Manage Your Expectations and Meet Your Comics Goals (Our Top 10 Tips)

Mar 22

Often when we feel bad about making art, it's because we're not meeting our expectations for results and rewards. Our comics may not look like the vision in our heads, or like the great masters we idolize. We may not be selling as much as we'd hoped, or getting published at all.

The discouragement and frustration that come from failing to meet the high standards we set for ourselves can make us give up before we really get started.

Our general advice on dealing with expectations? Lower them!

Read on to learn our top 10 mindset shifts and practical tips for managing our expectations and meeting our comics goals!

This article is adapted from Episode 10 of The Terrible Anvil Podcast hosted by Jess Ruliffson and Tom Hart!

1. Work with what you have now

Striving for perfection from the get-go (or at all, for that matter) is a stepping stone straight to discouragement and creative paralysis. Rather than postponing your projects in the name of building your skills first, work with what you have now! Make projects with the tools already at your disposal—you might just be surprised at the delightful comics you come up with. Seeing your projects through to the end, even if they don’t match the perfect vision in your head, will build both confidence AND skills.

2. Start small

Getting to work on your projects doesn’t mean you have to jump straight into your 300-page graphic novel, though. SAW Founder Tom Hart recommends starting with small projects that are easier to finish. Working on shorter-form comics will help you build momentum in your creative practice that can carry you into longer, more ambitious projects down the line.

Completing smaller projects will also help you build trust in yourself. You’ll prove to yourself that you can make comics and you can see your work through to the end—because you’ll have already done it!

Another great aspect of tackling smaller projects at a time is that whatever you couldn’t get to in one, you can do in the next. You don’t have to cram every idea you have into one project because there will always be another waiting for you!

3. Learn as you go

As you make shorter-form projects, you’ll learn a lot about making comics. You’ll start to better understand how to compose your pages, how things fit in a panel, how to tell stories visually without relying on narration. The best way to learn how to make comics is to make comics!

Of course, you can still dedicate time to learning things like anatomy, perspective, or whatever you struggle with, and doing so can also build your confidence. Just remember not to get caught in the mindset that you have to do all those things first before working on your projects at all.

4. Give yourself more time

Jess Ruliffson says that “Time is the Medium of Possibility.” Essentially, take your time in making projects!

If you’re striving for perfection but only giving yourself a week to complete thirty pages, you’re automatically setting yourself up for failure. Not giving yourself the time to complete your comics as you envision them will only reinforce the idea that you’re not good enough to make them, which is never true. You can get closer to that vision in your head by simply giving yourself more time.

Working on smaller projects doesn’t mean you have to rush through one comic simply to get to another. Strict, stressful time constraints can strangle your creativity and suck the joy out of the process, whereas taking your time gives you more room for exploration and experimentation. Try new media, approach your ideas from different angles, and give yourself the time to apply what you’ve been learning along the way!

5. But still set deadlines

Give yourself more time…but not all the time in the world. You can kick the can down the road forever without a basic timeline for completing your comic. And staring down a project without any deadlines can make it feel shapeless and intimidating. Implementing them gives you something to aim for..

Here at SAW we often circle back to this great quote by Ira Glass:

“All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you…We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it's normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions…It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take a while. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

To recap: our expectations for our work (at least some of them!) come from our taste and our desire to catch up to it, and the only way to do so is to make a lot of work, especially smaller week-to-week projects. And the only way to do that is through regular deadlines!

And that brings us back to the whole premise of The Terrible Anvil podcast, inspired by another great quote, by Emile Zola: “One forges one’s style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines.”

Routine and structure may sound like they would hinder creativity, but working within constraints actually nourishes it. These deadlines should still be realistic—they should allow you enough time to meet your goals. Working on daily deadlines should make comics a habit, a regular practice you look forward to, one that brings you enjoyment rather than frustration. You can also try weekly deadlines, or monthly, or whatever pairs best with your working style.

