Personal Note: That Wonderfully Weird Anticipatory Feel
Throughout The New Yorker‘s 101 year history there’s been a clockwork like efficiency to the submission process for its artists. New work is submitted on Tuesday, there’s an art meeting that week where it is decided which submitted cartoons are bought (a bought cartoon is referred to as an “OK”), and at the end of the week the cartoonists who sold a drawing are notified.
It being a Tuesday, this week’s batch of new drawings would ordinarily be submitted today to The New Yorker‘s cartoon department for consideration.
But every so often, New Yorker cartoonists receive an email from the magazine’s cartoon department notifying us that there’ll be “no meeting next week.” One of those emails came in last week. Thus, we are currently in a no art meeting week. No submission of work, no wonderfully weird anticipatory feel as we go through the week.
The “feel” begins as you send in your batch, (hopefully) confident of your week’s work. Hope hangs in the air on through Wednesday, Thursday, and part of Friday, when one learns if a drawing has made it through the editing process and been designated as OKed.
If by late Friday no “OK” email has shown up at your electronic doorstep, there’s a nothingness to deal with.
Let’s call the nothingness “rejection,” because that’s what it is. The New Yorker traditionally does not tell you why something has been rejected. If that was the case, our cartoon editor would be spending every single second of her every waking moment telling the legions of rejectees why such-and-such drawings didn’t work.
I’m sure my cartoonist colleagues each have their own way of dealing with the news of a “no meeting week.” My way has always been to continue drawing through the week, as usual, in denial, I suppose, that it is a no meeting week. That weird anticipatory feel, I’ve found, is addictive, and motivating.
____________________________________________________________________
I really enjoyed this piece especially how you described that “anticipatory feel.” It’s such a subtle but powerful part of the creative process and you captured it in a way that felt very real. Even the idea of a “no meeting week” changing that rhythm was interesting to read about. Do you find that this waiting period actually fuels your creativity more or does it sometimes make it harder to stay motivated?
Very interesting. In olden times, I would complete a short story (for children's magazines), go to the PO with a self-addressed stamped envelope and the story inside, and relax for a few weeks until it was feasible that I might hear back (again, by mail). One magazine always wrote to say they were considering a story. During those golden times, a final acceptance was always possible.