Jessica Abel

Go from overwhelmed, anxious, and stuck, to consistent, clear, and in control of your creative life. If you feel like you're floundering in the deep end (Not waving, drowning!), and anxiety over the complexity and enormousness of your creative projects overwhelms you, stop scrambling to fit everything in and feeling stretched thin. DIVE DEEP AND SWIM Sustain the energy you feel when thinking of how awesome your projects could be. Value your own creative work as highly as work you do for other people. Build a reusable structure and process that will consistently get you to the finish line. Blast through your stuck-ness. Focus. Finish. Move on to the next project. You're a creative person. Even if you have a hard time calling yourself a "writer" or an "artist" in public, making your creative work is core to who you are and how you see the world. You may be harboring a big, ambitious idea for a project. Possibly a lot of them. And it's killing you. You lie awake thinking about it...and hating yourself for not doing more to make it real. And then in the morning you're exhausted, and you can't believe you "wasted" more time on this stupid idea. Who ever told you you were creative anyway? You try to shove your idea away, to forget it. But your creative work is what keeps you sane. You can't not do this. So you live with guilt and anxiety all the time. You've tried to carve out the time and attention you need to devote to your creative work. You've made ambitious goals, you've written lists, you've scheduled calendars...you've installed shackles on your desk chair. But chaining yourself to your work only seems to make you more distractible and more miserable. (And those unsightly leg sores!) Maybe you've even tried to borrow time-management tips from the business world. Get things done! Build seven habits! Eat that frog! But following business-minded productivity systems just doesn't work for you. The issue isn't simply getting "things" done, it's allowing yourself to devote precious time and attention to the vital, self-generated creative work that builds toward your vision for the future. The problem is, the life you're living is already full. You've made a lot of promises, to yourself, your family, your friends, and your community, that you'll be there for them. You probably have a job; you may have kids. You may well have many competing ideas for your creative work. Where, exactly, can you find that mythical Creative Focus Unicorn? In Growing Gills, you'll discover that the power is already within you to make your work. The biggest obstacles to your getting your important creative work done lie in the unknowns you're facing. Growing Gills takes you step by step through the process of pinning down exactly what's stopping you from finishing your beautiful, inventive, and potentially game-changing projects. Using the power of conscious decision, you'll build your own unique system for fitting creative work into your existing life, taking into consideration how you work best. Like a custom-designed, powered exoskeleton, your personal system will bolster and support your creative practice day in and day out, so that you can grow up and grow old while continuing to make your creative work...without chucking out all the other connections to your family and the world that make your life rich and worth living. GROWING GILLS: Breathe in the deep end. With your purchase of the ebook or print edition, you'll also get: The Growing Gills Workbook for free A checklist to identify what specifically stands in your way An invitation to a 5-day free minicourse where you'll build a plan to overcome those obstacles.

How to Find Creative Focus When You're Drowning in Your Daily Life

Growing Gills

Matt Madden

A course on comics creation offers lessons on lettering, story, structure, panel layout, and much more, providing a solid introduction for people interested in making their own comics. Original.

Making Comics: Manga, Graphic Novels, and Beyond

Drawing Words and Writing Pictures

Ira Glass

An Illustrated Guide

Radio

A new course of material to accompany First Second’s widely acclaimed 2008 comics textbook. In their hotly anticipated follow-up to 2008’s comics textbook Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, School of Visual Arts cartooning professors Matt Madden and Jessica Abel bring their expertise to bear on the “second semester” of a course of study for the budding cartoonist. Covering advanced topics such as story composition, coloring, and file formatting, Mastering Comics is a vital companion to the introductory content of the first volume.

Drawing Words & Writing Pictures Continued

Mastering Comics

Neil Gaiman

Collects original comic strips from American authors and illustrators published in 2010 in graphic novels, newspapers, magazines, and on the Internet.

The Best American Comics 2010

Gabriel Soria

Life Sucks

200 years from now, Trish "Trash" Nupindju lives on the newly inhabited Mars, whose settlers live under harsh and ruthless conditions. Trish dreams of only one thing: becoming a hoverderby star. It seems like making the professional derby team is the only way to escape a future of poverty on her parents' farm. But, what happens when a half-dead Martian shows up on her doorstep and changes everything? Find out in the first volume of the new science fiction trilogy created by Jessica Abel.

