The Marvelous And Magical

I can't remember when or why I started drawing, but by kindergarten it was something I did a lot and greatly enjoyed.  I also had (and still have) a deep affection for books that began long before I can remember.  My parents had a lot of books I wasn't allowed to peruse at my leisure, mainly because most of them were words-only books and as I was an avid drawer I'm sure they wanted to protect their things from doodles and crayons.  I'm also sure that mild restriction only added to the great mystique books held for me, then and now.  Books were special, treasures.  My mom often took my brother and me to the "big" city library, and it was like walking into magic to be surrounded by all those books!  And an entire wing packed with books just for kids?  Amazing.  We'd select a few, check them out, cherish and re-read and re-read them at home, then carefully bring them back.  

Because they weren't ours to keep.  They were not mine.  Yeah, it's a thing.

It seemed to me then a lot of things were "not mine."  Being little in a world of adults, everything seems made for giants or inherently dangerous or not allowed.  My world happened to be cable-TV-free, so there were no "just for kids" channels, and just-for-kid-ness seemed uniquely limited to things like Saturday morning cartoons, Sunday paper comics, booster seats at restaurants...  There was a vast adult world kids got to visit...and then had to take a nap.

One thing I knew was mine and just for kids was school, and I loved school.  Still do.  When I was in kindergarten, our school library held a bookmark design contest.  First prize was a brand new, hardbound Complete Winnie The Pooh.  I knew and loved Winnie the Pooh, even though I knew Pooh was not just for kids.  A grown up wrote it after all, and my parents enjoyed reading it and laughed at things I didn't quite get -- there's more to that bear than first meets the eye.  I didn't understand why I was sad when Pooh was left to wait on the hill for Christopher Robin to return, but I was, and I hugged my bear "Cousin" especially hard so he wouldn't be sad, too.  So, for the bookmark contest, I drew Pooh bear eating out of a pot of honey with bees flying around.  I drew it with pencil, just like a big kid, and I WON!  My bookmark design was selected over every other kindergartener, first and second grader in my little school and was replicated (probably just xeroxed, but it seemed like a very professional publication to me at the time) so everyone could take my drawing home and mark their places in their own very special books with it.  And as an artist, I got my first commission -- a hardbound book that was entirely, completely mine.

I don't still have that bookmark.  It was lost to the ages.  But I remember feeling shocked and  utterly surprised my drawing was chosen.  After all, I'd been competing against bigger kids--two full years bigger, and in kindergarten-terms, that's like a generational split.  That little bookmark contest felt like a huge endorsement and was what let me think of myself as more than a kindergarten kid visiting the world.  I started to think of myself an artist, and to see my artwork as something special that not everyone could do.


Not that I thought of cartoons, art, or anything creative as something I'd get to do for real.  You get to do art when the real work was done, after school or during free time.  I believed making art and drawing were enjoyments I would have to earn by working at other things, real things, because art is an indulgence reserved for leisure time and play.  I did not think, "when I grow up, I'm going to be an artist."  I was an artist already, just like I already had brown hair and a spider vein on my finger--it was just another inseparable part of me.  And for some reason, I thought that meant it wasn't valuable.  I don't know why or where I got that idea, but I wish I hadn't.  

At least some small part of me doubted that ridiculous conviction, though.  The part of me that was elated to be recognized among bigger, older, better-skilled, more mature competitors.  The part of me that cherished that Winnie the Pooh book and kept it safe all these years.  The part of me that's warmed by a rare sense of pride and a secret sense of shared magic when I read that book to my daughters, who also love that marvelous bear.

Woe Is Writer

If writing were this easy and painless, I'd have completed whole libraries by now...

I recently read an article about boosting self-confidence with the power of positive thinking.  

How original -- snide remark compliments of my inner critic.

When it's on break from beating me to a non-productive, quivering pulp, my inner critic often amuses itself with wonderfully cruel asides.  It should blog...  Funny thing, the article knew my inner critic well and said the reason it's swelled to the limits of my skull is because I'm a girl.

"Another perk of womanhood!  Yay!"

