(Disclaimer: I’ve had five years’ experience in a passion field myself, and they haven’t exactly always been pleasant years. Many of you may not share my experiences; that’s OK, they’re mine and not yours.)
Passion projects: they never get any less fraught when it comes down to how the sausage is actually made.
Careers in passion fields— VFX, comics, film production, whatever— never get any less complicated to manage, either. Emotions run high on all sides, there’s crying, there’s unprofessional stuff no matter how professional you want the workplace culture to be. (Your unprofessional stuff may occur in the restroom or other secluded locale of your choice, of course.) Weird speculation arises from the oddest, most offhand things. Every transitory hitch is a potential harbinger of eventual death throes, regardless of how stable the project is.
The only thing that heads off that drama is absolute transparency within the group you’re working with— which, in the case of a patronage model, includes your patrons.
Today, I asked some questions on the internets about the upcoming Womanthology book. It has raised over $100k, and gotten some comics press. I, along with some other people, have asked where that money is going. In return, I have gotten emails, tweets & texts saying among other things that I was…
