People love the comic strips that run in the weekly paper. The reason for this live is simple. The paper is full of articles and stories about a world that seems to be going horribly wrong. Most of what is printed is depressing and full of gloom. There are even some days that the Sports section seems to be depressing. The comic strips are the one exception. The comics are happy and ridiculous, and provide the reader with a brief respite from reality.

Many kids dream of becoming cartoonist and creating their own daily comic strips. As the child gets older most of them out grow the dream and pursue other career options, but a few people still pursue comic strips. These individuals quickly learn that they have not picked the easiest of careers. Creating a comic strip is hard enough, but trying to create one that is fresh and bright day in and day out is more than most people can handle.

There are several things that anyone who wants to create comic strips for a living need to think about before they commit themselves to this particular type of career.

Anyone who is interested in creating comic strips needs to be good at handling both rejection and criticism. Both of these things are going to be what they encounter a lot, especially at the beginning of their career. Just because the individual’s friends and family members love their work it does not mean that the editorial department at the newspaper is going to agree.

Pitching a comic strip to a newspaper is hard work. Even if the newspaper staff loves the work and thinks that the artist has a great idea, they are going to be reluctant to run with it. Papers have a very limited amount of space that they are able to use for the strips. Adding one strip means that another strip will have to be pulled. It does not matter what strip the paper choose to eliminate, some of the readers are going to be angry at the chance.

Even though the cartoonist might dream about having their comic strip in all of the big papers around the world, they need to start small. Instead of pitching their strip idea to nationally syndicated papers, the cartoonist should focus on local markets.

If the cartoon gets picked up the real work is just beginning. Creating a weekly or even daily strip is a lot of work. The idea has to be fresh and the writing crisp all the time. Many cartoonish find that the demand of maintaining the strip is too much for them and they quit.
The individual really does need to think about alternative forms of earning a living. Even if the person is able to sell their strip to their local newspaper, it is going to be a long time before the strip is generating enough revenue for the person to live off of.

In addition to being a source of income, the other job will also prevent the person from looking themselves away in their studio. Getting out of the home and going to work means that the person will be interacting with other people which is one of the best ways to get new ideas for future comic strips.