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Artist K. Woodman-Maynard discusses her gorgeous graphic novel interpretation of The Great Gatsby, the business of being a graphic artist and other engrossing matters. A delightfully different interview with a charming guest.
Click here for full transcript of the episode.
Episode highlights:
Sal Introduces K. Woodman-Maynard, Creator of The Great Gatsby Graphic Novel
“Color is gorgeous. The drawings are extremely expressive and interesting… the style of the period is displayed.”
“…I think it's a good way to get people who might not otherwise read The Great Gatsby, the prose book, interested.”
Cashflow from a Graphic Novel Is Inconsistent – Good to Have Steady Income from Graphic Design
“…it was very painful for me to cut out specific lines, because I love those lines.”
“I'm in complete agreement that you shouldn't dismiss somebody's whole life's work just based on certain philosophies. It's a balance.”
“…it started by a very intense deep reading of the text…”
“The whole book took about 1500 hours. That's actively time tracked hours.”
“…the first thing for a beginner that they need to know is that they can do it. You can make a living as a graphic artist.”
“I was encouraged to go into architecture because that was considered to be more stable for artists. I'm so glad I didn't, because I graduated college in 2008.”
“One thing that's been key for me has been diversifying my income. I have income from graphic novels. I have income from graphic design work, from illustration.”
“I think it's an important thing for yourself as a graphic artist to be able to pivot and to be able to work in different ways.”
“…finding good mentors. That's something that I would encourage your niece to do.”
“Going to Harvard has really helped me with asking stupid questions.”
“You can be a good business person and also be good at your craft.”
“The Great Gatsby was a commercial flop at the time that it was published.”
“He was making a huge amount. He would just spend it before he even got it, which is the direct opposite of me.”
“…a captive audience of troops who read The Great Gatsby and then returned and spread the word about it.”
“I'm wondering what's going to happen once the vaccine is out. Will we experience another Roaring Twenties in a different way?”
“I do the Pomodoro method. …You work for 25 minutes; you take 5 minutes off. Then every two hours, you take a half an hour break.”
“In high school, we had to take career placement tests. I had equal likelihood artist and military officer.”
The Importance of Story Telling
Addressing Mental Health Issues with Kids via Comics: TKAMI.org
“I decided not to go into architecture because it wasn't my calling. Also, because I could see that it wouldn't be good for my mental health.”
“It's just gorgeous. I highly recommend this work.”
The Business of Being an Artist
Guest: DESIGNER AND GRAPHIC NOVELIST K. WOODMAN-MAYNARD
Sal Introduces K. Woodman-Maynard, Creator of The Great Gatsby Graphic Novel
Sal Daher: Welcome to Angel Invest Boston. This is a special episode; a literary episode. I have the honor of having with me, Katharine Woodman-Maynard. Say hi to our audience, Katharine.
K. Woodman-Maynard: Hi. I'm so excited to be here.
Sal Daher: Katharine is the person behind the gorgeous graphics of the Angel Invest Boston website and many, many other things. The reason she's on today is to talk about her graphic novel, The Great Gatsby.
K. Woodman-Maynard: Yes.
Sal Daher: Now, Katharine Woodman-Maynard is a graphic artist, a very successful graphic artist. For many years now, she's been playing around with the idea of creating graphic novels. She's created animations. About a year ago, she started working on The Great Gatsby in anticipation of the book going into the public domain. Her book is now published. Now, a graphic novel is not ... Don't get the idea that it's a comic book with little word bubbles and so forth. It's a lot more than that. It's basically like a collection of art related to The Great Gatsby.
Party scene in The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel Adaptation (Candlewick Press) by K. Woodman-Maynard and F. Scott Fitzgerald
“Color is gorgeous. The drawings are extremely expressive and interesting… the style of the period is displayed.”
Of course, it has text adapted from the novel by Katharine. It is beautifully and artfully done. Color is gorgeous. The drawings are extremely expressive and interesting… the style of the period is displayed. Also, a lot of the ideas in the book come across. I just want to say, congratulations, Katharine. It's a beautiful, beautiful piece of work.
K. Woodman-Maynard: Thank you so much, Sal. I'm so pleased to finally have it out in the world. Because I finished it a year ago, but it takes a year for it to get printed and put the publisher to do all their stuff. I also had to keep it a secret for a long time because of the public domain. Other people might be making their own version. It's great to have it out there.
