Reading at Meanwhile *THIS SUNDAY*
Also: loss aversion, and feeling like a snake playing catch
This SUNDAY, August 18, I’m reading a few diary comics and work-in-progress from my new book. I’m really excited for this one! If you’re reading this from Chicago, I really hope you can make it. I have a deep fondness for Delilah’s; because it’s one of the few spaces I’ve found in the city where you can rent out a big space for pretty cheap, I threw myself a little book release party back in 2012 for the first volume of “In the Sounds and Seas.” A homecoming!
Today the Ignatz Awards were nominated! If you’re invested in comics, please request a ballot, there are some amazing comics celebrated this year: https://www.smallpressexpo.com/ignatz-awards/
Also, Mutha Magazine and I submitted “On Fire” for an Ignatz, and it was not selected for nomination. I’m still very proud of that one, it’s worth a read if you haven’t had a chance to yet. Another Mutha comic was nominated, and it’s a stunner: read “Marigold” by Emily Zilber if you haven’t already! A rising tide lifts all ships; I’m really glad that such a thoughtful and beautiful comic about pregnancy loss is going to be read by a wider audience because of this nomination.
Unrelaaaaated, do you know about the concept in psychology and economics of “loss aversion”? It means that loss is felt twice as hard as the equivalent degree of gain or good news feels good. Between us, I was really hoping that this comic would sneak its way into the good graces of the jury and get me my first Ignatz nomination. I was just talking with my mom, who was in town this last week, about feeling at ease with my relative failure as a cartoonist (if “success” is marked by “people who don’t know me personally can easily access and enjoy my comics”). While I was talking about it, I held a tight fist of hope in my heart that the imminent Ignatz nominations would change the song a little. I’m going to be at SPX this year with my oldest kid, and I indulged in more than a few daydreams about how cool it would be if they were there with their mom, nominated for being good at the job that keeps her hunkered in the basement when I could otherwise be playing or reading with them. Ah well. This is a familiar feeling, part of the process, as it is to the hundreds of cartoonists who submitted their work too. So it goes.
Luckily for all of you, my fight or flight response is always fight. I’m fueled by a powerful “I’ll show them” willpower that has fueled generations of my family to make things better. This next book is a good one. I can feel it.
I was talking with a friend last week to catch up and to map out an upcoming collaboration, and we were joking with each other (both moms, both with more than one kid, both in the amorphous profession of making books) about how many balls we’ve dropped this summer. It made me think of an Elephant and Piggie book (again, mom of small children here) “Can I Play Too?” where a snake friend wants to join a game of catch, despite having no arms.
It goes about as well as you’d expect.
I’m trying to balance so many needs just to get through the day: the daily food & body & emotional & educational needs of 3 children, and also the daily food & body & emotional & professional obligations of my own life, and the emotional & logistical needs and pleasures of a marriage, and also the cascade of emails that come in and need urgent attention for back-to-school for three different schools, and daycare is switching classrooms after Labor Day and Ms Jo, who Leo loves more than me I think, will no longer be his teacher and how are we going to manage THAT and oh my god what is a good gift to give someone who has held and fed and loved your beloved child since he was a baby, and oh crap I forgot to pick up medicine from the pharmacy *again,* and we’re out of cheerios? how are we out of cheerios, I just got a family size box on Saturday? and Tom’s traveling again so bedtime is solo two more nights in a row and oh lord this friend I love so much wants to hang out but I don’t have a free evening for three weeks and is it shitty to say “maybe mid-September but no promises” so I delay texting back because I don’t know how to phrase that without sounding like a jerk and
Which is to say: I’m getting through. Balls are being dropped. Like, ugh, forgetting to email back that friend I’m planning the collaboration with. (If you’re reading this: I haven’t forgotten!)
I hope you’re all feeling less BONKed than I am right now!
Diary comics are on hiatus while I try to put up shields against all these balls and throw myself at this new book.
Off to daycare pick up, sure hope I don’t cry again when I see Ms Jo!
xox marn