Sunday is not a day of rest for cartoonists. Since Tuesday is the day we are allowed to submit our cartoon ideas/sketches —which we call “our batch”— to The New Yorker, Sunday is the beginning of needing to get serious about getting it done. Some have already started and may even have several cartoons drawn. Perhaps some of us cram on Monday night, I have been known to leave it until Tuesday morning. Many of us have been gathering seeds of ideas, trends or phrases, during the week; some will morph into a full fledged idea, others will be saved or discarded altogether. It can be a word based seed or a drawing seed. One never knows what will happen.
I can’t tell you my seeds for this week thus far, that will jinx it. But I can say that I said something mundane to my husband just now, while I was making tea, and he said of a certain word in the sentence I uttered: that word has possibilities. And he’s right. So I wrote it down. Said word will now go into the process of examination: how to use it, is it placeable, who will say it, why will they say it, is it political, can it be use in a newsworthy context, can it be historical, what’s the exact meaning, why do I care, why would you care, is it funny.
The word sits in my sketchbook, but also in my subconscious, sometimes for days.
Here is a New Yorker cartoon of mine that came from a singular word. “Niche” was being used in the culture in a political context (it was 2004, who knows what the usage actually was), and I took the word and ran with it:
Forgive me if I told you this already (I may repeat myself sometimes in this newsletter, apologies), but my early cartoons were often without words. Captionless. In my youth, I was suspicious of words; I am less so now, finally accepting their importance. Many of my first cartoons for The New Yorker were wordless. Here is an oldie from the 1980’s:
So, there was no word that jump-started this cartoon. I am not a knitter. I do ride the subway, and that was probably the seed (The horrid pushing murder of a woman in the subway last week weighs on my mind).
I just glanced at the NYTimes—often a source of seeds— for a word that might show you an example. Nothing was obvious. I’ll check again later.
Have a good Sunday!
My new book, a history with cartoons, will be out March 1, delayed because of supply chain issues! But you can preorder a personalized, signed copy from my local bookstore, here. Or preorder anywhere else you like!