Sal Daher: Yeah, yeah. Katharine, let's talk a little bit about why someone would do a graphic novel like this. Give us your perspective on that.
K. Woodman-Maynard: For graphic novels, there are different type of reading than traditional prose books. You have to use different skills. You have to combine visuals with words, which I think for ... Especially the youth today, that's a very important skill because so much of our world is visual and so much is on social media, and it's a different way of reading. Personally, it's how I think naturally. That is why I'm drawn to the form, visuals plus words.
“…I think it's a good way to get people who might not otherwise read The Great Gatsby, the prose book, interested.”
In terms of an adaptation, I think it's a good way to get people who might not otherwise read The Great Gatsby, the prose book, interested. Hopefully, they will then read the original, because I think the original is so fabulous. It's also just a different way to get students interested, like understanding the metaphors and the symbolism and just various things in The Great Gatsby a different way to engage, just like how film adaptations engage people in a different way.
Sal Daher: Yes, yes, yes. I understand. It can be both an on ramp, but I think it also is an extension of the novel in a sense that it's experiencing the novel in a different way, your particular view, your particular interpretation of the images in the novel that come across. Now, tell me a little bit about the business of doing graphic novels, of classic books that are in the public domain. What are the ins and outs of that?
K. Woodman-Maynard: Well, I don't intend to just do books that are in the public domain. In relation to the public domain, there was a lot of research that had to be done from a legal perspective to make sure that we weren't breaking any laws when we were making this book before it actually entered the public domain. Luckily, my husband is an attorney and did a lot of free work for me on that, but he's not I'm not a copyright or IP attorney. That is a complicated thing. From the business side, it is very similar to the writing business where, first, you find an agent.
Cashflow from a Graphic Novel Is Inconsistent – Good to Have Steady Income from Graphic Design
The agent helps you find a publisher. The publisher pays you in advance on future sales. I don't earn any money until all the royalties that advances like "payback." It's an inconsistent business in terms of cash flow and different things, which is why ... I mean, one of the reasons I enjoy doing graphic design, but I also just enjoy graphic design because it uses my brain in a different way. By doing both at the same time, I'm able to have a consistent source of income and also do this graphic novel without the same pressure as if it were my sole income.
Sal Daher: Sure. At regular intervals here, let's just make sure that we mention that I'm speaking with the creator of The Great Gatsby graphic novel by Katharine Woodman-Maynard, available everywhere on Amazon and other places. Your publisher, remind me again of the name of the publisher, I haven't ...
K. Woodman-Maynard: It's Candlewick Press. They're actually in Somerville.
Sal Daher: In Somerville, okay.
K. Woodman-Maynard: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Sal Daher: A local connection.
Let's talk a little bit about some of the things that you've dealt with in bringing in the aggiornamento, the text, bringing the text to our modern language and to make it understandable to people today.
“…it was very painful for me to cut out specific lines, because I love those lines.”
K. Woodman-Maynard: A lot of modernizing the text had to do with cutting out the text. That was a really hard thing, because I do love this book. I think that so much of Fitzgerald's language is just gorgeous. Sometimes it was very painful for me to cut out specific lines, because I love those lines. I would always try to balance out driving the story forward, conveying certain emotions, dealing with the themes that I wanted to convey, and then also just not wanting to weigh down the graphic novel with a lot of text because I personally don't like graphic novels with a lot of text.
On the other hand, in terms of modernizing, there's also a lot of anti-Semitism in the book. There's this character of Meyer Wolfsheim, who Fitzgerald describes pretty stereotypic caricature of a Jewish gangster. I didn't feel comfortable drawing him that way, certainly.
Sal Daher: If I understand correctly, he was modeled on a Jewish gangster who used to fix baseball games and things of that nature. It was a character very much in the consciousness of the time.
K. Woodman-Maynard: Yes. Fitzgerald, in general, seems very in keeping with the time. I don't think he's particularly anti-Semitic compared to other books of the time period. I, personally, writing in 2020, when I created this, didn't feel comfortable doing those things. We made some edits to his language. Fitzgerald had given him some strange words. Like instead of connection, it was gonnection. We made it connection. We took out those accents throughout the book. Things like that was also another way that I had to modernize the text.
