I spoke to a group of approximately 60 people recently about my journey to becoming a cartoon gag writer. It was the first time I was the only speaker on a program and the group was not in the cartooning business, although a few members of the Long Island Chapter of the National Cartoonist Society attended! I think it went okay! I started off telling the group which syndicated cartoons I write for currently and in the past, and which publications have bought cartoons where the idea and caption were mine.
I then gave the audience a timeline, starting with writing news and features for my high school and college newspapers, and how I got into selling print advertising for weekly and daily newspapers, which became my career. Then I told them how I started writing jokes on the side while working full time for newspapers, and how it evolved into coming up with ideas and captions for cartoons. The people in the audience knew me, were friends of mine, some knew I was a writer, but most had no idea what I actually did.
I guess a lot of people were intrigued because, after the talk, the overwhelming comment to me was, "Who knew?" Other wonderful comments were, "I really enjoyed your talk" and "You are a role model for other women."
I enjoyed talking to the group. It was fun and an important thing for me to do. From that one talk I've had offers to speak to other groups. I just have to refine my microphone skills and become somewhat more computer-literate.
What can I say? We writers work alone. It was freeing to speak about what I do. In all honestly, I consider myself a ghostwriter.
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