Comic Strip of the Day

CSotD: Creativity sold by the pound

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Mike Peterson Published: June 24, 2014 1 minute 3 comments

Adam@Home is on an arc about the creative process that actually began yesterday, so here's the Comic Strip of the Day and the Comic Strip of the Day Before. Bonus time, eh?

A cartoonist who also works as an illustrator (not at all uncommon, of course) posted something about freelancing the other day that included a mention of per-hour rates. I have never understood that, or been confident about it, for just the reasons outlined above.

Whether it's creating a graphic image or writing something, it is a process, not a series of actions, and I never understood what I was supposed to do if I found myself thinking about a project while I was in the shower or walking the dog. Is there something like a chess clock that I could slap when I began to ponder something — "your time!" — and then again — "aaand, back on my time!" — when I got distracted and began to think about something else?

And I understand that everybody has times when they think about work. I'm sure a lawyer sitting in the sun may think, "What if I approached it thus-and-so …"

But at least the lawyer has a certain number of billable hours that are spent digging in archives. I'd be out of luck or very, very poorly compensated if I tracked the hours, for instance, I spent reading and researching the Canadian fur trade at the turn of the 19th century for my last project.

Which reminds me of the time a new reporter was asked to review a book. She agreed, and then, after turning in the review, put in for several hours of overtime for time spent reading.

As I recall, they had to give it to her, because the review had been assigned. If she'd simply said, "I'm reading this book and I'd like to write a review of it," that would get into a my-time/your-time dichotomy. But they had told her to read the book and review it.

And, besides, if she'd been assigned to review a play, she'd have certainly been on the clock while she was at the theater. 

You can bet that they didn't assign her to read any more books, but everyone in the newsroom below the level of editor got a (very quiet) chuckle over it.

I prefer to quote lump sums to clients. "This is what you're gonna get, this is what it's gonna cost you."

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but they're paying for the final product, not the time spent making it. It's worth it, or it's not.

I was going to insert here James McNeill Whistler's comment about how an artist reckons the value of his work, and, happily, when I poked around to verify it, came across this fascinating explanation of where it came from, which was a trial in which he was suing John Ruskin for libel.

Ruskin is one of those sort of "sausage factory" types like Samuel Johnson or HL Mencken, in that he produces a lot of delicious quotes, but it's best not to look too deeply into where they actually came from or some of the other things he said, because he was simultaneously kind of a jerk and certainly by that stage an old fart.

Whistler, meanwhile, is often paired with his friend Oscar Wilde among the most outrageously quotable people to come down the pike and is the source of "You will, Oscar, you will," which is the ultimate commentary on quotable wit and them as generates it.

So, taken from the above linked discussion of his trial with Ruskin, here's the point about billing creative work:

Attorney General: Did it take much time to paint the ‘Nocturne in Black and Gold’?  How soon did you knock it off?  (Laughter)
Whistler:  I beg your pardon.
Attorney-General: I was using an expression which was rather more applicable to my own profession.  (Laughter)  How long did you take to knock off one of your pictures?
Whistler: Oh, I knock off one possibly in a couple of days — one day to do the work and another to finish it.  (Laughter)
Attorney-General: And that was the labour for which you asked two hundred guineas?
Whistler: No; it was for the knowledge gained through a lifetime.

Another link in the discussion came up this week when Atlantic published a sort of kind of discursion on why writers procrastinate, which quickly morphed into off-topic silliness but got enough pass around that I suppose you might want a look.

However, her theory that writers put off work because they're afraid it won't be good enough is laughable, or, at least, the attitude of a rookie.

She also mistakes "writing" for the process of putting ink on paper or its electronic equivalent, and comes from a school of process-oriented writers who like to produce a first draft and then take inordinate pride in how often they have to do the whole damn thing all over again carefully they polish their prose to perfection. 

I put off the actual writing until I've decided what I'm going to say and then I say it.

Obviously, that was rarely an option in the newsroom, nor is it one in cranking out a daily blog in a three-hour window, but it's how I handle the stuff I have time to handle that way.

The creative process is not a one-size-fits-all thing, but it is certainly a thing where you should judge the final product by the final product, not by how it got there.

Kevin Kallaugher's final product is damn good, for instance, and he doesn't mention inflatable swimming pools or Oscar Wilde, but he does explain his process here and, while you would do well to skip that writer's-workshop-extruded nonsense in the Atlantic, you really should go read KAL's piece.