Sal Daher: Well, when you think about a great work of literature from another time, I think we have to have an approach, which should not be a historicist approach, the approach which says that we, in our current time, have reached perfection and people, in other times were benighted fools who have nothing to teach us. If that's the attitude, you can read nothing other than something that was published yesterday. Maybe even that is suspect. What you have to do is you have to engage people on the ground on which they were walking at the time that these things are being written.
Then to appreciate them for the exceptional things that they did, sometimes the things that went against the grain of the times that they were living in. For example, you talk about anti-Semitism. Let's talk about Henry Ford. He was an anti-Semite. Henry Ford was also really the first major American employer to pay black workers and white workers the same. They pay them based on their productivity. It's because he thought that if you could produce, you should earn the same. Yet he had lots of other crazy ideas.
We shouldn't look at Henry Ford and say, "Ah, that anti-Semite, forget about him." No. He was a great man. Like all of us, he had flaws. He had blind spots. He really made that huge, huge difference to really ... I mean, he changed the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of poor black people from the south, who came up north to get high paying wages in the industry.
“I'm in complete agreement that you shouldn't dismiss somebody's whole life's work just based on certain philosophies. It's a balance.”
K. Woodman-Maynard: Yeah. I'm in complete agreement that you shouldn't dismiss somebody's whole life's work just based on certain philosophies. It's a balance. There are some extremes where you might want to do that, but I don't think Fitzgerald is one of those, personally.
Sal Daher: No, no. The point is, is someone who's a great writer, great thinker. It's not like to say, "Oh, yes, Joseph Stalin, yes. Oh, well ... "
K. Woodman-Maynard: That's what I mean.
Sal Daher: What a fine ... He had excellent, excellent suits. He had excellent suits. No. I mean, Joseph Stalin was a freaking murderer and no redeeming qualities there. That's not the same thing. You can say, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a great thinker. So far, I'm sure he had feet of clay. He is someone that, if people have the historicist approach, they could never read Solzhenitsyn anymore because of this, because of that.
K. Woodman-Maynard: Which is the problem that books like Huckleberry Finn get into that, that they have a big conversation about race. What's interesting about Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby is that one of the characters, Tom Buchanan, who's very much made fun of in the book and shown to be stupid and a brute, he's very racist. It's not like Fitzgerald is embracing this racist mentality, which is, I think, what's interesting about The Great Gatsby in that way.
Sal Daher: Would you care to talk about the process of writing a graphic novel? How does that work?
“…it started by a very intense deep reading of the text…”
K. Woodman-Maynard: It's a lot of work. For an adaptation, it started by a very intense deep reading of the text, underlining, circling different themes and colors, and thinking about what I wanted to highlight. Eventually, it goes through a lot of different stages, where basically you go from working very loosely to very refined. You make a lot of editing changes in a very rough way. You don't waste a lot of time once it's beautiful and colored and everything. In an overall way, I start by doing rough pencils. I write a script.
“The whole book took about 1500 hours. That's actively time tracked hours.”
My editors would edit the pencils and tell me what things they thought needed to be changed. Then I would do inks, which are the line art. I would do that digitally. I printed it out on watercolor paper, and then watercolor traditionally with paint. Then I would scan it back in and Photoshop it a little bit. Then that would be the final work. It's a huge amount of work for every page that's done. I time tracked, Sal, because I'm so used to time tracking for graphic design work. I know how much each stage took. The whole book took about 1500 hours. That's actively time tracked hours.
Sal Daher: Wow.
K. Woodman-Maynard: That's really useful knowledge for me. Because then when I'm thinking about a future book, I think about what kind of pace I want to be writing at, how many hours a day I want to spend, and then I can figure out my timeline for a publisher.
Sal Daher: That's fantastic. That brings to mind, why don't you talk about the business of being a graphic artist? Katharine is a graduate of Harvard College. She is at the top of her profession, as a professional graphic artist. She has a paying business. She's not somebody who's waiting tables and then saying that she's a graphic artist. This is what she does all the time. When she's not doing this, she's, I don't know, playing with her dog, playing with her husband, going cross-country skiing or something.