--said my inner-critic.  I'm calling her Unis.  (The rest of me had a bit of an f.u. reaction...)

The article claimed that's because little boys tend to be criticized way more than little girls.  What?  I have no idea why that would be the case, but let's say it is.  The article claims boys criticize and tease each other more openly than girls, and anecdotally-speaking that does seem to be the case.  And it feels true that girls grow and nurture a substantially stronger inner critic than boys.  Just look at public restroom behavior.  En masse, women don't tolerate gross bathrooms or slovenly bathroom habits.  Men do.  Within 10 minutes any male public restroom becomes a post-apocalyptic mire pit.  Which I don't get at all.  Anyway, the article said because they're more used to criticism being heaped upon them, boys learn early to shake it off, confront it, or ignore it.  Which is why some can miss a toilet or sign their names in pee and go right back to their day.  Men who don't behave that way--often just hold it until they get home, if they are so able.  On the other hand, girls perceive criticism often when it isn't even really there.  We experience it more acutely, and internalize it, making it part of our identities.  A slovenly bathroom reflects on us, and we will not have that. We'll demand intervention, call in a manager, complain, the most fringe of our sex may even attack the mess themselves!

I don't know if the article was accurate, but it felt and feels true.  At least as a description of me and Unis.  And the inner-critic theory also fits with the "practice makes perfect" model.  Most boys and men I've known do seem better at ignoring, compartmentalizing or confronting than I am, all skills I'd like to master, though not at the expense of decent public bathrooms.  And I do dread a regular regimen of high-fiber frustration and cardio-criticism just to build my confidence muscles.

"Embrace your anxieties."

Shut up, Unis.

 

Family Ties and Bindings

I know a very talented composer/song-writer.  Like so many in the music biz who blow my mind, he is versatile and able with a whole mess of instruments and can, all by himself, compose, arrange and record a full score's worth of music all by himself, playing every part, with a little home-recording equipment and mixer.  Amazing.  Because he insists on having ridiculous extravagances like uninterrupted health insurance and paying his bills in a timely manner, he teaches and manages in addition to composing, but he longs for a day when he a score gig, theme-song or recurring jingle pays well enough that he can devote his working days to music full time.  

He landed a commercial, a national commercial, which doesn't equate to suddenly living in a beach house in Malibu but is, nonetheless, a monster big deal, especially to those of us still on the breaking-in side of any creative industry.  He excitedly shared this fantastic news with his family, explaining that he'd sold an original song that would then be recorded and played, nation-wide, on multiple channels, etc.  Very exciting stuff.  Through it all, his mom uh-huhed and smiled and listened, and then said, "I don't see how this makes you money, though."  He explained again about copyright and pay-per-play and rates varying by channel and exposure and repeated play.  "Uh-huh," she said, still confused.  "But why do they pay you for that?"


His big news fell like a stone.  It was kicked around a little through dinner.  Finally, he stopped trying to make his mom understand not only that he would earn money every time the song was used but that he deserved to be paid for each use.  He returned to SoCal and LaLa Land  a little heart-broken.  


Family is such a funny thing.  Nothing means more or is harder to get than a ringing family endorsement, and no rejection by colleagues, friends or strangers stings quite like an unenthusiastic, "it's nice but--" from a relation.  It's especially problematic when your work is outside the familial expertise or taste.  Help-books and friends tell you to harness these feelings, channel them into your work, because they are potent and real and universal, feelings rooted in the deepest love and respect --

These are the feelings that make lifelong careers!  

For therapists.

ba-dah-dah-dah!

True Lies And Non-Fiction Fiction

I'm sure you've heard the phrase, "film is a lie at 24 frames per second."  Well, that's true, of course, because a film is not life, it's a construction.  Even a documentary cannot be anything other than a construction.  But in openly-admitted fiction that is in no way trying to be True, how much is true by necessity?

