Sunday Spill: Personal History…A Box Of Time Spent

Personal History…A Box Of Time Spent

There is one certain thing in this cartoonist’s life: rejection. I’ve been submitting drawings, without fail, on a weekly basis, to The New Yorker for 49 years. Most (and often all) of the drawings in every single batch are rejected (the number of drawings submitted in the weekly batch is entirely up to the cartoonist. My batches number anywhere from 8 drawings to 12 or so — I don’t like to burden the cartoon editor with more than that). The batting average is, of course, awful, but it is not unusual. To the outside world it likely makes zero sense. If I thought too much about it, it wouldn’t make any sense to me. But, for me, doing this much work is the only way to get to the work that works well enough to make it into the pages of The New Yorker. There’s no other way. There are no shortcuts. And here’s the funny thing: I wouldn’t want a shortcut if there was one. The reward in this biz is the time spent drawing.

Behind every week’s batch of drawings are the work sheets — the pages where words and drawings are first scribbled down. Sometimes something that’s written down (words or pictures) lights up enough for me to take it to a finished drawing (that’s what gets sent into the magazine in the batch). For some reason I’ve saved all my work sheets over the years (I don’t really ever go back to them). What I’m showing you here is a box of time spent — approximately 5 years of work (might be a little less, might be a little more). As you can see, the work sheets have finally outgrown the box, and so today I slapped an identifying sheet of paper on the box, then put a brand new empty box in its place on the floor of my old work room. This full-up box will be stored away with its mates from earlier times.