K. Woodman-Maynard: Always.
Sal Daher: She lives in cold places always. Anyway, so tell us a little bit about the business of being a graphic artist. I say this for my dear niece, Julia, who is an aspiring graphic artist, give some pointers to a beginner.
“…the first thing for a beginner that they need to know is that they can do it. You can make a living as a graphic artist.”
K. Woodman-Maynard: Absolutely. I think the first thing for a beginner that they need to know is that they can do it. You can make a living as a graphic artist. You're told so many times, growing up, that you can't do it. I certainly was. I was encouraged to go into architecture because that was considered to be more stable for artists. I'm so glad I didn't, because I graduated college in 2008.
“I was encouraged to go into architecture because that was considered to be more stable for artists. I'm so glad I didn't, because I graduated college in 2008.”
Sal Daher: It's very hard.
K. Woodman-Maynard: There was like a whole downturn '08, like architects were out of work. One of the things is, I found that following my passion has been better economically for me than going towards a safe profession. Because if you're following your passion, you have the motivation, you have the drive, you will figure it out if you're able to be agile in terms of ...
Sal Daher: Agile, yes.
“One thing that's been key for me has been diversifying my income. I have income from graphic novels. I have income from graphic design work, from illustration.”
K. Woodman-Maynard: ... figuring things out. One thing that's been key for me has been diversifying my income. I have income from graphic novels. I have income from graphic design work, from illustration. I used to do a greeting card business. I ultimately pivoted and decided to give that up, because it wasn't giving me the satisfaction. The cost benefit was not there. I'm smiling when I say pivoted because that was a term that I learned from doing all this work for graphic design on an Angel Invest Boston.
Sal Daher: That's great.
K. Woodman-Maynard: It's one I use a lot.
Sal Daher: Yeah, pivots.
K. Woodman-Maynard: Pivots.
Sal Daher: We love pivots on Angel Invest Boston.
K. Woodman-Maynard: Period.
Sal Daher: Yes.
“I think it's an important thing for yourself as a graphic artist to be able to pivot and to be able to work in different ways.”
K. Woodman-Maynard: Yes. I think it's an important thing for yourself as a graphic artist to be able to pivot and to be able to work in different ways. Because I think if I had been like, "Oh, I'm an oil painter and oil painting is all I'm going to do," that would be a much harder way to make a living than being a little bit more flexible.
Sal Daher: As they say in Brazilian Portuguese, jogo de cintura, you have ... The best soccer players, they have good play on their waist, on their hips. They can turn quickly. You need to have that flexibility, which, by the way, in startups, is extremely important.
Being a successful founder, it's a very rare mix of rugged determination with flexibility, with the ability to read situations and determine what can be done and what cannot be done and where to cut your losses, where to regroup, where to pivot. I think it's really important to be persistent, but also to be judicious. Don't bang your head against the wall, think strategically and judiciously.
That's wonderful.
“…finding good mentors. That's something that I would encourage your niece to do.”
K. Woodman-Maynard: Another thing that you talk a lot about is mentorship, finding good mentors. That's something that I would encourage your niece to do. Because that has been invaluable to me also, and just talking to people who do it for a living. It's really helpful to learn from them. I think too often, I wouldn't ask enough questions early in my career or reach out to people because I always didn't have the confidence. I think that's a really important thing to do.
Sal Daher: Growing up, I always remember people saying, "There's no question that's too stupid to ask." Then as I grew up a little more, I thought, oh yeah, there are. Yeah, there are really stupid. Because everybody in the room is saying, "What an idiot. Oh, that guy is asking that stupid question." As I got even more mature, it dawned on me, hey. Because there's these little connections that we make that may not be obvious to us at that moment, and that's our moment to figure that out. We have somebody in front of us who can help us.
We go for it and never mind that everybody else is going to be rolling their eyes in the room. Because it's not going to take away from you the fact that, all of a sudden, you've moved several squares forward on your Monopoly game. Jumped past Go and collected $200 from ... There are moments in your career. I remember this, I'm walking by an elevator at head office at Citibank. I was working in Argentina. This guy that I helped out with some things, he was in the elevator heading up. He stops the door from closing and shouts out to me.
