Failures and Successes

I learned of the Xeric Foundation Grant for Comic Book Self-Publishing, which “offers financial assistance to committed, self-publishing comic book creators” as a student in Carol Tyler’s Comics class at University of Cincinnati in 2006. At that point, I knew I had a story to tell and wanted to make comics more than anything on earth, but I didn’t know the first thing about printing, distributing, promoting, etc. (I still don’t know much.)

The Xeric grant seemed like the perfect first goal: a modest amount to print my book, a boost of confidence and validation from the grant foundation, and I’d be able to have full artistic control while working out the kinks in the approach to my book.

Pyrograph 1: Pretty in person
but takes a bad photo.

“I’ll take my time,” I thought. “There’s always next year,” I told myself.

Years, and drafts, and experiments passed. Then, in October 2011, I overheard a conversation that the Xeric Foundation was retiring the grant. The final grant deadline was February 29, 2012. I had less than five months to do what I hadn’t been able to do in as many years. Thank God it was a leap year!

I sketched all through the fall and burrowed in for a busy winter. The straightforwardly-autobiographical section of my book was easy enough—ink on paper. But for the section set in the 1890s, I planned an approach that was rustic and old, something undeniably West Virginian: woodburnings.

With my trusty little electric stylus in hand, I attacked a poplar board with my first design. The results were beautiful! So I did another, and another, until five were completed. I threw the first board on the scanner. The results were not beautiful. The rich brown burned lines were broken by white reflective glares, and, even after hours of Photoshop tricks and touch-ups, when reproduced, the woodgrain looked like scraggly trompe l'oeil. I HATE trompe l'oeil.

It was now late January. A month from the deadline, in my FROZEN, un-insulated apartment, now constantly coughing from woodsmoke inhalation, my knuckles throbbing, I abandoned the grand experiment. It just was not a sustainable way to work. (Don't bother suggesting I give it another shot.) Wearing fingerless gloves, two hats, and a sleeping bag, I inked my sketches on paper and met the grant application deadline. Now that I have more time, I'm refurbishing that section into full color.

Pyrograph 2.

Yesterday, I received in the mail a letter of acceptance from the Xeric Foundation, an offer of nearly double the amount for which I had asked, and a hand-written note: "More grant $ awarded than requested, but you deserve and will need it!"

The same day, I also received a note from a dear friend that she had taken Wild Child #1 to a counseling session, and it had helped her communicate the nature of her own upbringing to her counselor. If that were the only result to come from my frustrations, I would still have considered the book a huge success.