— There is no new issue this week as we’re midway through a double issue timeframe. The Monday Tilley Watch will return a week from today.
The Drawings Pile Up
This week, cartoonists return to submitting work to The New Yorker after a week’s break (when there’s a double issue, such as we have now, the pattern has been for the Cartoon Department to dim its lights for a week…i.e., no submissions). As I’ve mentioned here before, I find it difficult to dim my lights as well, and so continue on drawing. This results in many more drawings piled-up than submitted. On the average I come up with a couple of possible contenders every day. Doing the math: 2 drawings a day x 7 days a week = 14 new drawings a week. I never send the cartoon editor that many weekly. This means there are extra new drawings tossed in the unsent stack (shown in the photo above). A few extra here, a few extra there, and suddenly there are a lot of unsent drawings. The week off means even more unsents are, well, unsent.
I’ve discovered it’s just as well having a number of extras — the unsents — to choose from. It never fails, come submitting day, that some of the latest “possible contenders” don’t seem like contenders at all. During the week I’ve obviously deluded myself. Knowing this delusional business happens weekly probably explains why I tend to forget what I’ve drawn by the end of each day. What’s been drawn has been drawn; I’m grateful that the ideas, however successful, came my way — but what comes next has to be the focus. Whatever happens on judgment day (that’s today, when I send my batch of drawings to Manhattan), the pile of unsents are luckily standing by.
I am glad you don’t dim your lights.