“I used to use the word ‘mistakes’ a lot and say that mistakes bring good, and of course, these are things you don’t expect to happen – something goes wrong in a drawing or whatever. Today I don’t know if I want to use the word mistakes anymore. I just want to say that something happens and then something else happens and then something else happens. There is no right way, so all of the zigzags that you make getting toward something – all of those things that take you hopefully to a place that you like in the end, it’s all a part of the process. I’m not even sure what I meant by mistake because it’s all a mistake, it’s all one big mistake.
Sometimes you’re too uptight in the beginning and you need to kind of look at it and go ‘Ugh-gh-gh’ and loosen up and say, ‘Wait, there’s too much here.’ It’s just like when you overwrite. I often write three or four times too much and I look and say, ‘Ugh, that’s horrible.’ So how do you clarify and edit and reduce it? Sometimes I think I don’t need to touch it and sometimes I think it needs to be torn up and thrown away.
Sometimes I wish I were really lazy and I wish I could just do it once and get it over with and go to the movies or something, but for the most part, what I like to do is love the process. You don’t always love the process, but when I’m loving the process of editing, I’m finding the better voice.”
— Maria Kalman (via Please Make This Look Nice)