"Sal, if you're negotiating position here in head office, ask them to give you a ... Get your permanent residency in the US. Make you a permanent resident in the US, which is a path to citizenship. Because it's really easy for Citibank to do that for someone who's from overseas. Don't forget to ask that, okay?" Close the door. 15 seconds is something that made a huge difference. I was going to go in there and not talk about this. Eventually, I would have done it. It's like two years out of my life, that this guy saved with 20 seconds. There are moments like that in your life. Don't let that moment, when you're going to ask your stupid question, go by. Do ask the stupid question.
“Going to Harvard has really helped me with asking stupid questions.”
K. Woodman-Maynard: Absolutely. Going to Harvard has really helped me with asking stupid questions. Because with people know that I went to Harvard, I don't need to prove that I'm intelligent. It's a nice benefit of having gone there, that that has established. I don't have to go about it proving myself.
“You can be a good business person and also be good at your craft.”
K. Woodman-Maynard: I want to circle back to the business of being an artist, because I think another important thing for artists in society is that they're taught to not be good business people. That is almost seen as a negative for artists, that they should be so involved in their craft, that they don't even think of business, and they just do it for joy. I just think that's such a negative stereotype and so detrimental, because I think you can be both. You can be a good business person and also be good at your craft. You're more likely to be successful in your craft if you think like a business person. I just wanted to add that.
Sal Daher: Very important. You don't have to take a vow of poverty to be a successful artist. You're not a monk who's going to be wearing a hairshirt and take a vow of poverty. You're a normal person who has to support yourself. Part of that is thinking like a business. Because if you don't think like a business, you're not going to do art. You're going to be waiting tables. You're going to be doing something else, which is far less interesting and far less productive for your talents, for someone with your talents. Yes, having a business approach is important for everyone.
Everyone should think about the goals that they have in terms of their finances long term, in terms of the work that they're doing, where they want to be in the future. Not necessarily earning the highest salary, but working on things that are really, really interesting that will be rewarding to them and will take them somewhere. They're creating value for someone. I think that's a really excellent advice.
“The Great Gatsby was a commercial flop at the time that it was published.”
The Great Gatsby was a commercial flop at the time that it was published. As a matter of fact, it was thought to be a blot on the writing career of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Would you care to talk about that a little bit?
K. Woodman-Maynard: It's so tragic about The Great Gatsby. Fitzgerald really thought that it was his best work. He thought it was the best novel in America. It really did flop. Reviewers didn't really get it. Audiences also didn't. He had all these theories about why that ... He didn't have strong enough female characters in it or various creative decisions, he thought, is why it flopped. Some of it was the time period that by the time it published, flop, it was seen as, oh, another flapper book by Fitzgerald. It's just the same thing that he's always done.
“He was making a huge amount. He would just spend it before he even got it, which is the direct opposite of me.”
It's so much better than his other work, in my opinion. He never saw success in his life. He really died thinking he was a failure, which is really tragic. Speaking of business of being an artist, he made just extraordinary sums of money at certain points in his career. He got the equivalent of, I think, like $2 or $3 million a year of modern day money for his stories at certain points in his career, or $23,000 current money for short stories. He was making a huge amount. He would just spend it before he even got it, which is the direct opposite of me.
I'm like, I'm going to hold on to this so that I can make sure I use it the best possible way. Anyway, that's a side note about Fitzgerald. He died, not in poverty, but with very little money. What happened was not that long after his death, there are a couple things that happened. One is his friends and different reviewers ended up championing his work once he was gone. Then also, books were ...
Sal Daher: When did he die?
K. Woodman-Maynard: He was 44 years old. It was 1940, and he was only 44.
Sal Daher: World War II was going on and the great novelist dies.
“…a captive audience of troops who read The Great Gatsby and then returned and spread the word about it.”
K. Woodman-Maynard: Yeah. What ended up happening is that, during World War II, there were books that were sent over to the troops to entertain them. The Great Gatsby was one of those books that they reprinted. They're called the Armed Services Editions. This is according to Maureen Corrigan who wrote a book on The Great Gatsby and researched this. She believes that that's one of the reasons there was this resurgence of The Great Gatsby, was because they had a captive audience of troops who read The Great Gatsby and then returned and spread the word about it. There was this huge resurgence of it not that long after his death. It's really just kept going up, the interest in, mainly, The Great Gatsby, but also just Fitzgerald in general.
Sal Daher: Could it be that in the '20s, the action takes place ... What is it? Like 1922 or something, published it in 1925, was just too close to the time? It was still the Roaring Twenties, time of great economic growth, of great dislocation. They talked about this whole ... Basically, the old families were all being ground down by these entrepreneurs who were coming up and were nouveau riche. He was like the quintessential of nouveau riche. Maybe it was just too close. The people who would be reading this would be saying, "Ah! I don't like this. This is too close to home."
K. Woodman-Maynard: I think that's what I've read too. That's very apt description. Also, then by 20, 30 years later, they look back and it's a different generation who maybe didn't even live or was just being born in the 1920s. Then it becomes nostalgic in a different era. I've also been thinking about, obviously, the flu pandemic of 1918 and how it relates to the Roaring Twenties.
Sal Daher: [crosstalk 00:25:09]
“I'm wondering what's going to happen once the vaccine is out. Will we experience another Roaring Twenties in a different way?”
K. Woodman-Maynard: I'm wondering what's going to happen once the vaccine is out. Will we experience another Roaring Twenties in a different way?
Sal Daher: It's entirely possible. People have a sense that they have put away their social lives, all the things that they do to enjoy themselves, and that therefore they're going to make up for it. They're going to have a tremendous amount of partying, people going to fall out of balconies and things from too much hard partying.
Just thinking, artists come in and out of favor. Johann Sebastian Bach, for example, he was very successful in his life. He was a good businessman. He had a family. They were all working musicians, successful, prosperous. He was highly respected. Then there was a period when his music just basically disappeared. Nobody listened to it. Nobody played Bach. It was out of fashion, and then it came back into fashion.
Mozart was an entirely different person, somebody who financially was always in trouble, also a great genius. You have these two contrasts. Who do you want to be if you're an artist? Do you want to be Mozart with a crazy up and down life or Beethoven with crazy disturbed life? Or do you want to be Johann Sebastian Bach with a fully-formed family life and enough money to have financial security, and then to be able to pursue your art in the highest level?
K. Woodman-Maynard: Yeah. That's what I try to achieve. It's not like I'm fully there yet. That's really my goal, is that stability. That's really important to me from, obviously, just a life perspective, but also a mental health perspective. I don't do well with crazy up and downs. I like more consistency. It's an interesting thing as an artist. Because I think, again, that stereotype of the ups and downs and all that. Yeah, I also try to make decisions not like Fitzgerald with money or things.
I had money for a wedding from my parents when I got married. Instead of having an elaborate wedding, we just did it at my parents' house, 30 people. It was about $2,000. The rest of the money went to a down payment on the house. It's like I'm making those decisions so that I can keep doing what I want to do and not spend it all on big parties. That's not my thing.
Sal Daher: What's the tempo of your work, Katharine? Do you have set times that you work and there are other times that you don't? What does your day look like normally?
“I do the Pomodoro method. …You work for 25 minutes; you take 5 minutes off. Then every two hours, you take a half an hour break.”
K. Woodman-Maynard: I work very regimented kind of. I meditate every morning. I have a nice breakfast. I get to work usually around 8:00. I do the Pomodoro method. I don't know if you're familiar with this. You work for 25 minutes, you take 5 minutes off. Then every two hours, you take a half an hour break. I found that I'm most productive when doing that method. Also, it helps with overuse injuries. I essentially spend the morning on graphic novels, and then the afternoon on graphic design. I use that method. During lunchtime or afternoon, often, I go for a run or a ski.
Because exercise is really, really important, really important to me too. It's a pretty structured day, which I think I learned that I needed to have that when I started working for myself and not in an office setting. I had to learn to not pick up the phone from friends during that time. Because even though you can take the call, maybe you shouldn't take the call right then. It's a big learning curve that I think so many people now have experienced with COVID and working from home. I've been doing it for, I don't know, seven years or more now. I really liked the flexibility. It's really great. Sal, you'll appreciate this. In high school, we had to take career placement tests. I had equal likelihood artist and military officer.
“In high school, we had to take career placement tests. I had equal likelihood artist and military officer.”
Sal Daher: Or artistic military officer.
K. Woodman-Maynard: Yeah. It would be like either of those professions would be good for you. I went the artist direction. Still, I like to bring in my military officer into it. That's why I am so into sports too. I rowed crew at Harvard. I was the captain of the lightweight crew team. Now I cross-country ski a lot. I can get that military officer out in different ways.
Sal Daher: Well, bringing it to modern times, if you watch Space Force ... Did you ever watch that TV show?
K. Woodman-Maynard: No.
Sal Daher: It's a comedy about Space Force. The two main characters, there's a general that's a bit of a crazy general, and there's a scientist. The scientist has his own peculiarities and the general has his own peculiarities. It becomes evident that the general is not very good at science. He doesn't know much science. What he does know is human nature. This is the thing with the military. It's very important. It's all about understanding human nature, understanding, dealing with people, and leading people, and getting people to do things.
When people think about the military, you think killing and aggressive, murderous kind of. No, no. It is someone who is very good at motivating people and someone who is really good at logistics. By the way, sometimes they get involved in shooting. Because most of the time, the army is not fighting. They're getting ready for fight.
Anyway, Katharine, open it up to you, things that you would like to talk about that you like to present to an audience of people who work in startups, people who start startups, investors.
The Importance of Story Telling
K. Woodman-Maynard: Yeah, yeah. I think I'd like to speak a little bit about storytelling. Because I see for graphic design, I'm trying to tell a story using visuals and words and creating a certain mood in a very different way than a graphic novel, which is obviously storytelling. There's some definite similarities there. Then also for startups, I always watch the videos that the founders upload, promoting the podcast or describing their business. Some of the founders are so much better at telling the story of their business than others.
It makes such a difference, especially to me who I don't have experience in biotech, for instance. I think crafting that story is so important to success of the business, but just conveying to people what you're doing. Anyway, I just think a lot about storytelling in these different ways. That's something that I think of with this audience in particular.
Sal Daher: You're putting your finger on something that's really important. There's a massive difference between a startup that comes in with a pitch deck that is full of these incredibly woolly and complicated diagrams of what they're going to do and so forth. That, to me, is a sign that they're trying to figure out the business. They don't really know what the business is. When they come in with something that says, well, this is our target market. This is how big it is. This is what we're doing. By the way, we have all these initial clients that we've done this business with. This is the kind of economics that we have. It's a very different story.
You can tell from the level of the discussion and how well they present their startup, how developed the startup is, because it's true. Messaging isn't just about convincing people, it's also about telling people in your company what you do, telling yourself what you do. Many people don't understand what business they're in. They think they're in one business, they're in another business. Working on the message and working on explaining or creating a narrative is extremely important.
I always ask people to tell the story of their company, how the company came about, and what the progression is. Because you can tell a lot from that story, how it evolves. The story you never want to hear is, "Oh, we're looking around for some way to make money. We thought that this is a great market to be at." That's like, ah. I'm not divulging any great secrets here. That's not going to cut it. The story is usually like, this is itch that couldn't resist scratching. I just had to scratch it. Being an artist is a little bit like that too. You're just extremely passionate about this thing.
You're going to do this. You're going to be this no matter what. Whether you make tons of money, you make some money, you're going to be doing this because this is something you feel very strongly about. There are interesting stories to be told about that. You're absolutely right.
K. Woodman-Maynard: Well, it's so similar writing, what you're describing. When you first do a draft, it's usually so convoluted and too much, too long. I wrote two graphic novels before this, and my first one was like 400 pages and just meandering. That's what you have to learn to do. You have to learn to edit it down. Then you have to pick your theme, which is what you're saying like, what is this about? Then you have to stick to that. There's a lot of parallels there.
Addressing Mental Health Issues with Kids via Comics: TKAMI.org
One other thing I want to talk about is different ... Separate from the graphic novel and the graphic design, but it is a comics project, which is I make comics with my friend who's a child psychiatrist. It's for kids. They describe different mental illnesses like depression, anxiety. They're all, through this character, called TKAMI. He's a little monster and all the characters in the world are monsters. They're just one page comics that we make that just described the illness in a way that kids can understand and that hopefully parents or caregivers can talk to their kids about.
It's called TKAMI. Tkami.org is the website. They're all free comics. This was something that a couple of friends and I felt very passionate about. There's a lot of mental health problems in my family and my friends' family. Their father died. He was very mentally ill. They used the proceeds like some of the ... Not inheritance exactly, but to create this page. I just wanted to talk about it, because it's related. It's another one of these projects that we just felt passionately about and wanted to create and felt like it needed to be out there and we want to share it. I just want to share it with your audience, in case it's helpful for you.
