Vlog 20160604 (Patreon)

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Okay hello Patreon it's Saturday and I'm just here in Vancouver just chillin' out.. finally starting to normalize myself after a long series of intense weekends and conventions and stuff and I'm to keep today's update short n' snappy, 'cause I actually have quite a bit of work to do quite a lot planned for today.

The one main thing I want to say is that I've been diving more and more into bookwork which hopefully you've been able to tell based on the things that I've been uploading to Patreon. But I'm I'm into the meat of it now... So the next thing that I have to work on our these supporting comics which kind of bridge the gap between the weekly updates and the rest of what I was doing in my life. So what's interesting about making these books is it's kind of a retrospective... Wasted Talent is very much in the moment. I'm drawing a comic about whatever happened recently and it's focus is also very narrow. So it's about whatever was funny-- whatever I think I can make a good joke out of. And this leaves a lot-- narratively-- on the table and the interstitial comics that I make are all about filling in those gaps.

These take quite a lot of work but I think they are really important for setting the broader context of what's happening in my life throughout the work. [[Dragon software did something strange that I didn't expect and made a noise]]

Anyway the process of doing additional work for the book is really tough it's really time consuming I've been trying to use you some more tips and tricks... more hints to motivate myself to work on it and one of the ones I've chosen is kind of a daily tracking system. So this is a tip I picked up I think from Jerry Seinfeld where he said "it's just important that you work on it every single day" and when it's your full-time focus that makes a lot of sense... that's great... I mean obviously I go to work every day and I work...but when I come home it's not everyday that I get to manage to work on my book. So usually I come home I have to do chores, I have to do other real-life things that need to be taken care of and it doesn't always leave over all a lot of time and energy for work. And I actually get most of my work done during the weekends like now and I kind of batch that work together and spread out throughout the week. That's not always ideal -- the weekend is supposed to be the time that you recuperate and if I ever want to do something social or fun or if I go away for the weekend a kind of throws that entire process in the mix... so what I'm tracking here is like "days I succeeded at working during the week and days that I failed."

One of the big changes... I've used this method for a while and it's been mixed success and I'm trying to figure out what exactly makes it more successful. Before I was tracking... like if I didn't get to work I would record why not. And it just started to get depressing and started to feel like an excuse making exercise. So this now is: "you eiher worked on it or you didn't" and even a little bit of work counts... like my minimum is half an hour... so if I can manage to do half an hour of work that counts the day. And if I don't do it I just track it with an 'X' but it doesn't matter why. All of these were valid reasons this week so... this one I was able to see a friend who I haven't seen in months and months I really wanted to get together with them, and this one - I had an event at work and I had to work until 11 at night, and this one again I came home, I finished my chores and then I found a bit of time to go out and socialize with friends. Which are all fine... those are all decisions that you could make in your life but it doesn't go towards that goal of finishing it. So about an hour of work is enough to layout and letter this comic I'm trying to draw and now I'm going to take that to the next stage on the livestream.

So basically that's that. We will see how this progresses through the next couple of weeks... whether I can actually get myself on a more consistent schedule. The hardest part is starting-- I think I've been I've been scared about starting this stage for a long time because I know it's so much work and it's daunting, but I just gotta get it done-- gotta just pull myself together and do it so that's the goal.

Anyway that's about five minutes I don't is that much more to say so I will just leave it at that. Hope you guys have a great week and I will see you in the livestream when I finish setting that up in about half an hour or so. Ok! Baiee.