A common debate you'll hear throughout the humanities centers on how much of the artist is evident in the art.  How much of what's written is the writer?  There are whole schools of criticism that take up variations of that one question.  You can build a whole career in critical studies just exploring auteur theory.  Way back when, one of my professors (also a novelist) was deeply annoyed we (his idiot students) kept making assumptions about an author based a novel he wrote.  For instance, one of the characters was quite perverse which prompted our creative interpretations of what the author believed about sex and women and sundry accoutrements.  The discussion got pretty detailed, and gross, and my professor ended up throwing a chair to get our attention back.  

I had yet to brave the admission I was, myself, a writer.  Publishing cartoons and writing all the time were my hobbies and side-lines, things I knew I would do for the rest of my life, but only in addition to a real career.  Because no-one writes books or draws cartoons for a living.  Those rare exceptions I saw in the newspaper or magazines or bookstore were freaks of nature or products of nepotism or luck.  They were not regular, real people from no-where like me.  Regular, real people from no-where go into law or medicine or other linear careers of easily measured success (apologies to the lawyers, doctors, and others laughing at me right now, but  these were the assumptions of my juvenile mind).  I had not yet faced the fact that I was headed for a creative career, so I didn't yet realize having any sort of audience meant I, too, was going to have to brave being exposed.  As a multi-panel cartoonist, I joked I was a "stripper" by trade.  I didn't realize at the time how very accurate that would be.

Creating anything--even if you couch it in lies and call it fiction--is a kind of personal striptease.  Naturally, everything we "create" on some level reflects who and what we are.  Even intentionally avoiding subjects, settings, events, or characters from personal history is revealing.  No wonder it's such a daring and nerve-wracking thing to do.  I get nervous as bathing-suit weather approaches, I certainly don't feel any more confident showing my insides as well as my outsides.  When I started considering a creative career, I engaged in ridiculous fantasies to keep myself hidden.  I'd write under pseudonyms, use caricatures instead of photos of myself, hire an actor to stand in for me at public functions:

"And the award goes to...Jody Lindke.  Playing Jody this evening and accepting on her behalf, please welcome Vin Diesel." 

What's almost worse than feeling so self-conscious is the counter-impulse of feeling supremely vain.  Creative expression strikes the insecure me as a narcissistic act of screaming on paper, "look at me!"  My inner-critic is fat and happy as it goes to town mixing low-self-exteme with guilt-generating shame, and the result, I've discovered (as it was recently pointed out to me again) is I chronically hold back in my work.  


I'd been dealing with rejections and couldn't help asking myself over and over "what do they want?"--they in this case being publishers and producers and agents and readers and every level of gate-keeping in between--and I did this within hearing of a friend who reminded me, "what they want, really, is a piece of your soul."  Did you feel a chill?  'Cause I sure did.  If I didn't want to share my visage with others, I certainly didn't feel any more confident exposing any fraction of my soul to derision.  I wasn't gonna do it.  There had to be a way out.  I had to be able to pretend convincingly enough to keep myself separate--and safe--and still create compelling fiction and films.

Not so.  

Looking at the stories I revisit most, the shows and films and books I turn to, I realized it's not only true, that bit about the soul, it's right that it's true.  It is just.  It is good.  


It's also really, really, really intimidating...

Whether you're consuming art or creating it, you're engaged in an act of sharing, and what you're sharing is yourself, your humanity--y'know, that thing supernatural or immortal creatures always envy in us, that thing we always recognize in friendly aliens from other worlds and never find in the ones who want to eat us.  That thing is what makes a good story great, that makes us laugh and cry and feel we not just engaged with art but experienced it.

I thought I was done with a particular bit of fiction.  It does all the things it needs to do.  It's funny, it's moving, it's got a plot, plants have pay-offs...but some parts feel clipped, some opportunities lost, because I'd approached it as a story about "those people" in "that place," and kept myself away from it.  So what could be great is only good.  If I dig in and let that bit of soul I've been hoarding show, if I scrape down to expose the raw, real emotion and pain of what I'm writing about, it could be one of those stories you can't look away from or forget, the kind of story that becomes as real and personal as lived memory.  Drama is action driven by feeling, and I hadn't wanted to feel what drove the actions I'd written about.  I'd written about death and fear and lust and love and joy, but I'd protected myself, kept my clothes on, kept my humanity to myself.  It's intimidating to think of an audience seeing this and saying, "this is Jody's fear and lust and love and joy," reducing me to what fragments of myself slipped through.  I don't want the censure or humiliation.  If I invest myself and the work is rejected, I lose the self-soothing, "well, that wasn't really me."  However much I give any piece of writing, it is by nature a construction, but if I only ever play it safe, my work can never be more than artifice.  