Trish Trash #1: Rollergirl on Mars

Carla, an American estranged from her Mexican father, travels to Mexico to discover herself.

La perdida

The production of a segment of This American Life is the vehicle for an overview of many aspects of radio programming and production.

Françoise Mouly

Presents excerpts from graphic novels, newspapers, webcomics, and other sources that feature the work of up-and-coming and established artists such as Charles Burns, Chester Brown, and Joyce Farmer.

The Best American Comics 2012

Alison Bechdel

Features excerpts from graphic novels, newspapers, webcomics, and other sources and features work by up-and-coming contributors as well as such established artists as Joe Sacco, Jeff Smith, and Dash Shaw.

The Best American Comics 2011

A Library Journal Best Book of 2015 Go behind the scenes of seven of today’s most popular narrative radio shows and podcasts, including This American Life and RadioLab, in graphic narrative. Every week, millions of devoted fans tune in to or download This American Life, The Moth, Radiolab, Planet Money, Snap Judgment, Serial, Invisibilia and other narrative radio shows. Using personal stories to breathe life into complex ideas and issues, these beloved programs help us to understand ourselves and our world a little bit better. Each has a distinct style, but every one delivers stories that are brilliantly told and produced. Out on the Wire offers an unexpected window into this new kind of storytelling—one that literally illustrates the making of a purely auditory medium. With the help of This American Life's Ira Glass, Jessica Abel, a cartoonist and devotee of narrative radio, uncovers just how radio producers construct narrative, spilling some juicy insider details. Jad Abumrad of RadioLab talks about chasing moments of awe with scientists, while Planet Money’s Robert Smith lets us in on his slightly goofy strategy for putting interviewees at ease. And Abel reveals how mad—really mad—Ira Glass becomes when he receives edits from his colleagues. Informative and engaging, Out on the Wire demonstrates that narrative radio and podcasts are creating some of the most exciting and innovative storytelling available today. From the Trade Paperback edition.

The Storytelling Secrets of the New Masters of Radio

Out on the Wire

A collection of short, graphic novel stories about the adventures of women, by American comic book writer and artist, Jessica Abel.

Short Stories 1989-1996

Soundtrack

Lynda Barry

Celebrating the best in graphic storytelling and literary comics, a cutting-edge collection, guest edited by the award-winning author of the long-running comic strip Ernie Pook's Comeek, features excerpts from graphic novels, pamphlet comics, newspapers, magazines, mini-comics, and the Web, from Chris Ware, Seth, Alison Bechdel, and Matt Groening, among others.

The Best American Comics 2008

Artbabe

In this richly emotional, high-velocity tale, a young woman journeys to Mexico City in search of her true identity, only to discover a self she can hardly recognize. This is first full-length graphic novel from Jessica Abel, an acclaimed young comics artist.

La Perdida

“When I started RAW magazine in the ’80s, there were mostly superheroes, a few children’s comics, and the dirty, intentionally lowbrow, underground comix. And now, comics can tackle any topic.”—Françoise Mouly, from the Introduction FEATURING Charles Burns, Chester Brown, Joyce Farmer, Chris Ware, Gary Panter, Sergio Aragonés, Christoph Niemann, Adrian Tomine, Sarah Varon, and others. This year with a sampler of comics for kids!

I’m psyched. I’m totally psyched. I’m not a loser. Who the hell am I kidding? Life sucks for Dave Miller—he’s broke, girlfriendless, and stuck in a dead-end job. Life sucks harder because his job is night manager at the Last Stop, LA’s finest vampire-owned 24-hour convenience store. Dave’s facing an eternity of turning the hot dogs and installing pork cracklins displays for Radu, his crappy boss and Vampire Master. It’s bad enough that Dave is clinging to his days as a vegetarian by refusing to feed off of humans, leaving him weak as a kitten and so not capable of superhuman feats of strength. But when he finds himself competing with psychotic surfer-vamp Wes for the affections of Rosa, a beautiful mortal with a romantic fixation on the dark side, life is about as sucky as it can possibly get.

The flagging college American football team is transformed when coach sends the reluctant team members into the clutches of painting instructor Artbabe. Zen insight and wisdom of composition saves the day. Mini-comic format that self-seal and can be mailed like a postcard.

Jessica Abel

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