Saturdays
We are a clerk, a graphic designer, a janitor, a college student and a print shop guy/touch-up artist. We are Candle Light Press.
A few years ago, in the midst of worrying where the time goes with dayjobs and such, we instituted a comics workday, Saturday. On Saturday, all else takes a backseat. Obviously, we work on comics more often than that, but the psychological effect was far-reaching at the time. We were all despairing that books would never be finished, that the death-of-a-thousand-cuts day-to-day existence would swamp our efforts.
By declaring Saturday a haven from the quotidian, we suddenly had a time when everything else needed an excuse to interrupt comics-making, not the other way around. So much time and optimism was being burned up in justifying the little snatches of time that maybe, yeah, I could be writing that new thing, or Jer could be inking, or Carter could be clicking. Declaring Saturday the comics workday cleared all that out. Once there was Comics Time, making more time turned out to be a snap.
If you want to make time to make books, you have to change everything: your habits, your sense of idle time, your environment, the whole thing. Then all you have to bump up against is the day job. For me, it's easy enough; it starts early, so it's out of bed and off before I come to my senses. Jer and Carter are up well before they go to work, so there's that countdown mentality...one more page before I go to work...maybe fix this panel up too? Ian is still in school, so his schedule is just crazy; Will works a couple gigs on top of his art. We all have something that demands a wedge of our day so that we can do (and pay for) the rest.
And even though we work on our books pretty much all the time now, Saturday is still the best day of the week.
--John
A few years ago, in the midst of worrying where the time goes with dayjobs and such, we instituted a comics workday, Saturday. On Saturday, all else takes a backseat. Obviously, we work on comics more often than that, but the psychological effect was far-reaching at the time. We were all despairing that books would never be finished, that the death-of-a-thousand-cuts day-to-day existence would swamp our efforts.
By declaring Saturday a haven from the quotidian, we suddenly had a time when everything else needed an excuse to interrupt comics-making, not the other way around. So much time and optimism was being burned up in justifying the little snatches of time that maybe, yeah, I could be writing that new thing, or Jer could be inking, or Carter could be clicking. Declaring Saturday the comics workday cleared all that out. Once there was Comics Time, making more time turned out to be a snap.
If you want to make time to make books, you have to change everything: your habits, your sense of idle time, your environment, the whole thing. Then all you have to bump up against is the day job. For me, it's easy enough; it starts early, so it's out of bed and off before I come to my senses. Jer and Carter are up well before they go to work, so there's that countdown mentality...one more page before I go to work...maybe fix this panel up too? Ian is still in school, so his schedule is just crazy; Will works a couple gigs on top of his art. We all have something that demands a wedge of our day so that we can do (and pay for) the rest.
And even though we work on our books pretty much all the time now, Saturday is still the best day of the week.
--John
posted by John Ira Thomas at
2:16 PM
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