Deadline!

Last week was a nightmare. I was knocking out pages Mon-Wed and working to hit 6 pages by the weekend. When I get blindsided by an edit that means I'll have to rework the last 7 pages of the book. I thought I could handle it, but it really knocked the wind out of me. So I took the weekend to regroup and recharge. I can still make my deadline, which I'm stoked about, because I've made it this far. When I started I was terrified I was gonna choke. But I didnt! Monday is a new round and I'm gonna make this happen. Then it's on to issue two. And I'm gonna be way ahead of the curve on this next issue. I guess this is what they mean by learning to roll with the punches. One thing I've learned, for all those of you out there wanting to do comics... deadlines are a good thing. At least if you're getting paid. Deadlines never seemed to work for me when I wasn't getting paid to do this. But not now. It's a real drive and a real pressure to get it done. I've learned more in the last two months about making comics than I did with the two dozen or so comics I'd published before this. One piece of advice though, keep a timechart of your hours and what you do each day. It's helped me immensely to see how many hours - at first, that I "wasn't" spending working - then, how many I was wasting on too little productivity - to finally, a reasonable amount of time per page, per day. Now to work. Five pages in 6 days. I can do this. --Will