Grinding to a halt.

[dolari]

I started drawing my comic this afternoon...and the more I did, the slower I got. About 10PM I'd done two panels, was just looking at the scratching on the sketchbook, and while it was good, I just had no more...oomph. It was all gone. I picked up the pencils, scratched some more...then all gone. There were other things that contributed, but the realization was - I was out of creative gas. Even writing this just feels like pushing a giant block up a steep hill.

The vacation I took last week really slammed it home - the things I'm doing for my job are forcing me to grind my transmition gears to nubs, and it's really hurting me creatively. I work 6 days a week, leaving me with really only one day to do comics, instead of two. Also my job has me going into work about the time I naturally want to go to sleep. So every work day, I wake up at 7AM after 4 hours of sleep, go to work, come home at 5, sleep for another 4 hours, then try to do as much creatively from 10 to 3, when I have to go back to bed.

The problem is, I'm shifting my gears way too hard to do this. At night, when I'm really feeling the creative juices starting to flow, I have to put the pencil down, and go to bed. I've gotten into a bad habit of not doing much overnight on weeknights, because when I finally get moving, I have to stop. So I started doing my comics on Saturday and Sunday And then I moved to 6 days a week and there was no time for AWFW, which is why I had to put it off.

I didn't realize how much grinding my gears from 5th to 1st and back to 5th were doing and damaging my engine, until last week, when I took a vacation to, well, get some real sleep. It took me about three or four days to finally get myself rested and feeling good again (and my body immediately rebounded to it's 7AM-3PM sleep schedule). I felt so good, in fact that I wrote about 7000 words on my 9000 word first chapter, AND a really nice CS comic the remaining three days. Then I had to go back to work, and I ploughed through the last 2000 words and it was a bear. I just didn't have the creativity to do it, and that last part suffers in my view from just some bad bad writing. It took a LOT of rereading to fix everything.

Today, I tried drawing, and I just didn't have it in me. I kept pushing the pencil, but all day, I just had that feeling I have every weekday of "Don't start, you'll just have to stop when it's time for bed." No matter how hard I pushed it just took longer and longer to finish a panel...then just to finidh a character...then just to mark out where the character would be. And I stopped and gave up. As the popular saying goes - I ran out of spoons.

When I move to Seattle, I'm going to do what I can to get an overnight job anywhere. Something to fit with my natural sleep schedule, so I can get comics out on time and be creative again. Because I'm getting really tired of just staring at the computer monitor reading webpages trying my best to just stay awake in the day, and tired of having to stop everything I'm doing for sleep when I'm not tired at night.

I always feel like a huge failure when I miss a deadline. The problem is, it feels like it's only going to get worse before it gets better. I'll keep trying, though, I already stopped one comic, I don't want to stop two. There's only 73 more days of this. And maybe one more week vacation before then. We'll see what happens.

I'm sorry I keep stumbling, readers. You deserve better.

Comments

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

Wish I could send you more spoons - pretty low on them myself just now. Can I make probably a couple of silly suggestions (I will anyway)?

1. Previously you've indicated that CS and AWFW have already been scripted to the end. Why not find someone else to draw it for you for a while? They don't have to draw all of it until the end, just enough to alleviate what appears to be a form of "guilt" over not producing the comic to schedule.
2. Consider this - that at some point in the future both web comics will be completed. To anyone reading already posted pages, it really doesn't matter how long a gap there is between each, because for them it's just one click from page to page. That being the case, the issue isn't so much that the pages come out on time, but that to come out at all.

Take your time, and do it right.

And if it's not working for you right now, then do stuff that does. Don't feel guilt over a slow production schedule, just assure your readers that future pages will be forthcoming and that you're not dead or quit. Readers are smart, and they understand the pressures of real life, because for most of them that's where they live too (not a reference to SL either).

So go take as much "time out" as you need.

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

"Why not find someone else to draw it for you for a while?"

I actually did tried that for a while at the beginning of AWFW's run, and while one person stepped up to the plate, there were no actual strips drawin inside of three months. Thats why I'm doing two comics instead of just one.

Thanks for the good wrods though - you're right. As long as the comics come out at all, that's what matters.

[gwenners.livejournal.com]

I've found much the same with my five-hour-a-day-getting-up-too-early regieme. It really saps my creativity, and tends ot keep me somewhat depressed.

I hope we both see changes of venue to our favor -- and soon!

Re: grinding

[taracait.livejournal.com]

We are you grateful subjects, mum, and seize happily upon whatever morsels you deign to drop from your beneficent hands....

Well, not exactly, but your well-being and health are far more important than keeping to what is, after all, a self imposed schedule.

I happily absolve you of my portion of whatever obligation you feel toward keeping the schedule, especially in the next few stressful weeks.

You have to much on your plate right now; you don't have to finish the Brussels sprouts, go ahead and have dessert. :)

exhaustion and comic

[(Anonymous)]

You need some time for your body to adjust to the new sleep schedule induced by your
job. It can take weeks.

This is one reason that shift workers and pilots make very dangerous mistakes.

In the meantime, remember that you are human, cut yourself some slack.

Penny
( Loyal fan of Closetspace)