The work of illustration is deep work. It’s difficult to chip away at it in-between other things. It takes a while to get into a flow state and to stay there for a period of time. Illustration work requires stretches of time and concentration in the realms of 2-4 hours per session, minimum. Schedule even a half-hour phone call during this type of time and it can blow a whole half-day of work by breaking up the time in to chunks too small for deep work.
The other stuff that illustrators do–the marketing, the emailing, the accounts, the phone calls–isn’t deep work, it’s bitsy. It’s possible to fit them in between other things: respond to an email on the train on the way home, make a phone call while out walking.
Paul Graham writes about the manager’s schedule and the maker’s schedule. He gives us all a really good framework for optimising our time. And while he wrote it for the context of software development teams, it’s easily applied to the work of an illustrator. Freelance illustration requires both of these modes of working, the deep-work schedule of a maker, and the changeable, agile schedule of a manager. Being aware of this means we can structure our days and our mindsets for it so that we can do both better.
Chances are you’re good at some things and bad at others.
As humans, we naturally bias toward improving our weaknesses because they’re easy to see. If someone says, “You look beautiful in every possible way today, but there’s some blueberry on your teeth” we focus on the blueberry, and not how beautiful we look in *every other way*.
In school, I was terrible at maths but good at drawing. So, naturally, mum enrolled me in after-school maths (not after-school art) to try to improve my weakness. With a lot of work, and a lot of time, I went from terrible at maths to slightly-less-terrible. Meanwhile, other students who were naturally strong at maths just got stronger. No matter how hard I worked, I could never equal their mathematical prowess. I hated every minute of that maths tutoring.
School measured us all individually. It focussed on personal gain and achievement. It promoted the belief that each individual should and could be great at everything. It trained us to believe that we shouldn’t (and couldn’t) rely on one someone else to help us achieve great things.
But now, as an adult, I know better. Now, I take a collaborative and strengths-based approach to the work I do. I spend all of my time getting better at the things I’m already good at. What about my weaknesses? Well, it’s important that I know them so that I avoid wasting time trying to improve them. But I don’t need to be great at everything. No one does. Instead, it’s far easier, enjoyable and efficient to seek others who are great at what I’m not, so we can use each other’s strengths and work together to produce exceptional work. Work that can’t be produced by a single person. Work that is greater than the sum of its parts; work that matters.
It’s possible that I can share an idea with billions of people in seconds. But how long does it take to hone a craft? To get really good at something? To build an audience of any size that’s interested in listening? That could take a lifetime.
It’s easy to be convinced that through our connectivity online, we’re able to shortcut our way to an audience. A subscriber a week feels painfully slow. Making one or two 32-page picture books a year seems as though it may not be worth all the effort. But these achievements are only slow because we imagine them to be fast. The headlines feed us stories of ‘overnight success’ only to later reveal that any overnight success is really 20 years in the making.
Progress is only possible with generous persistence. Drip-by-drip. One subscriber a week means 52 a year. And there’s likely a compounding effect where one subscriber who values what you do tells 5 others. Suddenly, one subscriber a year means 250 people a year. No fancy algorithms needed.
So chip away, drip-by-drip, and enjoy yourself. People will listen eventually, if what you’ve got to say is worth listening to. One day you might wake up to your own overnight success. And if you don’t? Well, at least you’ve enjoyed yourself anyway, and lost nothing.
It takes approximately 2 seconds to draw a circle. Chances are, the first one won’t be perfect. But, at 2 seconds per circle, it’s possible to draw 30 circles a minute. That’s 180 circles an hour. I bet you, that by the 180th circle, they’re getting better. Near perfect.
On the other end of the spectrum, it takes authors about three years to write a novel. That’s three years before they can start to learn from what they’ve done, to find out if it’s any good, or how they can improve it. Chances are if it’s their first one, it’s not going to be very good. It often takes at least 2 or 3 tries to make a good version of anything, whether that’s a creative pursuit, or something more like making bread, beer, or pancakes.
If an author wants to write a novel, but they haven’t done so before, then perhaps the best way to start is by writing a short story – a beginning, middle and end in 2000 words and less than one weekend. Then write another, and write another. By the end of the year, that author could have written 52 short stories. That’s 52 opportunities for learning from how readers read it, what works and what doesn’t, what parts are hardest to write, and what the author finds easiest.
By keeping feedback cycles as short as possible, we’re able to learn as quickly as possible. The faster we learn, the more we’re able to see (and correct) mistakes, amplify what’s strong, and improve at the skill we’re trying to master. It might also turn out that we find satisfaction in short stories and circles, and the novel doesn’t matter so much in the end after all.
It’s easy to blame ‘the other’. Them. They don’t understand me. They don’t see what I see. They missed the point I was making. It might be a publisher, after a rejection. Or an editor, on a submission. It might be a reader in a review.
But what if it was me, and not them? What if, instead of blaming the other, I looked at how I could change for them? Maybe they had a point? Maybe it wasn’t right for the age group? Or maybe it does need more clarity? If I made the work for them and not me, maybe, just maybe, this once, they could be right. Don’t we owe it ourselves to see what would happen if they were?
