Well, I have some good news and I have some bad news.
The good news is that my devotion to and excitement about this project continue to grow; the response has been amazing and just the fact that I’ve survived this fearful experiment in self-exposure is like a kind of weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I am continuing to try to manage my life in such a way that I can draw lots and lots of diary comics.
The bad, or perhaps neutral, news is that the pace of three comics per week has proved far too much for my current practical reality. Remember that the posts thus far have been from a vast archive of past work – but that secret cache of diary comics is running out, and while I’m delighted to have an archive of more than eighty (!) comics to show already, I just can’t keep this up forever. So, I’m slowing the pace of posts down to one per week. Meanwhile I will endeavor to draw more than one comic per week, and maybe eventually settle into a regular routine of two or even three. But for now, I think Wednesday is a good day to post, don’t you? It has such a nice Nordic ring to it…
There is also a very real aesthetic and artistic reason to try to build up again that lag between drawing the comics and posting them. It’s not only that I think that I need some chronal distance between the events of the comic and showing them to the world to maintain, well, my sanity – I can’t imagine drawing some of these comics and then having to post them right while the memories and emotions are still fresh and all-consuming. And that’s just it, it’s also affecting the comics I’ve been drawing to know that they’re rapidly approaching the day of public scrutiny – and I don’t want to become less risky in my art because I know how soon it will be very public and affect my life and relationships. The most frequent question I am asked about the comic by people who happen to be IN the comic is, “So when is it going to catch up to what’s taking place NOW?”, which is an idea that sort of ties my stomach in a knot.
It’s particularly relevant because so far I’m not sure that anyone who doesn’t know me is reading this comic – yet, the point of the comic is not communicating with my friends. I talk to my friends in real life, that’s where our friendships are! I make art, which happens to be based on my life, and of course I want to share my art with people I’m close to, but I don’t want the stories told in the comics to become a primary part of those relationships. It’s a difficult paradox, when you start telling stories, making your private reality public. I’m afraid if there wasn’t a significant distance between the events of the comics and when I posted them, it would become a series of tepid descriptions of all my most inoffensive thoughts and interactions (“And then Sara made an optometrist appointment! And Marc played some drums! And we all ate Thai food! Hooray!”).
So for the sake of sexy comics which I’m glad my employers haven’t seen and emotional frailty comics which I wish had never happened and all the other sordid secrets I can somehow drink my way into being brave enough to post, but only a year later…
(What’s that? You’d like to know what you can do to hasten the day when I have infinite time to draw comics for your reading pleasure and health insurance besides? Well, perhaps you’d like to visit my store and buy yourself a print or a comic book! Or coming soon, CDs and original art, custom prints of diary comics, and who knows what else?)
Probably the future is great.
Muffins! I can deal with this. 🙂
I’ll still have something to look forward to once a week? Sounds good to me!
Yeah! Wednesday will be my favorite day!!
Thanks, all! You guys are rad. 🙂
That makes so much sense! I’ll look forward to one per week, happily!