Who: Dana Simpson

Claim To Fame: Dana Simpson first caught the eyes of devoted comics readers with the internet strip Ozy and Millie. After winning the 2009 Comic Strip Superstar contest, she developed the strip Phoebe and Her Unicorn (originally known as Heavenly Nostrils), which is now syndicated in over 200 newspapers worldwide. There are eight Phoebe and Her Unicorn book collections: Phoebe and Her Unicorn, Unicorn on a Roll, Unicorn vs. Goblins, Razzle Dazzle Unicorn, Unicorn Crossing, Unicorn of Many Hats, Unicorn Bowling, and The Unicorn Whisperer, as well as two graphic novels, The Magic Storm and Unicorn Theater. Simpson’s books have appeared on the New York Times bestseller list, and won the Washington State Book Award and the Pacific Northwest Book Award.

Where To Find Dana: Her Website, Amazon, Twitter

Praise For Dana: “Simpson easily straddles the line between kid and adult humor—another way in which these books recall the heyday of Calvin and Hobbes.” — Cory Doctorow

When and where do you like to write? Are you the same-thing-every-day kind of writer or can you write anytime, anywhere?

I kind of have to leave the house. There are a lot of distractions here. My cat is here. My books and video games and Netflix are here. At the very least, I have to go sit in the backyard. It’s better if I get farther away, like a coffee shop or even the beach (I live in a California beach town, so that’s an option most of the year).

Usually it’s during the day, while my spouse is at work. I like to be done working when they get home, so we have the evening together.

Do you have any pre-writing rituals or habits before you sit down to write?

Charging my iPad? I do almost all my writing on my iPad these days. I scribble out roughs in one of the free drawing apps that exist for it. I sit down, usually with coffee, and I get to scribbling.

What do you do when the writing isn’t coming easy? Do you struggle at all with that dreaded enemy of writing: writer’s block?

I have a notecard on my phone where I write down random comic ideas as I think of them. Just walking around in normal life, I’ll think “hm, I wonder if unicorns have FitBits” or “I wonder if unicorns eat at human-style restaurants” or “hey, I’ve never done a storyline where Phoebe goes to a school dance.” And I put that in the file. So I usually have some backlog of potential ideas, on days when it’s not flowing.

The other thing is, I’ll think about what I want to draw. If the writing end of things isn’t cooperating, usually I can think of something fun to draw. So I’ll be like “you know what would be fun to draw? A snowboarding unicorn,” and then I’ll try to write something where Marigold is on a snowboard.

Usually that seed of an idea is enough, because I’ve been writing these characters for years and their personalities are really well established, so once I set them loose on a premise, they kind of just do their own thing.

When did your aspirations to become a writer begin? At what age did you start writing in hopes of making a living out of it?

I drew my first comic strip when I was really young. Age five. I still have it—my mother saved everything my siblings and I drew.

And I think it was while my age was still in single digits that I first started entertaining the idea of drawing comic strips for a living. I mean, it was a job you could have. Charles Schulz had it. Bill Watterson had it. Why couldn’t I grow up and have it?

I went through a phase in my teens of wanting to be a professional musician. (That’s me, keepin’ it super realistic.) But when I was 19 I came back to comic strips, and never left—I started doing a strip that came to be called “Ozy and Millie,” which I then did as a web comic for ten years. My plan was to immediately get syndicated and make a living off my comics. It didn’t quite happen like that—it was another 15 years before my next strip after that, “Phoebe and Her Unicorn,” got its first book and its newspaper launch.

Writers have to be master prioritizers — juggling all sorts of projects and deadlines at the same time. That’s certainly the case for you. Do you have any methods for managing tasks and time to stay productive and not let overwhelm sneak in?

I guess I take it one piece at a time. There are writing days and there are drawing days. I can write a week of strips in an afternoon usually, then I send the ideas to my editor. Once I have her notes I start drawing. Usually doing a week of daily comics is 1-2 days of work. A Sunday comic by itself eats up an entire day, so there are days dedicated to that, too.

Deciding on an idea to pursue writing about can be the most challenging aspect for a writer. How do you come to find the stories and lives that become the subjects of your books? Are there habits or daily tricks you use to think about book ideas?

Well…there are currently 10 “Phoebe and Her Unicorn” books. Of those, 8 are collections of the daily comic strips. Writing those, I think kind of small. Daily comic strips aren’t an especially good medium for telling complex stories.

That’s fine with me, usually. I’ve never thought of myself as a storyteller in that way. It’s part of what drew me to comic strips as a medium. Hanging out with my characters all day, putting them in situations that are either relatable (“Phoebe takes a test at school”) or weird and funny (“Marigold introduces Phoebe to a dragon who barfs candy”), sticking around long enough for a laugh or a pithy observation, and moving on to the next thing. Like I said, I have a file on my phone that’s full of one-sentence ideas that I can have the characters riff on for a week or three. That’s most of what “Phoebe and Her Unicorn” is.

But then there are those other two books. The Magic Storm and Unicorn Theater. They’re the two longest stories I’ve ever come up with. So suddenly I’m having to think about story structure and all that. Those two books were a learning experience.

For Magic Storm, the idea was “I want to take them on an adventure.” So I ended up giving them a mystery to solve, a kind of suburban magic quest that ended up involving a dragon. For the next one, Unicorn Theater, I decided to do something different, and it wound up being more of a story about relationships and personal drama and how we (read: how I) end up channeling that into stories we tell.

Having only done it twice, I have no idea what I’m going to do for the next one of those. Maybe a ghost story? I’m still learning how long stories work, to be perfectly honest.

You are both a writer and an artist. Which came first for you creatively, writing or drawing? How do you strike the balance in your daily routine?

It’s funny, because I always say that I’m a writer who draws, rather than the reverse—and I do think that’s what comics are, at least the comics I make. The art can be so-so if the writing is there; if it isn’t, it doesn’t matter that much how good the art is.

But the truth is that I was an artist first. I’ve been drawing since I could grip a marker in my tiny fist. And drawing is fun and relaxing for me. Writing is something I took to later, and writing is work.  I’m always relieved when I’ve written something, gotten it past my editor, and I can sit in my room and draw it all. Drawing is like my reward for doing the hard part.

Like I said, there are writing days and drawing days. And they’re fairly different headspaces. It helps keeping them apart.

How do you judge a productive writing day or an unproductive day? What’s the sign of a good day for you?

If it’s a writing day, one week of comics—six dailies and a Sunday—is a successful day. On an art day it’s a little more nebulous. That takes as long as it takes. There are smaller goals within it—lettering a week of comics, penciling a week of comics, inking a week of comics. Did I achieve something on that list? Cool, it was a decent work day.

There ARE days when I’m just not really feeling it. That’s fine, you get to have a certain number of those. As long as there aren’t so many you miss deadlines. Because I have nothing but deadlines. The strip has to be there every day.

What books or writers have most influenced the way you think and the way you write?

I could talk about that all day! In terms of comics: Charles M. Schulz (“Peanuts”). Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”). Lynn Johnston (“For Better or For Worse”). Tove Jansson (“Moomin”). Jeff Smith (“Bone”). 

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle really helped define what unicorns are to me. Both the original novel, and the 2010 graphic novel adaptation (which lived on my desk when I was designing Marigold). And I think I have to credit Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth for nurturing my sense of the absurd, and for teaching me the word “dodecahedron.”

What is your advice to aspiring writers?

Write what makes you happy. Learn to be happy that something is finished rather than torturing yourself about whether it could have been better. Never quit—success could be right around the corner, you’re probably closer to it than you think, and the ones who make it tend to be the ones who didn’t quit. (Someone, I think maybe Schulz, once said that a lot of cartoonists quit a year or two before becoming marketable, and that always stuck with me.)

And honestly…if at all possible, marry an understanding person with a “normal” job, so you don’t have to do the whole day job thing. That really really helps.

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