|
|
|
 |
||
 |
"I absolutely love these comics. Some of my lower-functioning students come to study hall to read Chester for further explanation." Megan, 8th grade teacher from OH |
 |
 |
||
Archive for the ‘Author’s Purpose’ Category
10 Year Anniversary
Written on Sunday, February 3rd, 2013 [permanent link]The business license from the Commonwealth of Virginia came in the mail February 2003. I celebrate a decade of business this month with my 32nd title and a pile of thankfulness to the friends and family who have supported me every step of the way. Chester and I have survived some missteps, hundreds of miles of travel to conferences, and a Great Recession that hit our main target audience (public schools) particularly hard. Why did I keep going?
Most of the people who start their own business fail. A savvy friend who loaned Chester Comix LLC money at the very beginning noted that this was my “Defending Your Life” moment. Check out the movie sometime — it’s a funny look at how important it is to be brave in the face of the conventional wisdom to play it safe and keep your crayons within the lines. And her reference to that movie was a huge compliment that kept me going through some scary times.
They were scary times because I couldn’t see around the corner, not because I was unsure of my own footsteps and the direction I was walking. I believe to my core that I was put on this planet to do Chester Comix. I’ve been doing it the best I can — first as a newspaper cartoonist from 1995 to 2004 and then as my own publisher from 2003 until now. I often think what a weird set of skills it takes to do this work — and marvel at how my life has included training for those skills — how the pieces all brought me to this life I have now . . .
* CARTOONING. I didn’t study art as a major in college — I’ve studied it my whole life. I taught myself to draw by copying Peanuts out of the newspaper. My dad was an art professor, and my parents took me to a lot of art museums as I grew up. Art was not an oddball career choice. It was accepted and encouraged. You’d be amazed at how important that is. When I started to draw my own superhero comix in elementary school, my dad got them copied so I could sell them to my friends. Chester Comix LLC is just a more elaborate form of that work I was doing in 4th grade.
* WRITING. Schools make all of us practice writing all the time, of course. But I went further. I started keeping a journal in 5th grade and was on the school newspaper in elementary, middle and high school and then in college. That’s where I got encouragement to write for a public audience — a big barrier for many people. I picked newspapering because it allowed a broad range of creativity and seemed to have a lot of job security (every town has a newspaper, right?). The Internet crushed that — but not before newspapers taught me to brave enough to write publicly and write well on deadline.
* PUBLIC SPEAKING. I did debate in high school because my friend Amy did. But in the process I found a family of friends there and learned to face a big audience and think on my feet to speak extemporaneously. I think about that training every time I talk about my work in front of 350 kids in a school cafeteria. (And it’s fantastic when kids tell me that I’m much more interesting than other authors who get up and drone on; it’s all due to my debate training at Brookings High School with the incomparable Judy Kroll. Well, that and my love of Steve Martin.)
* RESEARCH. Majoring in History and Literature at Harvard University was a great excuse to buy the books I wanted to read anyway and take time to dig for details in the papers I wrote. My work-study job for four years was inside the school’s rare books library. That love of reading and research is the starting point for every story I tell at Chester Comix. Chances are, over my morning cereal I’m reading a historic academic journal I found in a used bookstore.
* MARKETING. This is an off-shoot of the newspaper work. When Chester ran in the Daily Press of Newport News, VA, I was just as involved in the marketing of the feature as I was in writing and drawing it. I’m comfortable in social media and thankful for all the tools I can wield myself to promote the business now (many of which didn’t exist in 2003!).
* STUBBORNNESS. The key. I spent the summer after my high school graduation working for my father’s weekly newspaper in Ohio. When the staff floundered a few months later, I took a leave of absence from my freshman year at college to keep the paper running until my father’s permanent return to Ohio in the summer of 1986. In that experience I learned hard and valuable lessons about being a small business owner. No one will ever care about your business as much as you do. No one will be addressing samples letters on a Friday night with you. But if it’s what you believe in, you do it gladly.
I believe in Chester Comix. Thank you for all your support over the past decade. I look forward to more storytelling and more success in the next one!
Posted in Author's Purpose, Comix Creation | Comments Off on 10 Year Anniversary
Inspiration Goes Both Ways
Written on Saturday, December 15th, 2012 [permanent link]
Every day I make my pilgrimage to the post office to check the box for new orders for history comix or for checks that pay for previous orders. Some days I get something even better.