Roald Dahl doesn’t have an Instagram account. He passed away in 1990. But there are over 300,000 posts tagged #roalddahl and the ‘official HQ account’ on Instagram has over 57,000 followers.
Managing social media, along with all the other stuff I have to do in life, is hard. It’s a time-suck. The algorithms that drive visibility demand us to be sharing high-quality content, 3 times a day, 7 days a week. And they aren’t designed for us, they’re designed to benefit the ones who pay: the advertisers. Who’s got time for that when the alternative is to write the next book?
Sure, there are tools that ‘automate’ the process for us. They say things, “post like a pro”. But they don’t really automate it. We still need to capture, curate, and, at the very least, schedule the content. Some ‘professionals’ advise that we “do it in batches” or “schedule several weeks in advance” to try to reduce the overwhelm. Which is fine, but it still takes away from doing the work.
Maybe another approach is to just make great work, like Roald Dahl did. If we strive to make great work, work that matters, work that can’t be ignored, then we don’t need to share it on social media, because if it’s good enough, others will. We’ll have a lot more fun along the way, too.
When I get home from work, I put my bag and the mail I’ve just collected on the dining table. It’s the first flat surface I encounter when I walk through the door in the evening.
Because of this, I don’t eat at the dining table. It’s too messy. The bag and the mail is all over it. So, after I cook dinner, I sit on the couch and eat it while falling headfirst into a TV rabbit-hole. One episode of something over dinner, then one after dinner. Before I know it, it’s bed time.
Day after day, this used to be my evening routine. But then, something changed, and it wasn’t me.
On a weekend, I made a new flat surface, a table, and put it even closer to the front door. Now, when I come home, I put my bag and mail down on this new table, I don’t even think about it, it’s just more convenient.
Because of this new table, dinners are eaten at the (tidy) dining table. Because dinners are at the dining table, I don’t turn the TV on. Because I don’t turn the TV on, I gravitate toward spending my evening writing, or reading, or drawing. Making stuff.
It turns out, I developed a habit. But I didn’t change me. I changed my environment, and then it changed me. It was far easier that way.
Is there anyone else out there whose suffering from having 100 beautiful sketchbooks of which you’ve used just one or two pages? Rest easy, neither has one of the most prolific illustrators of books in Australia, Bruce Whatley.
When Bruce posted this to Instagram, I felt my entire body relax. I too have many half-finished sketchbooks. A library of reminders about the times I read another piece of advice about drawing everyday, saw some wonderful sketches of people who practice like this, and thought, right, now is the time for me to do the same thing.
But sure enough, 2-3 pages into a beautiful new sketchbook, the momentum fades. The only time I’ve ever been able to keep it up is when I’m on holidays and not spending my day commuting to and from my day job. There’s some part of me that wishes I could be like ‘them’. The ones who sketch. The ones who draw something, anything, everyday. But most of the time, I just don’t feel like it. I’ve had a hard day at work and my creative energy is spent, or, I value other things more (like spending time with my wife and cat).
You might be different, too
Hard and fast ‘rules’ for a creative practice have never worked for me. Write 1000 words a day, drink a cup of celery juice every morning, meditate at 5:45am on days starting with T. They’re blanket statements, said by a few people, but assumed to apply to many. But we’re all different. Each person works in their own way, and has their own limitations. Family, life, work, health, it’s different for everybody. So what works better for me is doing the work to understand my own constraints, and then optimise for that. For example, I’m a morning person, so, in general, I do my most creative or focussed work before people wake up. It also means that at night, I rest. I’ve tried working around this, but it never works. Not only do I produce less interesting work if I work at night, but the ‘habit’ doesn’t stick.
I think the only ‘rule’ is that there are no rules. Everyone is different, so we do what we can, when we can, and if it’s not how others operate, then that’s OK.
I’ll have the mushrooms sautéed in mashed banana, topped with salmon eggs. No, wait, I’ll try the chocolate-covered rare lamb fillet with vanilla ice-cream and seaweed butter, instead.
People don’t want original, even if they say they do. What people want is something that’s familiar, but just a little bit different to before. Evolution, not revolution.
Original is hard. It’s hard to stomach. Hard to make. Hard to sell. That’s why genres exist. Every genre – whether it’s food, books, or music – has a formula. Being ‘original’ really means taking that formula and tweaking just one element, or two, to make something that feels decidedly new.
When a sculptor sets out to sculpt something, the material sits in front of them. An inert hunk of clay, stone, or bronze that has already pulled from the earth. The starting point is a given, it already exists, they have something to work with. To respond to.
But writers have to make their own clay. That’s what a first draft is; the malformed, misshapen, big hunk of clay. It’s not until any writer has toiled through hacking out a beginning, middle, and end from the pit in their mind, that they can sit it on the table in front of them and begin to respond to it – to slowly chip away, or push and pull it with their hands, to make it into something that they themselves will be proud of, and perhaps, will touch someone else one day.
When you know that all you have to do is get the big chunk of clay on to a page, first drafts become easier. The point of a first draft isn’t perfection, it’s about existence.
