The kid needs to get a more realistic perspective.
"I must have sent out 30 submissions." I know published authors who took 70-80 to get their first story. And those were one-time deals, not steady work like a newspaper comic is.
I'm no comics scholar, but based on publishing history, your first work is often not your best. You will often not sell it. You will look back on it years from now and laugh at how bad your first efforts were.
If they reject you, you need to pick yourself off the floor and write something else. Actually, you're best off if you're writing something else while you're waiting for the response to your first work.
And saying "Hey, we're not looking for cartoon animals right now" isn't anti-furry. It means that your work doesn't meet our needs. Newspapers want variety in their cartoons: a little something to appeal to everyone. It's pretty common in publishing to be told "We're not looking for X right now." This is why you suck it up and send them something else.
As I said before, I'm not educated on comic strips, but looking at the big names:
Charles Schultz of Peanuts started his career drawing 1 panel strips, particularly something called Lil' Folks. Peanuts apparently actually had a rocky start and he was also working on a sports comic called "It's Only a Game" at the same time.
Bill Watterson of Calvin & Hobbes started his career as a political cartoonist and was shortly fired because he didn't understand the local politics. He then got a job with "Target: The Political Cartoon Quarterly." When he did finally sell Calvin & Hobbes, he also apparently embarked on a quest to change comics as they were currently published, so I don't think that initial sale was all that easy. He wanted to do experimental things, and that's hard to get someone to take a chance on.
Gary Larsen of The Far Side published his first work in a small local paper. Then he published his work in another small local paper. It was only after he thought he might break even if he could get just one more contract that he became successful and famous by selling to the San Francisco Chronicle.
I'm sure I could go on and find other stories. I know Dr. Seuss was a political cartoonist before he was an author, but I don't know what he did before that.
Essentially, the guy is whining that working in the arts is hard. And, let's face it, working in the arts during an economic collapse (or anywhere for that matter) is hard.
But no, furries ruin everything. It's totally all about them and not about the fact that people aren't interested in his current work or that publishers simply have no space to take on a new strip.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2014-07-29 08:44 pm (UTC)"I must have sent out 30 submissions." I know published authors who took 70-80 to get their first story. And those were one-time deals, not steady work like a newspaper comic is.
I'm no comics scholar, but based on publishing history, your first work is often not your best. You will often not sell it. You will look back on it years from now and laugh at how bad your first efforts were.
If they reject you, you need to pick yourself off the floor and write something else. Actually, you're best off if you're writing something else while you're waiting for the response to your first work.
And saying "Hey, we're not looking for cartoon animals right now" isn't anti-furry. It means that your work doesn't meet our needs. Newspapers want variety in their cartoons: a little something to appeal to everyone. It's pretty common in publishing to be told "We're not looking for X right now." This is why you suck it up and send them something else.
As I said before, I'm not educated on comic strips, but looking at the big names:
Charles Schultz of Peanuts started his career drawing 1 panel strips, particularly something called Lil' Folks. Peanuts apparently actually had a rocky start and he was also working on a sports comic called "It's Only a Game" at the same time.
Bill Watterson of Calvin & Hobbes started his career as a political cartoonist and was shortly fired because he didn't understand the local politics. He then got a job with "Target: The Political Cartoon Quarterly." When he did finally sell Calvin & Hobbes, he also apparently embarked on a quest to change comics as they were currently published, so I don't think that initial sale was all that easy. He wanted to do experimental things, and that's hard to get someone to take a chance on.
Gary Larsen of The Far Side published his first work in a small local paper. Then he published his work in another small local paper. It was only after he thought he might break even if he could get just one more contract that he became successful and famous by selling to the San Francisco Chronicle.
I'm sure I could go on and find other stories. I know Dr. Seuss was a political cartoonist before he was an author, but I don't know what he did before that.
Essentially, the guy is whining that working in the arts is hard. And, let's face it, working in the arts during an economic collapse (or anywhere for that matter) is hard.
But no, furries ruin everything. It's totally all about them and not about the fact that people aren't interested in his current work or that publishers simply have no space to take on a new strip.