Earlier this year, when I started my newsletter on Substack, the site prompted me to consider my “manifesto” – a prompt I made fun of at the time and, since then, have been unable to completely clear out of my mind.

I just recently taught another workshop on making autobio comics specifically aimed at students who likely consider themselves creative but also might not consider themselves artists – it’s one of my favorite kinds of audiences to teach. I can remember being in their shoes a decade ago when I first started making diary comics. Growing up, I had always been “the kid who draws” but I never would have considered myself a cartoonist – nor did I think I was much good at the drawing part, if we’re being honest.

My first diary comics show this anxiety, even though they were only drawn for an audience of one – me. My handwriting is wobbly and cramped, like the letters are trying to hide. The image lines are tentative and occasionally digress into tightly-wound anxious scribbles. Despite this initial discomfort, within a month a recognizable style had started to settle into place and the lines and letters became more confident.

Back in 2013, at the suggestion of a friend, I had started experimenting with comics a couple years into a particularly prolonged bout of postpartum depression as an attempt to do something creative at a time that I really wasn’t feeling it. I set a goal of 15-20 minutes a day and that goal quickly ballooned to 60-90 minutes a night. And as I continued drawing and settling into this new project, I felt better.

Since then, comics have become one of the major ways through which I understand myself, my studies, and the moments that make up my life. Yet, whenever I talk to noncartoonists about the perks of making comics, they nearly always respond in exactly the same way: I’m not talented, I’m not an artist, I can’t draw. Then I have to take a deep breath and explain to them calmly exactly why that doesn’t matter. It makes me a little sad every single time.

These moments are what’s led to my manifesto, which comes in two parts.

1. Anyone can make comics. Including you!
2. The idea you need to be good at something in order to do it is a lie and it keeps you from having a lot of fun.

Here’s why “not being good” doesn’t matter:

Lots of people have hobbies. Lots of people play sports or craft or cook and bake. Yet very few people are Olympians, are master woodworkers, are top-of-the-line chefs. Despite this discrepancy, people still allow themselves to enjoy these hobbies – and that’s exactly how it should be! All of these activities value practice and slow incremental progress and, most importantly, the joy of doing a thing.

So why isn’t making art like this? Why don’t people let themselves be bad something and do it anyway? (Confession: as a recovering perfectionist, this is a question I ask myself on a far-too-regular basis.)

I think a big part of the problem goes to the difference between creating a product and nourishing a practice. Austin Kleon recently tweeted about different approaches to art: as “producing things” or “as a way of operating in the world” and I immediately copied it down into my agenda because that’s exactly the reminder I need for myself these days.

So, in support of “my manifesto,” I would like to use future posts to share thoughts, prompts, exercises, readings, and more to try to encourage you to join me in drawing comics – even if no one else ever sees them!

With that goal in mind, I will leave you with one of the earliest teaching tools I ever made: how to draw a chicken! I hope you’ll grab a pencil or pen and a post-it or some scrap paper and spend a few minutes drawing chickens today. You might be surprised at what you can do.