Episode 61: Creative focus with Jessica Abel

Jessica Abel

In today’s episode, we get some great lessons in creative focus from cartoonist, author and educator Jessica Abel. We have loved all the inspirational but practical work she has done on being a creative when you have a busy life – from her workbook Growing Gills to her practical advice on creative focus.

She gave us some great advice on saying goodbye to projects we have finished, how to pick a project when you have a million ideas, and how to manage your energy in your creative and day job lives.

You can find her at jessicaabel.com, or on Twitter and Instagram @visiblewoman.

Jessica is the author of the graphic novel La Perdida (winner of the the 2002 “Best New Series” Harvey Award), Trish Trash: Rollergirl of Mars, nominated for 2 Eisner awards, as well as two collections of stories from her omnibus comic book Artbabe. She and her husband, the cartoonist Matt Madden, were series editors for The Best American Comics from 2007 to 2013. Together they’ve authored two textbooks about making comics, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures (website for the book here) and Mastering Comics. Her book (and podcast), Out on the Wire, is about how the best radio producers in the world use story to keep us listening.

Jessica is the chair of the illustration program at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Both within and without PAFA, Jessica helps creative people with big ideas to get past procrastination and anxiety, and get on with the business of making their potentially transcendent, game-changing creative work real in the world.

You can listen right here on this page, or get Marginally on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever get your podcasts.

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Find us on Instagram @marginallypodcast or Facebook. Meghan’s on Twitter @meghanembee, and Olivia’s @roamingolivia

Theme music is “It’s Time” by Scaricá Ricascá. 

Have a question you’d like us to try to answer, or a topic you’d love to have us cover? Interested in being a guest? Contact us here. Thanks for listening, and get to work!

In this episode: