On Saturday, I went to the initial meeting for the third anthology of Toronto Comix, where writers pitched three of their story ideas and everyone voted on which one they liked best. I got to see how this process works, or at least their version of it.
I had to shove down a tsunami of shyness to go into the back room of the coffeeshop and involve myself in the meeting, but I’m so glad I did. It’s really important to me to surround myself here with people for whom creating comics is just a normal, natural thing, who have processes for doing it. And this was definitely that!
At the end, the lead editor, with whom I’d connected with on Twitter, told me he liked my work and asked if I’d like to be involved as a writer or an illustrator. EEK! My intention in going to the meeting was really just to observe and learn, but I found myself saying “If my style fits any of the stories, I’d like to illustrate!” As I thought about it afterwards, I felt like this was exactly why I’m here and what I should be doing.
As I reviewed my A3 sheet of 2015 goals this morning, I discovered that this meeting ticked one of them: “Participate in an event for cartoonists”. (And I saw I’d also achieved several other of the goals, too!)
You’ve just got to put it out there: