Interesting report by NPR about New Yorker cartoonist Tom Toro who submitted 610 cartoons to the New Yorker before he made his first sale.
“I went in, he looked at my stuff, I was just nervously sitting there waiting for him to say something,” Toro says. “And I remember he looked up and said, ‘I don’t see any joy in these. These aren’t ready yet.’ “
Toro says that’s the comment that stuck with him.
“So I went back home and I just threw everything that I had done previously out the door, sat down with a blank sheet of paper, and just tried to draw from the heart,” he says.
By my count in the New Yorker Cartoon Bank, Tom has over a 100 cartoons published since that first sale.