I have a love-hate relationship with the week between Christmas and New Years. On the one hand, I love it. I tell myself to just hang out, read, try to relax. Everyone is not doing much. On the other hand, I worry about taking time off, that if I don’t draw for a week I will loose my ability to be funny again, will never sell another cartoon to The New Yorker, my career is over, no one will remember me, that’s it.
It’s Wednesday of said week, 2021, and I am in the middle of this. I am thinking I should draw you something, but I don’t know what to draw. I should be drawing cartoons, the magazine will open up again on Jan 3rd and will be ready to receive cartoon submissions. But I don’t want to draw, I dont know what to say. This is how it goes.
I am married to another New Yorker cartoonist, Michael Maslin. We talk about this a lot. He draws every day, no matter what. His approach is pure play, he enjoys making things up, just drawing for fun. I understand that, and feel that way sometimes, but mostly I get bored with my own drawing. I always am looking to say something, or make someone smile. Perhaps that means I should try drawing something else. Or draw more often to push myself into other areas of drawing.
Creativity requires some push. You can’t wait for lightning to strike, or you will never create. People who give out advice on writing say, just put something down. Anything. It gets you going. If at the end of the day, you only have one sentence—hey you wrote something. You have one sentence.
So I’m going to go over to my desk and draw something. You will witness me pushing myself. I wonder what will happen?
So this happened. It means nothing, it may never make it to a full cartoon with an idea, a caption, etc. But it might. That’s the key thing. Creating something might be something, but it also might become something, or it could be nothing. Or it might just be what it is, the act of creation.
At the end of the day, what more could you ask for? I could desire connection with others, which I often do. It is what I am doing right now.
And I also managed, by talking to you in this last half hour, to come to some measure of peace with the week between Christmas and New Years. Thank you.
Liza, this is delightful.
Also, do you follow George Saunders on here? If you do, wonderful. If you don't, here is a real fun coincidence:
His Substack is called Story Club, and the first story that he is offering for folks to read and analyze along with him is a Hemingway story called "Cat in the Rain"!
Thank you for creating this post and that drawing for us and/or for you. (For me, something that helps me write each day is to think about creating a joke, a thought, a poem, an idea, something for a Specific Someone. Do you ever do that?)
Thanks again for sharing all you do.