Eerie Rotica has been a burlesque performer for about a decade, and she also cartoons. She asked me if she could interview me for her substack. She posted the interview up over the holidays.
We talked about what I do and what it's like being creative for a living. I enjoyed meeting Eerie and thought this was a good interview.
Here's a portion that I (for some reason) snipped out of the interview. It's all about the journey and how it is not linear. Being creative for a living is not a straight line to success.
"I
was a college administrator until I was in my 30s. It was only then,
realizing I was personally unhappy with that profession, that I went
full time freelance. It was another artist, George Rhoads, who said to
me, 'You'll never be any good unless you do this full-time.' He was right.
When I quit and drew all day, I DID get better. But it still took six
months before selling anything for actual money. For me, selling gag
cartoons seemed to work best. I always thought that the
garbage-to-good-stuff ratio would change. I would stop wasting my time
with writing things that did not work and wasted time -- but I found out
it's just part of the process. That wandering around with ideas and
going down dark metaphorical alleys that don't yield a working result is
just built into this. At least it is for me. And it doesn't bother me
to toss ideas away and think of new ones. You shouldn't fall in love
with an idea. Now it's tough since a lot of the old markets are gone,
but people still love cartoons."
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