At last week’s Life, the Universe and Everything symposium, we talked a little bit about how we need to work more and talk less about our projects.
Whether it’s a movie, a drawing, a story (or finally changing the oil in the car!), we all have projects that we can’t wait to see come to life. We talk about them, we dream about them, we think about them constantly—but there comes a time when thinking and talking about your project becomes counterproductive. Talking about your character isn’t going to put words on a page, but writing will.
It’s easy enough to say, “Well, yeah, I just need to work on it,” but the truth is that it can be harder finding the time to work on your project than it is to actually work on it! Nobody else is going to give us the time we need for our projects, so it’s our job to make it happen; that’s why I love Alec Longstreth’s article on THE SCHEDULE.
Alec is a comics writer and illustrator. He also teaches cartooning at the Center for Cartoon Studies (that’s right—a cartoon college!) in White River Junction, Vermont, and has made dozens of comics.
THE SCHEDULE is Alec’s routine for getting it done! When he started making comics, he had this great vision of what he wanted to do, but he never really sat down and worked consistently. His was mostly a schedule of drawing when he felt like it, or had the time. No schedule = no comics for him. He decided for himself that if he was going to finish his comic, he was going to have to make a schedule and stick to it. To make sure he was going to see it through, he shaved off all of his hair and beard as an outward sign of his commitment and vowed not to cut his hair or beard until he had finished! Talk about commitment!
DAY ONE
You can SEE that he’s still working on it, still going, still making it happen! He’s on the home-stretch for the completion of his comic, Basewood, and I couldn’t be happier for the guy.
To read his thoughts on making a schedule that works for you, check out his post on the blog Make Comics Forever.
(All images in this post are by and belong to Alec Longstreth)
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