Striptease may be an art, but making art is a striptease.  You can't hide and create. 

I often say story lets us live surrogate lives, but I realize now that's only possible when the teller is courageous enough to give real life to it.  That bit of soul they want is where Truth with the capital "T" resides.  Art doesn't give us feelings of strength or courage or empathy or solidarity or love or loss or hope.  Art stimulates real feelings because real feelings were put into that art. Feeling is the heart (note the phrase) of story.  That's what gives it the power to teach, to reveal our humanity, to cement our connectedness and acknowledge our fragility.  Dismissing it by calling it "fiction" is kind of naive.

Casting Vampires & Other Film School Cliches

It's awards season.  Festivals, viewer and professional award nominations are flooding the industry news, getting everyone excited and anxious to do new business.  For those in the rapids, congratulations and hang on tight!  For those on the shore, use the lull to gear up for next time.  And for those in between, do your best to stay afloat.  When it comes to scripted entertainment, sometimes just not going under deserves recognition and applause.

This season is always bitter sweet for me.  It brings to mind past projects:  the surprise when something you didn't realize was kinda good got some recognition, the suffocating silence when something you thought would do better isn't noticed at all.  It's a funny business.  

I had the great privilege of screening short films I worked on at festivals, at school, and at the DGA.  Like with writing anything, when you're involved in the making of a film, it's difficult to get the perspective and distance you need to actually see the film.  It's tough to see the edit for what it is when you're bogged down by memories of the making of the thing.  Maybe you can't see past the actor who seemed fine until he got drunk on set and felt-up half of your some-still-slightly-under-age, all-volunteer crew.  Or maybe you're stuck staring at the actress who swore she'd cut her hair to get the part but then refused half-way through production so the final third of the film doesn't make any sense.  Or the scene that should have had the hunky guy you already filmed for the plant scene but who didn't show up to shoot the pay-off, and you couldn't afford re-shoots so you never re-cast and what should have been a comedy isn't funny or even all that dramatic, so you're generally screwed.  Yeah, sometimes it's like that.


Like every department or component in any scripted entertainment, casting is crucial.  I won't say "casting is king" because we've all seen counter-examples and scripted entertainment, whether for the stage or the screen (of any size), is a team sport.  Quarterbacks and pitchers can't win by themselves, and a cast is nothing without a crew is nothing without a writer is nothing without a financier is nothing without...  Well, if financiers find themselves without, at least they have the means to buy it.  But I stand by the rest.  Back to casting.

It's a strange thing to be on the choosing side of casting.  I feel a little unambitious admitting I never used the "casting couch" as an opportunity to fleece someone for money or favors or to solicit border-line illegal "personal contact."  Talk about lost opportunities, right?  I found it challenge enough to just be at that table because I know what it's like to be on the other side.

There are many, many, many reasons I'm not an actor.  One biggie, I took theater in high school, where I learned that the anxieties typically associated with the audition side of a casting session pretty far exceed my anxiety threshold.  I'm always impressed when I meet (I'll add sane or happy) actors because what they do is really, really hard, and I don't mean performing.  Performing is an entirely different brand of difficult.  I mean auditioning, walking in cold, doing your thing (or their thing if there are sides), and walking out with no expectation of hearing from anyone, ever, about how you did or why you didn't get the job when you later see the film or show or program or commercial or print-ad or whatever.  That's really tough, and I find the people who can embrace that life and stress and remain whole with family and sanity intact are beyond remarkable.  Kudos. 

