonists. Michael Shaw is a good, bad cartoonist.
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