Today I got this. The letter and drawings from 10-year-old Donald made me so happy. There was no money in the mailbox today. There was no way to ship out new comix without waiting in line for 40 minutes amongst the holiday shippers. But Donald sent me a gold mind. He sent me a gift that came from his energy and passion and time. His love of Chester reminds me how important my work is. I love working for myself, and it’s nice to make enough money to buy iPhone apps whenever I want to, but a big part of the payment I receive for my work is the feeling that I am inspiring my young readers — inspiration to learn more, inspiration to love the nation and culture of America, inspiration to create their own stories.
Inspiration works both ways. Just yesterday I was back in the elementary school that taught my two sons over a 10-year period. I went into that building to volunteer in their art classes almost every week during those 10 years. I read my favorite childrens books to their classes at storytime. I played on the playground with them. The family of teachers at this school were so dear to my oldest that we had to drag him out of there after fifth grade as he protested that he wanted to graduate from high school there. Now that son is in college. Once a year I retrace my steps up to the front door in a kind of homecoming: the teacher who had my youngest in her gifted writing class asks me back every December to speak about my author work to her current class of gifted writers.
And they inspire me. Yesterday’s session was a great give-and-take with the authors of the future. At one point they were champing at the bit to draw so much that I stopped talking and let them draw, to see what they would create. They had ideas and knowledge and fearlessness. Grownups can get worn down by daily To Do lists and can give in to doubt. Connecting with creative kids is an electrical jolt that propels me forward in my own storytelling.
Thanks to all the young people who dare to be great. You are my heroes 😉
Posted in Author's Purpose | Comments Off on Inspiration Goes Both Ways
The Pace of Doodling
Written on Sunday, October 7th, 2012 [permanent link]
Almost every page you see in the Chester comic books was drawn and written on a tight deadline. I’ve spent my whole life practicing that skill: hit some part of the target — and hit it on time.
That’s the curse to the blessing when you get to do what you love for a career. When there is a paycheck at stake, you may run out of time to fine-tune that drawing of an elephant or to find just the right word for “stubborn.” You don’t have to hit the target’s bullseye — but you do have to deliver SOME drawing and SOME words by a certain date. For five years I delivered Chester the Crab adventures that the Daily Press of Newport News, VA, could run Monday through Friday throughout the the school year. It amounted to a giant mountain of one-man content. For four more years after that I did the same kind of educational comic strip for another newspaper in Virginia. Another mountain.
The way to accomplish this deadline art is to keep the Big Picture in mind. Writing a Chester story always meant thinking about all five days of the story at once, being mindful of just how much space I had to fill. (No need to go down a rabbit hole about drawing rabbits just the right way if there’s no room for that kind of detail!) It felt like thinking from the outside in — because if I ran out of time, the first thing to go would be the detail. Draw the outline of a brick building first, to get the idea across; the individual bricks only get drawn if you have time. I still have that dynamic on comics I do on commission — I get a deadline and 24 pages to tell the story of a famous town in Ohio, so I start thinking from the outside in to figure out how fast and well I can fill those pages.
But today, in the corner of my office, in a life of running my own business, lives the exact opposite dynamic — the Doodle.
Most of us remember the Doodle from 5th grade math class or sophomore year German. Many still practice it in committee meetings. After two decades of shooting out drawings like arrows at a target as some for-hire hawkeye, I LOVE going back to the Doodle!
My Doodles help me fill in and expand my old newspaper stories as I convert them for mobile devices. My goal is to double the number of panels from the old print versions. So when I have a spare 10 minutes at the kitchen table, I start a Doodle that may add a panel to the future expanded biography of Patrick Henry. Or I take a cool detail I sketched during a Civil War reenactment with my son and doodle that for a future iPhone version of the Battle of Gettysburg. Here I think inside-out. Because I drew the spine of a story years ago, the big moments of the story are already covered. NOW I can expand a story at any point that seems interesting to me — maybe I’ll draw more panels about the childhood of Clara Barton but focus more of my new Helen Keller panels on her later globetrotting life. Who knows! Each panel I noodle around with now is its own little world.
I’m giving myself the freedom to poke around at the details in each panel. Some of these new panels have taken months to finish. They’re my little basket of deadline-free fun. But don’t worry — I’ll share them soon.
After I add a few more lines to that barn in the background . . .
Posted in Author's Purpose, Comix Creation | Comments Off on The Pace of Doodling