Though it is really important in film school to work on as many of your classmates projects as you can (every project is a massive learning experience and every crew position, no matter how unglamorous or seemingly unimportant, will teach you buckets about producing and getting the most from yourself and your work), one of the best things about film school was the push to make us cast real actors.  "Don't rely just on your classmates," soon became, "you will post ads, you will audition, you will cast real actors, or you will fail this class," and thank goodness it did, because nothing less would have gotten me to do it. 

There are several things you can expect to see in indie- and student films that scream cheap and cliche but which can be great if done with some exceptional flare or skill:  major scenes shot entirely on a couch, games of chess or prominently featured chess boards and pieces (often to indicate intelligence otherwise lacking in the character, writing, and film), protagonists running alone in metaphoric pursuit or metaphoric flight, over-use of close-ups, flat space, ridiculously severe stripy lighting justified by window blinds, no apparent ceilings coupled with obvious set-seams, twinkle-lights and generic neon signs...  Actually, it's a pretty long list and probably deserves a post unto itself.  Anyway, one of my shorts (prominently featuring too much flat-space, too many close-ups, and no ceilings whatsoever) embraced the reformed vampire cliche.  It's one of my favorites.  I don't like bullies or human predators, but I love a good redemption tale, and vamps typically have a lot to answer for.  

My film was about a latch-key kid who finds a vampire, knows what it is, and adopts him.  It doesn't end well.  Subtle, right?  Since vampires are heart-and-hand with sex and violence, I wanted to cast a very attractive grown man as my predator and a bright-eyed, prepubescent girl for my latch-key kid for added yet subtle tension.  Sh'yeah.  Okay, not subtle at all, but that's what I was looking for, and I tried to keep an open mind, and I found it!  The girl was terrific, inside and out, with a wonderful "stage mom" whose first and only priority was her daughter (not always the case with child performers and their moms).  For the vampire, I was torn between two actors.  One was fair, the other dark, one lanky the other beefy.  How to decide? 

When you're casting, you try to keep an open mind, partly because what you think you're looking for might not exist, and partly because preconceived tunnel-vision can blind you to discovering something great yet unexpected that an actor might bring to the role.  Every project lives for those moments, those hidden and inspired opportunities, and as a filmmaker and story-teller you struggle to keep yourself open enough to recognize them.  Both actors were easy on the eyes and willing to commit the significant time for rehearsals, shooting, sitting for mouth-molds so I could get prosthetic fangs made.  But one just had more of a "killer" vibe.  The other was a good actor, very personable, kind, smart, funny, with a terrific, easy-going smile that just lit up the room and made me (and by extension, would make my audience) want to know him more--a very charming guy.  I knew at once he'd be easy to work with even on long, long shooting days.  But the other guy--and it's magical when this happens in casting, when you stumble on that "it" factor, that "wow" moment where an actor just becomes or is exactly what you're looking for even though you didn't know until that very moment that's what you needed and wanted and can't do without--he just had this perfect and ominous je ne sais quoi that screamed "I'm a predator."  He was perfect. 

But when I prompted him later to improvise a scene where he's "cheering up a sad child" at, say, an airport or doctor's office, his same je ne sais quoi also whispered, "I might gut you between takes just to see the color of your insides."  And that was for "cheering up a child."

I cast the smiling Mr. Personable.  I was instantly rewarded by my instincts being confirmed.  He took the job seriously, was prompt and punctual and we got the prosthetic teeth molds and he was really supportive and friendly in the best possible way with the ten-year-old on set.  The prosthetic fangs were perfect and very believable in proportion, color and size.  Mr. Personable was so great, I was able to focus exclusively on the billion other problems that is shooting a student film, including re-writing the script almost from scratch mid-way through shooting because between lost locations and time there was no way what I wrote could be shot.  

Through it all, Mr. Personable smiled beautifully.  Because he couldn't not smile.  

Not even when he wanted to. 