Sal Daher: Well, when we do the episode page, make sure you put a link to tkami.org there, so people can be made aware of this because kids…very graphic.. graphically oriented. Having a one-page graphic story can really lead kids to express things or to understand things that they can't understand, otherwise.
K. Woodman-Maynard: Yes. Especially right now, and so many kids are struggling not having their normal ... I can't even imagine. I think, yeah.
Sal Daher: It's so troubling, yeah. I have a great concern for young people, for children, also for young adults, for teenagers. Suicide ideation is through the roof. I'm also concerned about young college graduates, people who are getting out of school. Their careers will be affected by this for decades. I have sympathy for young parents, because this is just really brutal thing. I see my daughter and my son in law going through this because we live in the same house, and we help them out. I would hate to be in their shoes, because their life just ... This is really crazy. 2020 was a very tough time. Any resource like that is much welcomed.
K. Woodman-Maynard: Yeah. I agree that it's so concerning. Actually, my next graphic novel or my current one that I'm working on is a graphic memoir. It's a lot about dealing with a loved one with a mental illness and my own struggles with anxiety and depression in high school. I feel like sharing that story is so important for kids so that they don't feel alone, because so many kids feel alone. I certainly did at that time. I didn't feel like I could talk about what I was going through or what my loved one was going through. This is something that I feel passionate about.
“I decided not to go into architecture because it wasn't my calling. Also, because I could see that it wouldn't be good for my mental health.”
Wrapping it back into the business and artist, it's like I made a commitment. I decided not to go into architecture because it wasn't my calling. Also, because I could see that it wouldn't be good for my mental health. It's so ...
Sal Daher: [crosstalk 00:38:17]
K. Woodman-Maynard: Yes.
Sal Daher: Everybody and his uncle wants to be an architect. It is almost like a priesthood. You have to go through this very, very long novitiate where you work for very little. Then building a business as an architect is really, really hard in contrast to a graphic artist. You have a far better chance of having a good business as a graphic artist than you do as a working architect.
K. Woodman-Maynard: Yeah, yeah.
Sal Daher: You're tempted to become an architect, think about becoming a professional engineer, civil engineer or something like that, because that you can make money at, but architecture, oh. It's only for the people who just cannot live except by being an architect.
K. Woodman-Maynard: Yeah. I don't mean to knock architecture. I think I would have enjoy ...
Sal Daher: Architecture is wonderful.
K. Woodman-Maynard: I think it was also just a mental health decision that like I knew that I would have better mental health if I could control my schedule, if I didn't have to do a lengthy apprenticeship where I made very, very little, all of these things. I think that's the balance of the art side, the business side, and then just the health side, what is going to be healthy for you. I feel like that is also, I'm sure, very important in startups and founders when you're working so hard and so intensely.
“It's just gorgeous. I highly recommend this work.”
Sal Daher: It's very true, very true. Well, as we wrap up this delightful literary chat with K. Woodman-Maynard, that's the nom de guerre… non de plume of Katharine Woodman-Maynard. It requires a subtle mind to get through that one. She is the creator of The Great Gatsby graphic novel. I highly recommend it. I have waded through its 248 pages. It is gorgeous and is beautifully, beautifully adapted. By the way, I have to talk about this, the word bubbles and where the words show up, the text is so delightful, figuring out where the texts are, and reading a text appears of the snow and the walls and this and that. It's just gorgeous. I highly recommend this work. Check out Katharine's work, otherwise. I'm very grateful to her for making time to be on the Angel Invest Boston podcast.
K. Woodman-Maynard: Thank you so much for having me, Sal. It's so exciting to be on this end of the podcast instead of the graphic design, the graphic design end. It's such a pleasure to speak with you.
Sal Daher: Great pleasure to work with you and to speak with you on this. This is the Angel Invest Boston podcast. I'm Sal Daher.
I'm glad you were able to join us. Our engineer is Raul Rosa. Our theme was composed by John McKusick. Our graphic design is by Katharine Woodman-Maynard. Our host is coached by Grace Daher.
