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What happens when the thing you know you're meant to do takes years to actually happen?

In this episode of Surviving Main Street, Tammy sits down with lifelong friend Maria Scrivan, award-winning cartoonist, author and creator of the Nat Enough graphic novel series, for a conversation about creativity, rejection, persistence and what it really takes to build a career doing the work you love.

Maria knew from childhood that she wanted to be a cartoonist. But the path from drawing as a kid to becoming a published author was anything but straight. She built a graphic design business, submitted cartoons to magazines, traveled into New York week after week with stacks of work, heard no again and again, created a daily comic, experimented with self-publishing, pitched book ideas that didn't make it, and kept creating.

“You have to actively show up, and then things show up back for you.”

Maria shares how years of rejection, repetition and simply showing up helped refine her craft and eventually led to a book deal with Scholastic and the Nat Enough series. She and Tammy also talk about self-doubt and imposter syndrome, creativity as a lifelong practice, the discipline behind creative work, finding inspiration in everyday life, and why the skills we pick up along the winding path often turn out not to be detours at all.

It's a conversation about doing the work before you know where it's leading, putting yourself out there even when it's uncomfortable, and learning that rejection isn't necessarily the end of the road.

Sometimes it's simply:

Get rejected. Try again.

CONNECT WITH MARIA SCRIVAN
Website: MariaScrivan.com
Instagram:@mariascrivan

Surviving Main Street is a conversation about what really happens while you're building something. Host Tammy Venneri talks with founders, operators, creators and interesting people about business, reinvention, creativity, technology, leadership, money, mistakes, lessons learned and what they know now that they wish they'd known sooner.

New Season 2 conversations go behind the polished success story and into the messy middle of building, adapting and figuring things out along the way.

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