This discovery was not made until dailies, which for this project meant half-way through production.  We'd shot the "temptation" scene, a dirty close-up of our killer face-to-face with the vampire-buffet that is a healthy little girl's pulsing throat.  He played it well, all in the eyes, and we could even see the flutter of her artery -- the shot really worked -- as his lips part and we see...no fangs.  Couldn't see the teeth.  Over and over, close-up after close-up, all burned film, all losses from budget and time, weeks of time and money in the one and only custom-prop, but not one shot, not once were the fangs visible.  Something I hadn't noticed about Mr. Personable until dailies was his mouth had a naturally smiling shape to it, lifting quite pleasantly at the corners, but also dipping slightly more than I anticipated from the corner to the mid-quarter of the lip, a dip perfectly suited not only to completely cover his incisors, but the extended fake fangs as well.

Back to set we went knowing what we had to do--maximize exposure of those fangs.  Without fangs, the character just looked like some creepy, pale guy following a ten year old girl home.  Without fangs, the tension was less predator vs. meal and more imminent child-rape, which is still evil vs. good in theme, but a noir of an entirely different shade and one I had no intention of re-writing to accommodate.  So, I laid it out, and he agreed -- we had to see the fangs!  

That's when we discovered he couldn't grimace.  The particular shape of his mouth and the development of his facial muscles which made him look so pleasant meant he could not sneer or snarl or bare his teeth in any menacing way to save his life.  And he tried.  He really worked at it.  Dude was totally committed to the role (and only working for copy and credit!  God, I love actors!), but he couldn't not smile, and teeth-gnashing of any kind was impossible.


Back went the fangs, priority rush, for modification.  Back to the edit bay, emergency panic, to figure out what was usable and what wasn't.  Back to the computer, frantic revision, because the film we started shooting wasn't possible, even with the changes we made to deal with the lost locations and time remaining.  Duly regrouped, we completed production...by embracing additional student-film cliches:  ridiculous make-up, over-use of music for lacking transitions, reveal-it-was-all-a-dream plot re-shuffle, and the classic we-can't-resolve-this-story-in-a-satisfying-way suicide ending.  

Obvious block-buster material.  It's how I made my first million.  [insert laughter here]

We finished it, the culmination of half a semester of overwhelming amounts of work and a life-threatening lack of sleep.  I think it's six minutes long.  Including the credits.   

Two years later, having finally saved up enough money to have my "negative cut" (this sucker was shot on real, physical film, mixed and screened off a telecined work-print), I enjoyed one final surprise student-film cliche:  lost negative.  Somewhere between the school and the film development house, exactly one reel of my film negative was misplaced, making it impossible to cut the negative and produce a finished film complete with (drum roll, please) optical mono-track sound transferred from hand-cut magnetic film!  Yeah!  

Personable as ever, Mr. Personable would've done re-shoots in a heartbeat -- a consummate worker and just that kind of guy.  But my latch-key kid went from ten to twelve, and in girl terms that's something like six inches taller, plus braces on her teeth--no way new footage would cut.  There ended any possibility of a formal screening, of festival submission, of cutting DVDs.  Not my favorite take-away from the student film-making experience, but a valuable lesson in blind trust, film storage and archiving.    
  
Aside from some seriously bitter disappointment at not being able to "time" and complete a finished print, I've never once looked back on this project and been sorry, especially about my cast and crew.  I got to shoot some stuff I'm really, really proud of, even if almost no-one will ever see it.  When I say I learned, I say it with major italics.  Ultimately filmmakers are just viewers who also happen to make films, so it's no surprise that what makes for a great movie or show viewing experience also makes for a terrific production experience.  Writers sometimes like to say, "it's an important story," or a "valuable tale," but good stories really boil down to the people in 'em, whether they're part of the action or the telling.  It's the people involved that make a story meaningful and the time communicating it well spent.  

I've gotten to work with some supremely kind and diligent people who gave their absolute all.  In this case, it was just to help tell a six-minute story pre-loaded with problems and cliches.  And it's still one of my favorites. 

Pattie Kaiks and Self-Destruct Buttons

Growing up, most of my creative endeavors were pure rip-offs.  Stevenson's Kidnapped inspired me to write some really hacked high seas adventure tales.  I attempted a rendition of Watership Down except with kitties on a roadtrip.  And cartoon-wise, I knelt at the altars of Charles Schulz, Berkeley Breathed, Bill Watterson, and Pat Brady, and as I got older Kevin Maguire, Adam Hughes, Brooke McEldowney, Patrick McDonnell...it gets to be a pretty long list, actually, but if you look, you'll see them in there. 

