Today’s post is pure joy to write.
Sophie Lucido Johnson, a bosom buddy friendship in my life on the level of Anne Shirley and Diana Barry, is published this very day in The New Yorker. She wrote and illustrated a wonderful comic entitled, “Horrible Phone Calls I Assume I’d Have If It Wasn’t For The Internet” and, as you will shortly discover, Sophie’s cartoon is brilliant.
Being published in The New Yorker is a mammoth achievement. I probably don’t need to say that.
Maybe you read the magazine, maybe you don’t. Maybe you have a stack of New Yorkers on a chair in your apartment because you buy them when you’re in the airport and you swear you’re going to get through them all by the end of the summer (cough, cough.) Regardless of your relationship to the magazine, it cannot be denied that the editorial standards over there are about as high as they come. You gotta be good to get in that door.
And how do you get good? You know the answer.
You work.
And that’s what Sophie does. The girl. Practices. Constantly. She’s always writing, drawing, looking, thinking. When we’re in meetings or in the audience for something, Sophie pulls out her drawing pad and a pencil and sketches. She’ll draw people or things. She’ll make a cartoon or do lettering. She does it because she wants to get better and she’s willing to do the work. Of course, Sophie draws and writes because she loves it, too, but I want to drive home how hard she works at all this.
Being published in The New Yorker is pretty glamorous. But I assure you, and Sophie as she reads this will be nodding her head vigorously: Making art and writing is not glamorous. This stuff is frustrating, it takes forever, you fail, you get sad, you ignore other things, you doubt. But then, if you’re like Sophie and a handful of other people I know, you go back into the salt mines. Because you have to. Because that’s what it takes.
This beautiful girl works so hard. She works so hard, she got a comic in The New Yorker.
Congratulations, Soph.