HUUURG and TA DA PROGRESS

Turns out that writing down what you're going to do really does help you do it.

Last week, Thursday night, I had just finished both my Friday comics on the wire, and wasn't much looking forward to repeating the nightmare of finishing everything at the last minute in the week to come. I've been in and out of this cycle for over a year, mind you, since Alien Revenant started, and before that LOP suffered from a bout of spotty updating and long hiatuses (although the long hiatuses came to an end when I started the preliminary work for AR-- that was part of the reason WHY I started it, so that I could work on two drastically different stories at once and keep my creative mojo going.)

Incidentally, The Law of Purple will hit 1000 pages on April 2nd-- Lette's birthday. I couldn't have planned that if I tried.

Anyway, last Thursday night, I could have sat around vowing to get both comics drawn and inked, or I could have even started in on the inks, but I didn't. I had done that sort of thing in the past, but somehow it never really got either page up sooner. I knew what I really needed was to get enough ahead that Monday's pages wouldn't become a matter of "Ink 'em on Friday, TRY to get 'em colored on Sunday" anymore. I knew that a new chapter of AR was starting on Monday, which would give me some breathing room in the form of a title page, but I also knew that if I didn't take aggressive advantage of it, I'd be right back where I started by the end of the week.

I also knew that, much as I love making comics, I was tired of not giving myself enough time to do anything that wasn't an update for AR or LOP.

I knew all these things, so I sat down with a notebook, and I wrote them all out, by hand.

I then wrote out a plan for the entire week; I would set the goal of getting not only Monday's pages inked by Sunday, but all six pages for the week. I knew it was a high goal, but I also know myself well enough to know that setting a goal higher than I expect to meet means that I also get more done than I originally believed I could. (In the end, I actually did get five pages inked over the course of the weekend.)

Just a few minutes ago, I uploaded the pages for Friday, for both AR and LOP. (This is a Wednesday, for those of you not reading when I posted this.) I just got six inked and full color pages finished in half the span of time it usually takes me, and got other things done besides. (Like a sketch for my Deviant Art, which I haven't touched in ages.)

I am really pleased with myself, as you might expect. My goal for the second half of the week is six more full color pages, for next week, plus a black and white inked page for my fancomic (which I am going to do first, since I already started in on it), plus a short essay for my fanblog.

There's a point you hit where you finally just get so fed up with your own spinning wheels that you can hit traction just by force of will. I'm tired of being upset about it, so I plan on just being happy that I finally did.

Signing off-
-Jessi-sama

PS- Yes, I know some of you are mildly terrified that I have the ability to do six color comic pages a week at all, much less that I don't consider that enough. I don't have a life, okay? This is part of working on getting one.