Dear Climbers of Very Tall & Dangerous Mountains,
How do you set about doing an impossible thing? I recently wrote an article about this on Medium. You can read it for free here. In that piece, I used the haiku comic you see at the top of this letter.
The haiku was written on New Year’s Day in 2021 for something I was calling Project K.
I had never published it anywhere until the Medium article. I’ve been experimenting with finding ways to use my haiku comics as editorial illustrations. I was searching my spreadsheet for a topic to write about when I hit on this haiku.
I instantly knew what I was going to write about. I wrote 500 words in about 20 minutes and left the draft to make dinner. When I returned later that evening, I realized the article was all wrong. I studied the haiku comic I had created a day earlier and realized what was on the wasn’t what I wanted to write at all. I erased everything and started fresh.
The article I wrote and published feels much truer to my philosophy and the kind of work I want to do more of.
The comic itself was made from three primary sources. I drew the mountain and the dragon’s fireball. The dragon is from a public domain image of a temple in Taiwan I had once visited when I lived there as a missionary. The photographer had posted a much better picture than I ever managed to get on Pixabay.
The background and the warrior come from a book called East of the Sun and West of the Moon, a collection of Norwegian fairy tales. It had several editions, and I lifted this picture from the 1914 illustrated edition. The art is by Kay Nielsen.
Since the book was published so long ago, its contents are in the public domain and perfect for my collage art comics.
Project K, the project I wrote the haiku for, is part of the new thing I’m doing with my life as I transition from being a copywriter.
I struggled to develop a name for my new occupation until I read Austin Kleon describing himself as a “writer who draws.” In his most recent Substack newsletter, I discovered that Kleon stole that description from artist Paul Steinberg.
I’m a collage artist who writes. I’m leaving copywriting to do the impossible task of making a full-time career of being a collage artist who writes. That means I will be using more of my art in this newsletter, I will be using more of my art as editorial illustrations in other content I write, and I will be publishing more illustrated books. Poetry will, of course, continue to be a critical part of what I do.
As I make this transition (I’m still doing copywriting to pay my bills, but I’m strictly limiting my hours for that kind of work), your support and encouragement will be more important than ever.
When I was a little kid, I always had a quick answer to the question, “What do you want to do when you grow up?”
When I was in kindergarten and first grade, the answer was paleontologist, which in the long-ago times before the first Jurassic Park movie meant I had to explain to many adults that that was.
Later, my career goal changed to astronaut and then morphed again into astrophysicist.
In high school, I focused on becoming a lawyer. I achieved that goal and worked as a lawyer for almost a decade before ending in spectacular failure and having a complete mental breakdown.
That was ten years ago. Needing a way to support my family, I started doing copywriting, but that was never what I wanted to be. I’m good at it, but there’s little passion there.
This year I’ll be 46 years old, and for the past ten years, I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. Now I do, and I’m going for it with everything I can.
Here’s me reading another poem (and showing off a newly finished poetry comic) on TikTok:
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I don't know the exact route to making this dream a reality. But I know how to work, and I know that I'll get to where I'm supposed to go using the tools of pivot, quit, and grit.
Be the weird you want to see in the world!
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My new career is reader-supported. You can support my work by commenting on, liking, and sharing this free newsletter, becoming a paid subscriber, and buying my books and zines.
Thanks for reading!
Cheers,
Jason
Doing the impossible
Hi Jason, not sure if you've heard of it, but try submitting your work to the Rattle (rattle.com) here: https://rattle.submittable.com/submit
I hope this helps a bit to get the word out for you.
This is great! I've already used more than the spoons I had available today, so no energy or brain power to go to Medium. Wishing you all the success, my friend! You deserve it! (BTW, you have an announcers voice. I heard he wants it back! 🤣🤣🤣).