October 21 - On Schedule (Patreon)

Last week Matt said I was looking "a bit frayed at the edges" and since we were going to go on a little outing to a cabin that weekend, we decided that this week we'd be running a guest comic. Which meant all I had to focus on last week was getting ahead on script writing and some other things other than drawing-the-next-comic. 

Ever since Matt and I got back from our trip to visit his family in July/August, I've been off my work train. Scrambling to meet each week's deadline and feeling perpetually "behind schedule" It's made me feel like shit. 

But! 

But. Last week I got two scripts written! Matt had sent me his version of one script, and then I did my revision on it, and I offered to send it back to him to look over but he was all 'Nah, I'm sure it's fine.' (I wasn't in love with the script, but I thought it was... sufficient.) Which means yesterday, Monday, I could just jump straight into laying out the comic! So I did! 

I had written up a timetable for my entire day, and I had Stuck! To! It! For the first time in months, I was ON SCHEDULE. It felt incredible. It felt validating. See? I'm not a complete failure of a human being, I can budget my time wisely! When I got home, quite atypically, I showed Matt the layout I'd done. (Usually the first he sees of the comic is at the inking stage, before he's about to color it.) 

Oh honey, he informed me. This... is bad. 

It was a bad comic. 

It's no one fault, specifically. The script never really gelled. The bits he'd thought worked in his draft, I'd removed because I *didn't* think they worked and all we were left with was the blank, awkward remnants. 

All the pride and accomplishment and validation I'd felt that day collapsed. 

I felt utterly crushed. 

It wasn't the fact the comic was bad that made me cry, it's what it symbolized. I'll never get "on schedule," I'll always be rushing against my weekly deadline, I'm unprofessional and an overall failing as a human being and I have a stupid haircut. AND YES MAYBE MY PERIOD WAS SCHEDULED TO START IN TWO DAYS, I'm sure my hormones played no part whatsoever in feeling like I was being consumed by a bottomless pit of despair. 

Matt lovingly ushered me off to bed with a book and a kiss while he stayed up till nearly midnight starting the script over from scratch. 

When I got up the next morning -today!- he showed me not only had he re-written the entire script, but he's actually laid it all out in my Photoshop template pages for me, so all I'd need to do today would start penciling. 

Tuesdays are penciling days. 

Right on schedule. 

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The preview image you see here is the page I got inked today (left) and the incredible layout drawing Matt had done for me with his FINGER on my laptop's TRACKPAD. That sweet, patient man.