6. Lean on your community

If you’re someone who struggles with deadlines (join the club!), setting them won’t necessarily be the end-all solution for getting your work done. That’s where community comes in. Set up an accountability system with some trusted friends, peers, or mentors. This can look different for a lot of people. You might set up weekly meetings to check in and talk about your progress. Or you could try co-working calls to have dedicated time and company for working on your comics.

Comics can be a lonely, solitary art-form. But you never have to do it alone! Community is invaluable to making the process more fun and sustainable, and for getting you out of that mindset of not being good enough.

Not every community is best suited for this, so it’s important to lean on people you trust. Some creative communities, like in many MFA programs, can feel cutthroat and competitive; workshops become about tearing apart another’s work rather than helping it become what it’s trying to be. You might end up comparing yourself to your peers’ accomplishments and build your expectations for yourself around them.

SAW’s online community is a great contrast to this model. When you join, you get access to a friendly, non-judgmental, truly supportive group of people like you who want to be making comics. Our members regularly feel comfortable enough to share unfinished drafts or the very beginnings of their ideas to get constructive feedback.

You can share your feelings of frustration and disappointment and be met with solidarity and encouragement. You’re not alone!

7. Focus on your own progress

Hopefully within the right community, you’ll see that art is not a competition! Sometimes it can feel that way when we’re working within a market system, fighting for likes and book deals. But we’re all on our own paths as artists, and one person’s success doesn’t threaten our own.

To lean on a cliche, comparison is the thief of joy. Comparing your work to what others are doing often sends you on the same path as aiming for perfection—straight to discouragement and paralysis. Yes, there are tons of artists around you making super cool comics with distinct styles and clever storytelling, or getting shiny book deals and popular acclaim. Instead of measuring your work against others’ and feeling bad about not being at the same “level,” get inspired! People are pushing the boundaries of what comics can be and that’s exciting! It only leaves more room for you to try new things and push your work to the best that it can be—on its own terms, not anyone else’s.

If you’re aiming to get better, base the bar on where you were yesterday, or a year ago, not by anyone else’s standard. You just might notice how much you’ve grown as an artist, and what super cool comics you’re making too :)

8. Move away from inevitability, embrace possibility

Stop thinking about what your comics should be, and imagine instead what they could become. Try not to mandate results for your work before, during, or after making it. Expecting a specific outcome for what your work will look like only limits the possibilities of what it could become. Our expectations rarely become reality, so clinging to them too closely sets us up for disappointment. Jess notes that if our expectations are open-ended and steeped more in possibility than inevitability, they can be easier to manage. Loosening up about them can make the process more fun and our creative juices flow more freely.

Stay curious; sometimes our projects take us in totally different directions than we expected, which can yield delightful results! Leave room for happy accidents and sudden inspiration—that’s often where the magic of comics happens.

9. Be playful

A great way to do that is to let yourself be playful. The grind of comics-making can get tedious and exhausting, so introducing elements of fun and experimentation is essential for breathing new life back into your work and preventing burnout.

Tom reminds us that art-making, publishing, and sharing our work is more accessible than ever before, and that having so many options at our disposal should be exciting. You don’t have to slave away making comics you hate to conform to the demands of a singular market. You’re allowed to have fun and simply try things you enjoy.

10. Let yourself be mediocre

It's okay to be ambitious! But normalize your mediocrity too…

Embracing mediocrity has something to do with authenticity, showing up and working how you work, not anyone else. Being your authentic creative self can help you not to get too cynical about the process; you can do things on your own terms without getting bogged down in the “right way” to make comics.

We see our own work as mediocre because it doesn’t match what was in our heads. But when we dare to show it to other people—to that trusted community we’ve learned to lean on—they see it as fantastic! The hard part is accepting that, not negating it.

Hold some grace for yourself, and be kind to your inability to draw hands or cars or backgrounds.

Once you stop trying to be like Schulz and or make every comic a masterpiece, you’ll have the space to make comics only you can make, free from the expectations that were holding you back.