In the Arts (note the big "A" on that), you're supposed to study from others with the aim that eventually imitation will yield to talent and originality.  Pattie Kaiks was my first attempt as a cartoonist to generate something entirely my own.  Of course it was necessarily influenced by everything I'd ripped off and imitated before--you are your past as much as you are your present--but unlike everything I'd done before, I didn't "fall into" Pattie Kaiks.  I designed her.

The opportunity fell from the sky a little--I'd been doing cartoons for some local papers and talking with my editor about applying to syndicates and trying to branch out with a comic strip.  He suggested I develop one for his weekly paper, something that would be relevant to local and current events, and I sat down to build Pattie.  Unlike my earlier work, this would be a comic strip of adults for adults!  (That didn't quite stick because...well, because I was writing it, and as a friend of mine likes to point out, if the world were slightly more forgiving, my outfits would likely be a mix of primary colors--all three, every day, like a walking, living Legos set.)  Kid stuff eventually sneaked in, but I did my best to keep the perspective focused on Pattie, a tea-drinking, single, childless, self-employed C.P.A. in the full bloom (and physical slide) of adulthood.  I loved her instantly.  She's a woman's woman, a worker, tenacious and unapologetic, both proud of and frustrated by her physicality that was (and is) so expressive and really fun to draw.  

I submitted samples of Pattie for syndication and got a lot of positive feedback.  But I got bogged down in other things (teaching and graduate school and the like), and I suffered from a rather crippling case of rejection-depression that made it difficult for me to see ways to address the criticism without overhauling everything and starting again from scratch.  It's a stupid, useless, and totally derailing response to an editor's letter that essentially says, "I like you and I want to see more!"  And it lasted just long enough for me to whip out the classic, "it's been too long, they'll have forgotten me," self-destruct button.  I didn't re-apply.  What a wuss.

Pattie would have some sharp things to say to me about that.  You might glean from the bit above, the woman is no faint-hearted stranger to frustration.  She has little tolerance for self-pity and none for failure rooted in giving up.  And since going back and looking at my old submissions to syndicates, agents and publishers, I can see so much better now how to tackle many of the revision issues.  At the time, hot off the frenzy of creating it in the first place, when I looked at something like Pattie Kaiks, I already saw the hundred incarnations it was before I inked it so changing one more thing seemed impossible.  Skillful revision takes distance and perspective.  

One of my screenwriting teachers was a strong advocate of the "put it in a drawer" technique.  You write something that doesn't seem quite right, or even if it seems flawless, he advised we "put it in a drawer and forget about it."  Well, I can't really do that.  Put it in a drawer and obsess about it, done!  Done all day!  I've been developing a "put it in a drawer and make something else" technique, and I'm having rather profound success.  Once you close that drawer, create something else, something totally unrelated.  A key element here is you have to throw yourself into it with equal fervor for it to really work.  If it's just an exercise, give yourself a time-limit, but I have to say devoting yourself utterly to creating even a reeking heap of not-at-all-useful can do wonders for divorcing you from your previous work and getting you the "fresh eyes" you need to see, and revise, clearly.  The multitude of incarnations, left-overs from your first frenzied creative process, will pale before what's actually on the page and revision is possible again.  If you consider every submission you send as a slightly modified "put it in a drawer" moment, you could be neck-deep in a new and even more exciting creative prospect when the rejections or calls for revision roll in, bracing you for the first, preparing you to work if it's the second.  

As a friend and colleague reminded me just the other day, "This is the job."  Being a creative professional beats you up and knocks you down and sometimes doesn't pay anything at all.  But you get up and invest yourself and infuse your work with your best effort and genuine love in the hope others will recognize it and want more.  I've developed some better tools since Pattie, skills Pattie would be proud of, to keep me from sinking in the tempestuous, subjective seas of creative work.  My pity-parties now have strict curfews, and I keep a good number of drawers handy.  Some stink.  Some don't.  That's the job.