Posted at

You know, because I actually have something to say this month, unlike the last four.

November was National Novel Writers' Month, a month in which writers write novels for a month, which I attempted to do. Unfortunately, November is also the month of Thanksgiving, which means long hours at retail and lots of other things to take care of. So when I started missing updates here, I figured I'd go on hiatus for a while and write as much as I could in November. I got a bit done, and a bit more in December, but by New Year's I knew I'd have to get back to this before absence made me lose interest.

It's easier to write a page of prose than it is to draw a page of a comic, but the kind of work a book takes is much more mentally exhausting–especially with the very little feedback I get, it sometimes feels like I'm at sea without a rudder.

So this month I gave myself two goals: get the rest of chapter 9 up, and resume work on chapter 12. I'm pleased to say that I've done both, and I'm also pleased that my drawing hasn't suffered too terribly for my being away from it.

Here are the statistics.

Time elapsed since comic debut (1/1/2009): 756 days.
Pages posted: 255.
Average days per page: 2.96.

Time elapsed since start of work (10/26/2008): 823 days.
Pages planned: 464 (63.4%) (1.77 days per page)
Pages sketched: 320 (43.7%) (2.57)
Pages drawn: 283 (38.7%) (2.91)
Pages complete: 257 (35.1%) (3.20)
Pages posted: 255 (34.8%)

29 units: 8 sketched, 21 complete. Not a bad way to start the year. Chapter 9 is done, chapter 10 is drawn, chapter 11 is sketched, and chapter 12 is written. I should set aside some time to write out chapter 13, and maybe make a run for the rest of it to close out that category. The comic is 45% complete, and at this rate will take 60 months, of which 33 remain… which is assuming I maintain a rate around 50 units per month. If it stays at 30 or less then we have another 55 months to go. Wish me luck!