I’ve realized this year that a major reason I go to comic book conventions isn’t for fun, but because I feel a need to be legitimized as a cartoonist. After so many years of getting nowhere with cartooning, it means a lot to me to go someplace where readers, and especially other cartoonists, will say “Oh, you did Hereville? That was really good.”
It’s also, sad to say, why I enjoy being nominated for awards. (Did I oh-so-casually mention that Hereville was nominated for an Eisner, a Harvey, and an Ignatz? I did? Well, then, let me just casually mention it again.)
I was talking about this to another cartoonist — someone who has won major cartooning awards and is published by a prestigious company. And he told me that despite all that, he still feels the same need for legitimization. It never goes away, apparently.
In conclusion: Maybe I’ll try to go to fewer cons this year.
It sounds like you are holding yourself to a very high standard. The need or desire for legitimitization or validation is pretty natural and human. There’s nothing wrong with being happy that other people liked something you put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into.
In the program I work for, they have a teaching section on the Imposter syndrome. It’s interesting reading, and I recommend it if you haven’t already heard about it. Basically, many successful people feel like frauds and like they’re not really supposed to be where they are because it’s hard to adjust to that new identity – after all, when you’re nominated for an Eisner (!), aren’t you supposed to be “somebody”? At any rate, I hope you adjust and enjoy it. :)
I’m with Chingona here. What on earth is wrong with liking to be praised for work you know yourself is well done? I mean, if all you ever do is go to cons and tell people about how you created How Mirka Got Her Sword and don’t create anything new, the praise will dry up pretty quickly, so I don’t think you need to worry too much about it stunting your creativity.
There’s nothing much wrong with enjoying praise — although if seeking praise becomes an important goal of creating, rather than a pleasant but incidental result, that would be a problem.
Here’s the larger context: I don’t enjoy going to cons very much. I’ve had some really nice times at cons, but I’m also frequently miserable there, due to social anxiety issues. So it’s a mixed bag. And it’s usually an expensive mixed bag; unless the con is in driving distance of my home, the money I make selling books is never enough to cover costs.
So, essentially, when I go to cons, I’m paying money to get praised. That’s probably not a good use of my resources.
I’m not saying that I’m going to stop going to cons atogether! But I am going to cut back, I think.
P.S. Praise and popularity is a complex issue. Some popular comics don’t strike me as very good, at least not by my standards of good (presumably, the people who create those comics do think they’re good). An artist needs to rely on her or his internal measures of quality — otherwise they’ll lose ambition, because every time you do something ambitious you risk alienating your audience. This is true even for someone who is essentially doing light pop fantasy, like I am.
At the same time, I think becoming too unmoored from how other people will respond can be a route to an artistic dead end, as the comic ceases to be about communication with an audience; that’s some of how Cerebus went wrong, imo.
Come to cons with me and I will mitigate your social anxiety issues.
Come to Wiscons with me and I will bring you to fat-positive panels. Or at least drop you off at them before heading back down to the bar.
Maybe Mandolin and I can be your Confidence and Paranoia!
I’ve gotten pretty good at saying, “Is that a urine stain on your trousers?”
It won’t end well for me, I know. But it’d be worth it.
Well, you’ve definitely got the obscure geeky media reference thing down, which is an important part of fitting in socially at cons. :-p
Not only is this a natural human drive, but cartooning is a particular enterprise that takes place largely in isolation, and whose results (the reading and enjoyment) are far from the (prolonged) production, so you get, perhaps, less reinforcement than average without seeking it out. And cartoons occupy an odd cultural niche where you might not talk about it with strangers to the degree that you might reveal working on a novel/symphony, digging the hole of isolation from social approval that much deeper.
Anyway, more understanding, and yet I can understand the down-sides (short-term and long-term). Keep up the good work, dude!