May 26, 2003
Travel Battles, Buffer Troublesentry,
Before we start, today is Memorial Day in the U.S. There's a flag in my lawn, and a prayer of thanksgiving in my heart. Others will do a better job than I of memorializing, however, since by the time this letter airs, I'll be on an airplane somewhere over the Atlantic.
As of this writing, the buffer stands at 21 days. Between now and then I have two full weeks of travel and a family reunion. From the 26th through the 30th I'll be in Johannesburg, South Africa. From the 8th through the 11th of June I'll be in Las Vegas, Nevada. This means that during the week of June 1st through the 7th I need to draw like a madman.
The good news is that I've got a system now (and hey, it only took me three years to come up with it.) I sit down and pencil an entire week's worth of Schlock (9 rows), and it usually takes about 90 minutes to do it. It's a little rough, but by focusing on TIME rather than worrying about what the final inked version will look like, I waste a lot less time staring at the page. Seriously, it comes out to around 10 minutes per row, which is around half what it used to take.
Then, a day or two later, I sit down and ink. Here's where the system pays off. The inking averages 20 minutes per row. I can get an entire week of strips inked in just three hours, provided I can get into my groove.
The problem is that with all this travel coming up, I haven't had time to get into my groove. Saturday I inked three rows, and it only took an hour, but then I had a million other things to do (including writing this), and that was the extent of the cartooning. So I'm hoping that when I get back from Africa I'll be able to hit my stride really quickly.
I'll have to. A week from now the buffer will stand at 14. It's entirely possible that I'll get buried the following week, and then I'll end up returning from Vegas with a buffer of, oh, two.
Please don't tell me to take a vacation, or to run guest strips. Those are cop-outs. After all, I only need to come up with 5 hours to crank a week of strips, right? I just need to get busy.
By the way, if you live in Johannesburg, I'll be at the Sandton Convention Center doing Novell BrainShare. The conference has my full attention Wednesday through Friday, but I'm pretty sure I'm free Tuesday morning. Email me...