A few years ago I was given the opportunity to publish a comic with a publisher I really respect. The owner is a friend. He had distributed some self published books of mine and thought it would be a good for both of us if he published a book for me. I was very excited by the offer but almost instantaneously I felt overwhelmed by a fear of failure. The thing that sent me over the edge was when he emailed me asking what sites and publications I would like my work sent to for review. Suddenly everything became very real. I got really in my head about the idea of reviews. I suddenly had imaginary expectations to live up to. I worked really hard on a couple scripts and then decided they were not good enough. I had published small runs of comics in the past but this project would have a much wider reach and therefore a wider variety of scrutiny.
I felt frozen. I just stopped talking to him about it. Every time I posted a comic project on instagram I felt like he was looking at it and wondering why the fuck I hadn’t delivered on this great opportunity he had generously offered me. I thought I had burned a bridge . The worst part was during this time he published books by a couple friends and THEY KNEW I had the offer. I felt ashamed and embarrassed.
After a year he contacted me and told me he was still interested in doing a book with me. Finally I admitted that I had a lot of anxiety about the project and apologized for the radio silence on my part. Surprisingly he wasn’t upset at all and informed me he works with a ton of “underground cartoonists” who take forever to get work to him and it didn’t even occur to him to be upset about anything. He reminded me that he wants to publish work of mine because he feels it will be good for his company and not to do me a favor. Reviews are a tool used to sell a book not destroy it. He basically said if a book gets sent to someone who doesn’t like it, they probably just won’t review it. The offer still stands.
I’m in school now and barely have time to breath so whatever book comes out of this will happen after I graduate. The plan is to work on it this summer and come back to it with fresh eyes during school breaks, with publishing to come after my second year. Am I still anxious about it? Yes. Yeah. I am. But! I love critiques. I love having a second or tenth pair of eyes on a thing I’m working on. So maybe reviews aren’t that big of a deal.