Charles Schulz on the Most Dangerous Thing in Cartooning

One of the most dangerous elements in creativity is something that took me a long time to discover, and that is the slumps that occur in your creativity. This doesn't mean your ability to think of ideas -- I probably never go more than one day without really coming up with something, and I've learned to live with it... But the dangerous thing ー- and I have seen it on the comic pages -ー is when you lose the ability to judge what you have done, if you have drawn something that is not only a lousy gag or a lousy idea, it's not funny at all -- it is not a humorous idea ー- and you lose the ability to judge that. I never give my work to somebody else and say, "What do you think about that？" I just don't trust anybody. If I think it's funny, or if I think it's silly, I send it in anyway because I'm just trying to please myself. I never try to please a certain audience. I think that's disastrous. There's no way in the world you can anticipate what your reader is going to like or dislike. But it is possible, and I think you have to be aware of this, you can think of something, send it in -- and I've seen it time and time again, even if I love [the feature], I know: there's a “slump gag.” It's not funny at all.... The cartoonist is grinding these things out, he thinks something's funny, and he doesn't know it's not funny at all.