Rummaging and Ruminating - Jonathan Allen

Stamps! How cool is that?

I was recently contacted by a relative of the late, great Margaret Mahy, asking if I had any of the artwork for the books I had illustrated of hers that they might buy. 'The Great White man-Eating Shark' and 'The Three Legged Cat' for instance. As those books were from a good while ago, I knew I had some serious rummaging in the attic to do. So I did.

It was a nostalgic rummage at that. It always feels such a shame that most picture book artwork ends up in illustrator's attics. Some might make it onto a wall or two, but there are only so many walls in the average house and anyway, there are plenty of other things I would rather have on my wall ;-)
I came across a lot of artwork from books I had illustrated over the years. I had forgotten how much I have actually done, picture books, board books, pop-up books etc. There it all was, swaddled in bubble wrap, under a thin layer of dust. There was loads of it, not to mention the artwork for the 100 odd greetings cards I did in the eighties for Snap Graphics (defunct now I think) Hey, my stuff was popular once!

The path of my career has been one of being busy and successful, then being equally successful but doing rather less, in a more focussed way. In that mode I have been working for the same publisher almost exclusively for the last ten years. The character I invented (Baby Owl) and the concept I came up with ( I'm Not Cute! I'm Not Scared! etc you get the idea ) has had a good life but is now run it's course commercially, apart from board book reprints and such perhaps. So now I find myself no longer busy, and having time and inclination to stick my head out of my cave, having a look round at the Picture Book World in it's current incarnation, and sadly, not liking what I see very much.

For a start, getting a new idea in front of an editor is almost impossible. I'm not talking about for me per se, as I can jump the queue to some extent by citing my track record, (in theory anyway) but for any hopeful writer or illustrator.

A lot of publishers and agents don't even bother with standard rejection letters, they just don't reply to unsuccessful submissions, as if this is a perfectly normal and acceptable way to treat people.

Well it isn't. It's rude and disrespectful. Don't give me that "Due to number of submissions" stuff.
Don't, one the one hand, ask for submissions and then react as if everyone is wasting your precious time with their crappy submissions. OK, it takes time and is tedious to send a standard rejection email? (2 minutes??) But it is an acknowledgement of somebody's effort and as such the right thing to do. imho and all that. rant rant rant. . .

The other thing I realised as I surveyed the Picture Book world from my aforementioned cave was that after a great many years of thinking up, working out, roughing out and submitting ideas, is that there is an underlying process of attrition going on. A slow wearing away of your inner strength and confidence. Success is great, you get paid to do what you love, you get feedback and affirmation and all that stuff. But there is a constant pressure there, your next idea has to be good enough to get published, or if not that idea, the next one etc etc. Somewhere, deep down it wears you away slowly. Obviously, rejection doesn't help. After a few rejections you start to lose your confidence in your ability to tell what is or isn't a good picture book idea, and if it means that you are going to be financially challenged if you don't get something accepted soonish it all gets unhelpfully stressful. Low level anxiety is not the best head space in which to be effortlessly creative that's for sure.

The other other thing I realised was that my style is very much out of fashion. I have, over the years smugly told myself that because my style has never been in fashion as such, it can't go out of fashion. Wrong. . .
This is all my current perception, and I realise it may be a distorted view based on partial evidence, but nevertheless I believe there is some truth in it. There is, as I mentioned in a blog post a few months ago, an obsession in current picture books with 1950's style design orientated artwork. Retro style done by artists whose parents were probably not even born then. There is some lovely work out there, but I mourn the lack of emotional connection in the work. At worst it is a pale pastiche of an empty clichéd style I'm afraid. A sort of fake nostalgia. It is very much about composition and very stylised representations of people and animals etc. Nothing approaching an individual character. As my work is all about individual character, facial expressions and emotional connection with that character, I don't fit in at all with the zeitgeist.
That's ok, I wish all illustrators all the luck in the world, I just have to accept my time is not now, thats all.

I thought the unthinkable the other week. I thought "What would it feel like not to put myself through this any more?" This was a sacreligious concept, and one that stopped my in my tracks for a while. Writing and illustrating has been my life for the best part of 35 years, I can't just 'not do it any more'!
But the overriding feeling I got was one of huge relief. I had to listen to that.
But if I stopped writing and illustrating, how would I live? Well, I get royalties, I get the max PLR every year (hah!). I am mortgage free and the kids have left home. I even have a pension that I hadn't really thought about for years, I could spark that up, after all I am imminently 59 years old, (!) I can chug along at a low but acceptable level. I have other interests, I always have had, and I can earn a small amount from those. It's not a wildly unfeasible proposition.

