Ahead of schedule

I now have every cartoon written till the middle of March 2010. Not drawn, but scripted. I know what cartoon will appear every day till then. (I actually have more ideas sketched, but they haven't been assigned dates yet.) I came up with a Valentine's Day joke which is already scheduled for February 14th, for example. There are several Halloween strips planned for October. A week or more of Christmas cartoons for December.

It feels good to know what will appear when, although I continue to juggle them. There was a recession joke that I was going to plug into March 2010, but then I realized that maybe the economy will have recovered sufficiently by then (hey, it could happen) to make the punchline dated, so I moved it to September of this year. I'm not worried about that fast a recovery!

Sometimes when I'm drawing, I'll come upon an idea that seemed funny when I entered it a month or so earlier, but when faced with drawing it out, I decide that it doesn't work as well as I initially thought...so I either bump it to a later date when I hope to revisit it and find a way to make it funnier, or jettison the idea altogether and put another one in its place. This is a big advantage of planning 'way in advance. Of course, there are always the Six Stages of Idea Development that come into play:

1. Initial Idea is conceived and quickly sketched or written down. I actually prefer some of these quick scribbles to the more laboriously-drawn final versions. At this time, I generally find the idea hilarious, a sure-fire winner, and give myself many kudos.

2. Revisiting the Idea: a week, a month or however much later the idea is again encountered as I open my list prepare to draw it. This is a second chance to decide if it's really funny, or if the seed is there but needs development, or if I was stupid to originally believe the idea had any promise at all.

3. Penciling: The concept has passed muster, and the initial pencil drawing is executed. Here is where I may begin to seriously doubt the hilarity of the concept.

4. Inking: More doubt arises, as I've lived with the idea for several hours, and it's not funny to me at all any more. Here I remind myself that I'm too close, too far into it, to realize that it really is good. (Occasionally, I'm still happy with the idea at this point. Then it's a real keeper!)

5. Scanning and coloring: Now it begins to seem funny again. It may just be coloring someone's nose red or their hair purple or their shoes yellow that makes me smile, but I begin to feel good as the final product takes shape.

6. Uploading to the site: At this point, I'm either going to have to wait, hopefully, for someone to write to assure me that it was indeed a comic masterpiece, or I'm satisfied with the end result already and hate to move on to the next one, where I have to repeat the whole process.

It can also be called Six Degrees of Exasperation.

But there's never the pressure of not knowing what I'll be drawing two or three weeks from now. I hope I can always be several months ahead, because it takes a lot of stress out of the process. The only stress this does cause is when I have what I think is a boffo cartoon and it isn't scheduled for a couple of months. I want people to see it now! Sometimes I'll switch a couple of strips for that very reason. Kind of like a little kid who can't wait to show his new toy in Show and Tell.

I hope I always feel like I'm a kid doing Show and Tell.

Why Q?

Dave P. emailed me, asking why QlownTown is spelled with a Q. There are several answers: some legitimate, some whimsical. At the time I conceived of the idea, there was already a website called Clowntown: it featured games for kids. It has since disappeared, but the name is still owned by someone else. Consequently, I began looking at other names: Clown Acres, Clown City, Circus World. But Clowntown still appealed to me the most. I've always disliked the misspelling of "C" words with "K"--it just seems Korny to me. But "Q"--ah, Q. No one uses Q much. It would place my strip or site in a more distinctive place if someone were searching sites alphabetically, or looking for a strip on a site that listed them that way. And, once I dropped the anticipated "U" after the Q, it became even more distinctive.

Pronunciation didn't worry me. The Beatles took a common word and made their spelling the dominant version: at least to people of certain ages, if you say "beetles", they'll think of the band first. People will learn the spelling and pronunciation of a word if they see it often enough. Besides, "Iraq" ends in Q and no one thinks it's pronounced "Irack-qway" or "Irack-qwuh".

QlownTown could be trademarked, and so I did. That was important, because as word gets out, evil claim-jumpers can steal a title. If someone with a "Clowntown" or "Clown Town" or other, similar business name complains at some point, my feature has now been established. Besides, there's room for multiple companies named "Acme", as long as they don't create confusion among the products. Businesses in Maine" using the term "Mainely" number in the dozens, at least.

It's also memorable. Once you know how to pronounce it, you're likely to remember it with the Q. It's easier than Albuquerque, certainly. English has never been known as a language devoid of odd or inexplicable spellings.

The original version of the "Origin of QlownTown" essay on the website---which ran to about eight pages and was therefore severely edited---explained that the native people in the area which became settled by clowns was "QlownTown," a term that translated as "place where silly people live". While this is of course made up (there isn't really a QlownTown, folks--they're cartoon characters), it's nonetheless a sensible explanation in the reality of the characters' world.

I also wanted an offbeat spelling because the strip is offbeat. I hope it's closer to The Far Side than to, say, Family Circus. I'm not interested in cute. Witty, clever, literate perhaps (as literate as one can be while drawing clowns). Acerbic, occasionally. I'd rather have someone say "I don't get it" or have to look something up than say "Awww, that was so sweeeeet". I'm actually working on a Family Circus parody. Oddly, Family Circus was the most popular strip in one survey, suggesting that I'm barking up the wrong tent--but one does what one believes in. (Note to those who are as grammatically anal as I: I know the previous sentence should end with "one does that in which one believes", but sometimes, you gotta say it without too much pretension.)

Anyway, back to the why of Q: once I settled on Q, I liked the wacky spelling. It looks normal to me now, and that's the real goal of the strip: to create a world in which the offbeat seems normal. Except for occasional strips, the daily jokes are not about them being clowns; they're about the characters being wrong, or mistaken, or hapless--just like real life for the rest of us.

Funny, though--it's gotta be funny. And I think Q is funny.

Ah, the wonder of the internet

When I began on the journey that has resulted in QlownTown, my simple goal was to draw cartoons every day, post them on the internet, and make enough money at it to feel comfortable. I have since realized that I really need to set up an RSS option, a Twitter feed, and a bunch of other things that I still haven't done yet. You can, however, subscribe to this blog by clicking on the Subscribe option at the bottom of the page. If enough people subscribe, I'll make sure I blog more often.

I'm also tied up right now choosing cartoons for submitting to newspapers. I will of course refer them to the website, but they want 4-6 weeks of strips printed on paper (just like the old days!). I'm taking ideas from people now about what their favorite QlownTown cartoons have been. Based on feedback so far, I know the Sunday strip, Imminent Collision, will be in there, along with Evolvolation; Bottles of Beer; Alien, the QlownTown version; and (one of my personal favorites) the Ash and Elmo twins. Looking at the descriptions of other strips, I've found "offbeat" to be a frequently-used word which also describes what I try to achieve. Thirty years ago, there were no offbeat strips...now they're everywhere. But only mine features clowns!

Composing the cover letter to go with these collections is always a challenge; I don't want to send out a dozen packets, then realize I left out the word "wry" or whatever word seems to communicate something distinctive I was trying to get through to the editors reading the letter.

So the ongoing struggle is always the same: get things done that aren't Drawing Cartoons. I know that the more successful the strip becomes, the less time I'll be able to dedicate to just doing that, but the alternatives are much less attractive.