Siobhan Pie of New Dressling, Minnesota writes: “Hey, Paul, I love your cartoons! Where do you get your ideas?”

Well, thank you, Siobhan! Like most cartoonists, I used to download my ideas with Napster, but now I buy them on e-bay.

No, that’s not quite right. Actually, I get my ideas using the old-fashioned technique of alternately pacing between the living room and the kitchen, and pounding my head against the drawing table in my study. Once in a while, an idea just pops into my head, but that only happens when I’m driving, shopping, having dental work done, or in the middle of something else and can’t stop to write the idea down. So when you see me talking to myself in public, I’m not insane, I’m just being creative.

I've never had an idea come to me in a dream, but I did once get an idea in bed. I needed a cartoon about the state of Wisconsin changing from a system of distributing AIDS monies evenly amongst several agencies, to one of giving all allotted funds to the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin. As it happened, my boyfriend, Chris, and I had just spent our first night together, at his place, and I had somehow ended up with all the covers. It seemed a perfect metaphor for the funding cartoon, so I drew ARCW hogging blankets in bed. The cartoon offended some people, but, in my opinion, the best cartoons always do.

Sometimes, getting an idea can be a lot of work. I have some degree of freedom to determine what I’d like to draw for my weekly syndicated cartoon, provided it has something to do with LGBT issues. I have to take into consideration that some of the papers running my cartoon come out every week, others every other week, and still others once a month. (I also have to take into consideration that some cartoons don't travel well. A cartoon about, say, smoky bars might be a propos in Wisconsin, but not in California or other areas which prohibit smoking indoors in public areas.)

I try to submit an idea on Friday -- Saturday at the very latest (and the most frequently. The news cycle is often hostile to early bird ideas, it seems). With any luck, my editor will be able to check her e-mail and give her approval shortly afterward. If she doesn't approve, the e-mail negotiations ensue.

Her objection might be as minor as suggesting moving a dependent clause, or it might be as major as telling me that she likes the idea, but hates the topic, premise, and punch line. Or that the story is too old. Or that events will pass the cartoon by before the monthly papers have a chance to run it. So I propose another idea as soon as I come up with something, and hopefully, my editors and I can agree on something before midnight. Then I stay up all Sunday night drawing, scan the cartoon on Monday morning, and send the cartoon in four formats to the syndicate for distribution around the country.

The timing issue looms large in the decision-making process. When Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson blamed gays and feminists and others for bringing 9/11 on the U.S., it happened on a Thursday, and I quickly proposed a cartoon about it. Because I was worried that major news outlets would overlook the story, my proposed cartoon included a lengthy quotation of their remarks and a notation identifying it as a direct quote. (There was virtually no room for actual drawing in that frame of the cartoon!) Of course, by the time newspapers started running the cartoon a week later, Falwell and Robertson’s remarks were well known, but I couldn’t count on that on 9/13.

Then there was the case of a cartoon I never got to draw about the possibility of Gulf War II interfering with the 2003 Academy Awards. The Oscars were scheduled for March 23. I proposed the idea on March 8. At the time, the U.S. and Britain were pushing for U.N. approval of a March 17 deadline for Iraq to comply with allied demands. I tried to word the cartoon so it wouldn’t make a difference whether the war had begun or not; but my editors rejected the proposal because, even though the cartoon would be drawn on March 9, sent to the syndicate on March 10 and distributed around the country by March 11, the syndicate’s dating system for my cartoons would have referred to that cartoon as the March 24 cartoon. The day after the Oscars. (The dating system makes more sense to them than to me. I think it has something to do with the rather irrational expectation that my cartoon should continue to be up-to-the-moment the entire week, fortnight or month that the newspaper it’s in sits in your favorite bar waiting for you to pick it up.)

On the other hand, Q Syndicate allows me to draw some cartoons I probably would never be able to get away with at a regular daily paper or the syndicates that supply cartoons to them. This cartoon about Ann Coulter and former gay porn pinup Matt Sanchez, for example, besides involving a topic the mainstream media took only passing notice of, shows Sanchez in one of his porn poses. Your Podunk Press Gazette is just not likely to print a cartoon of a naked guy spreading his legs like that.

Until the end of 2005, I drew cartoons for the Business Journal of Milwaukee, Wisconsin to illustrate each week's editorial, and the creative process there was entirely different. The editorial page editor would e-mail a rough draft of his editorial to me sometime during the dinner hour on Monday, and I'd have to conceive and execute a cartoon for it that night.

Occasionally, the Business Journal’s editorial stance is considerably more conservative than my own, but the hardest editorials to illustrate were the ones commending someone (or worse a board) for some proposed intention. Or favoring one building design over another. Or, worst of all, summarizing the arguments in favor of two or more competing concepts and concluding that “time will tell” which is better.

It was often very late at night before I had any idea at all, so the editors didn’t have a chance to approve or disapprove a cartoon until after I had drawn it. If they didn’t like the cartoon, I had better not have made plans for Tuesday night. (A couple examples of cartoons the editors rejected appear about halfway down the page here; both involved editorial judgments that a cartoon or part of it might offend sensibilities of more sensitive readers.)

Once in a while, I’ll get commissioned to draw a cartoon by someone who has a clear- cut idea of what they want. It’s then a matter of discussing the cartoon with that person until I have an equally clear idea of what is wanted. My own mother once wanted a single cartoon for a Sierra Club newspaper to combine several wildly disparate elements about lead pollution: weighing lead in a balance, noting that Pb is the chemical symbol for lead and could also stand for “Political Bureau,” a bee buzzing to represent Department of Natural Resources chief “Buzz” Busadny, and a bald eagle screeching about “getting the lead out.”

That's not a cartoon, it's a brainstorming session. It's also an example of why most cartoonists would rather struggle to come up with their own ideas than draw somebody else's. But I drew it anyway. It was for my mother, fercrysakes.

The cartoon at the top of the page is another example of a cartoon for which I was told exactly what to draw. It's about Mark Belling, a right-wing Milwaukee radio host. (Yeah, I know. "Right-wing" and "radio host" is rather redundant.) Milwaukee activist and journalist Jamakaya wanted a cartoon showing Belling making the statements she was quoting in an article for the Wisconsin Center on Pluralism newsletter, and inserting the word "Corporate" into his slogan "Standing Up For Milwaukee" behind him. There is absolutely no creative input on my part save for the composition of the cartoon itself.