Notes on How I Drive and Read a Map

I don't know if this is typical of other comic strip writers, but I have a hard time steering from Point A to Point B in a storyline. It's like reading a map, considering every possible route -- milking MapQuest and Triple A of every shortcut -- and deciding to drive all the roads simultaneously.

Pulling into Point B can take a while. And by the time I stretch out of the car, my legs are shaking as if I've finished a marathon run. (footnote to fully appreciate the metaphor: the last time I ran I was in college, late for a class -- after a 30 second sprint, my various parts were shaking and threatening to fall off, even though I'd just run downhill.)

Last week I detoured all over the map.

I introduced a new character. Rather than selecting one trait and letting it hook the reader, I installed several -- it bristled with so many hooks it couldn't be handled. Soon the strip was twisted in my hands like a snarl of fishing line.

I decided to transplant the three finished strips into the following week, or the week after that, which left me three strips short for the week at hand.

I'm not a mellow guy. Sanguine is not an apt description, unless I'm bleeding. It made for an interesting week as I fought the temptation to grab those displaced strips -- sidestepping the need to write three more -- and aimed for the deadline.

I once had the idea that writing seven strips a week would be easy. I wrote far more as a magazine cartoonist. How hard could seven be?

But the difference is that most of my magazine material would be rejected. I could hope that the paying editors would only buy the best ideas. And if something sold that was less-than-satisfying (the sort of cartoon I'd include to round out the batch), that was fine. I'd get a check, pay a bill, and few readers would notice that this particular cartoon wasn't as sublime or sharp as I'd like. Even fewer would notice my name. Magazine cartoonists are literary spies, rarely noticed.

With Spot the Frog, however, I have regular readers. I decide which strips will appear. My name is stamped on my work like Coke on a can. There's an email link, with directions to my website, stopping just short of guiding you to where we hide the house key. When you read a daily or Sunday and it doesn't work, there's no hiding from the review. It's clear that I've driven the strip into a ditch.

Deciding at the last minute to write three more strips is a nerve-rattling ride I'd like to avoid, if only to spare Mary the excitement of living with a manic driver who never leaves the house.

Comments

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