The Lonely Worker

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NOTE: The following series of high spirited articles originally appeared in INFORMATION GUIDE (now CARTOON WORLD) during 1957-1959. 

For an unbroken succession of seven years I freelanced, fulltime, drawing and marketing advertising and magazine cartoons and-later-writing and marketing humor pieces for various publications.

Now get the picture: I lived through seven years of obtaining an income solely through my alleged efforts at the drawingboard and typewriter. I'm speaking singularly on the basis of that experience and what follows is based entirely upon it.

When I first quit a paid job (illustrator/ editor for an aircraft company's technical book department), I was 28 years old, in good health, had one wife, one son, $145.00 cash-on-hand, about a year's experience at selling magazine cartoons (totalling about $225.00 worth of sales), a lot of illusions regarding fulltime freelancing . . . and a huge dissatisfaction with any way of earning a living other than drawing cartoons.

Seven years later (presently, in fact) finds me with one wife (the same one), three sons, still in good health, 35 years old, less hair, more wrinkles, a hell of a lot more cash-on-hand than I started with, a definite disinterest in cartoon freelancing, a good job (four days, weekly) with a magazine and three days - weekly - in which everything I write sells . . . a happy fact that could not be, had I never learned how to make it happen through freelancing.

For me then, freelancing has been a transitory period: For you, it may be a hoped-for-future. I am going to offer a suggestion which (while certainly not the only way for a promising beginner to start freelancing), if followed to the letter, will keep you: (1) eating, (2) out of the cold, (3) freelancing and (4) from the necessity of giving up the whole idea and going back to a time clock.

Perhaps I'd better add: These points are guaranteed only if you are a type churl who really wants to freelance and whose family is given to adjusting reasonably easy to new situations.

You understand, I am not advocating the following method of getting into fulltime freelancing for anybody who cannot change their present paid-employment standard of living . . . nor for anyone whose wife does not implicity believe in their chances of eventually making the so-called grade.

THAT OLD DEVIL, OVERHEAD

Get your affairs in order, tabulate your bank account (if any) and move to the nearest, smallest town located on the edge of a river, lake or (better) an ocean.

Remember, I said the smallest town. Here, despite general opinion to the contrary, you will be able to rent a house or cottage (and don't look for luxury) for around $35.00 monthly. I've even lived in some places - rather on the order of elaborate chicken houses that rented for $25.00 with utilities included.

The farther away from industrial areas your town is, the lower the available rentals will be. I know of one cartoonist who rents a cabin with ten acres of ground for $10.00 monthly. Fabulous? Nope. The joint has an outhouse and no running water . . . but I told you: If you want to cut that overhead to your freelance pocketbook size, forget your present standard of living for awhile!

CHOW AND STUFF

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