And besides, if I take the pressure off myself, I am free to mess around with picture book ideas from a position of wanting to rather than feeling I need to. It may be a creatively liberating experience, who knows?
Anyway, whatever I decide to do, I send best wishes to you all and the best of luck,
Jonathan x

Freelance Life - part two - The Downside - And how to handle it

For any aspiring Picture Book writers and Artists, it might help in your struggle to know that there are many wonderful positives involved in being a successful freelance writer and/or illustrator. The affirmation and adulation ;-)  (Well, not quite adulation but people saying nice things about what you do anyway). The satisfaction in knowing that you are making a half decent living doing the thing you are good at and love doing. The warm glow that comes with knowing that children all over the world have made your work part of their bedtime ritual, at least for a while. That kind of thing.

But if I may inject a word of caution, while enveloped in this happy haze it is easy to forget that the freelance writer's and illustrator's life has it's downside, and that coming up sharp against it can be a bit of shock.

You expect some tribulation on the way up as it were, but once a certain level of success has been achieved, you would be forgiven for feeling that once you have finally 'arrived', and the public like what you produce, this state of affairs is now set in stone and will continue ad nauseum. . . All you have to do is just keep it coming and all will be Hunky Dory.

Yeah right.
Bubble bursting time ;-)

Sticking with David Bowie for the sake of a bad joke, you may find things drifting away from Fame and starts heading towards Low. . .

Confidence is a fragile thing. Not so much self confidence, speaking personally anyway. I always assume, rightly or wrongly, that I will be able to come up with the goods, but confidence that what you produce will be what anybody actually wants is a fragile thing. I always say that an artist's best attitude, psychologically, towards the opinions of other's and towards possible rejection, is to assume that everybody else is wrong. "The fools don't understand my art!" kind of thing. This sounds arrogant and possibly delusional, but it keeps your self belief intact.

The alternative position - vis - "Oh God, I must be totally crap!" isn't useful in any way. It's not going to help you persevere with your endeavors. And you need to persevere. It's bloody hard. Strong self belief helps, justified or not.

The more alert amongst you might have detected a personal note in all this speculation about rejection and downsides. Well done ;-) yes, I am in the middle of what can be called 'A fallow period". Ideas rejected right left and centre, inspiration at an all time low. All that stuff. Not much fun.

For those who have never been there, you need to be aware that it is all too easy to get into a bit of a downward spiral. It's all connected you see, rejection hits confidence, saps morale and engenders negative thoughts like, "If nobody likes what I think up, why should I bother?", and "Why should I send this idea in? It'll only get rejected." This is never going to help the creative process or help shore up the reserves of positivity you will need to draw on. When there is more pressure on a new idea being 'right' because a lot hangs on it getting accepted, being relaxed and funny, the way you need to be to do what you do, requires superhuman acting skills. At the time when it is most important for you to produce good stuff, you can't. Things start to feel forced. The very thing that makes you stand apart from others in your field, becomes suspect in your mind. Ideas become safer, less 'you' because the 'you' in what you do is now under critical examination and you start to feel that it may be the thing that is causing your ideas to fail. The rug is being pulled from under your feet, but by slow degrees. And in strange way, it's you that's doing the pulling. . .


So what do you do about it? You carry on. You work through it. You analyze, and adapt if you feel it is needed. You draw on your inner strength and your faith in your own abilities, that's what.

You have to believe that it is just a passing phase, and that things will come together in due course. Though like most things, this is easier said than done.

Remember, you are in it for the long haul, and that time will take its toll. The low level anxiety and uncertainty of many years of freelancing can engender an unwelcome and unhelpful weariness sometimes. . .

But forewarned is forearmed. This kind of emotional attrition is part of the deal. If you want the good, (and the good can be very good) you have to accept the bad ;-)

But enough whingeing! Styles do go out of fashion. Editors want to create their own lists of artists and writers and not keep using the old guard ad nauseum. Of course they do and of course they should. It's the way the World works.

For my part, I comfort myself with the thought that emotional connection with your audience doesn't go out of fashion, neither does humour nor using animals as protagonists. I probably need to take some time out to draw breath and reconnect with the reason I wanted to write and draw in the first place, then return, refreshed and full of killer ideas. Ho yes.

The funny thing is, that despite the angst ridden wallowing detailed above, the second you get an idea accepted you snap out of it like it never happened. . .

Chin Up ;-)