There are two keys to turning out a daily comic strip for 365 days of the year, according to Hilary Price, the creator of the comic strip "Rhymes with orange."

  1. "Ass in the chair" — Just sit there and crank it out.
  2. "Lower your standards" — You need to put something down on paper, then you can work on fixing it.

This is advice that’s also applicable to writers. I use both approaches myself. 

She gets her ideas from:

  1. Her personal experiences
  2. Her reading, especially newspapers and magazines — specifically the Boston Globe, New York Times, New Yorker and Utne Reader
  3. Other people
  4. Putting characters and places together — for example, asking "what would a rhinosceros be doing in a doctor’s office" led to a beast saying "Take the horn off, I’ve always wanted to be a hippopotamus."
All of these sources could also help writers.

Price’s overall topic was what goes into creating comic strips. Some other points that struck me:

  • Comic strips are uniquely American, created by newspaper mogul Pulitzer in his attempt to use the four-color press to gain a competitive advantage vs. Hearst
  • Newspapers are sensitive about humor about: 1) the body (she showed a banned cartoon that played on the similarity between "smear" as in Pap smear and "shmear" as in cream cheese on a bagel and 2) people’s personal relationships with God. Technically speaking, the cartoons weren’t banned, but her editors didn’t think they were worth losing newspapers for. 

Price spoke at the Needham Free Library on Sunday, December 10. I think she may have grown up in Needham. Her parents and her eighth grade English teacher were in the audience.

By the way, Iggy and I biked to and from the library since the temperature went up to at least 50F. Iggy estimates the roundtrip at about 15 miles.