Here is Part I of an article I wrote for an online magazine some years back, reposted and updated from my old blog. Part I of a series.

Now, I don’t expect my advice to suit everyone. I just read the advice of a writer over at the online Locus magazine about managing your time, and I didn’t agree with three words of it together.

For example, the writer at Locus advised against turning off the internet while working. He’s an online writer, so his dependence on the internet makes sense: I don’t have the same concern. At the same time he advised not doing research on the internet, which can lead to excessive websurfing. Instead, he just leaves a note in his manuscript to come back and add necessary data, or to get an editor to do it. For example, the exact length of the Brooklyn Bridge just gets a placeholder while he writes.

That may work for writers, but as an artist, I actually have to draw the Brooklyn Bridge. I can’t just leave the panel blank and turn in my pages with blank panels for everything I can’t draw at the moment so an editor can pop in the details later. I certainly can’t leave the hard parts of the drawing job all for the end of the assignment. So for me, turning off the internet, or setting a time limit is essential for my self control.

Like I said, each to their own. My methods seem draconian to some. If they work for you, great. If not, I’m sure we’d all welcome your sugggestions.

Time Management Skills

I am not going to be writing a column about the State of the Industry, or which comic character is cooler, or which trend is going to save the market or anything like that because I honestly don’t pay a great deal of attention to the day-to-day workings of the comic book industry. I am entirely too centered on my own business.

That business is being a professional creator. That is what concerns me. That is the only thing I really know much about. So, that is what I will be contributing here: information and advice about how to survive and thrive as a professional.

So. Let’s talk about time management.

If there is one thing that creators know how to do, it’s waste time. We’re masters of procrastination. Freelancers working at home can imagine a thousand ways to sink minutes and hours and not accomplish much of anything and still make it to the end of the day feeling like they’ve done their bit of work. It’s easy to delude ourselves since we usually live and work at home alone and there is no boss standing over us cracking the whip.

We have friends and family who drop in any old time because we don’t have real jobs and they want to free us from the drudge of our drawing boards. That is very nice of them, but many creators don’t have the willpower to just say no to distractions. A coffee break becomes two or three hours out of the day and the next thing you know, you’ve lost eight or ten hours of work in a week just hanging out with your buddies a few times. Do that for a month, and you’ve lost a week’s work, easily.

The procrastination monster is the bane of every freelancer’s existence. Once upon a time, we wrote and drew comics for free. One day we woke up, and comics became a job. Suddenly, it wasn’t as much fun anymore. There’s nothing like the pressure of a production schedule, income concerns and the opinion of the public to take the wind out of your sails and dock the flight of your imagination for good. Writer’s Block is nothing but a creator’s special brand of procrastination. Ideas and images don’t come when they are blocked by money and deadline worries. It’s easy to create when you have nothing to think about but creating. It’s not so easy to create when you can’t pay the rent and put food on the table or get your children medical care. (There’s the “art is pain” school of thought where living in a garret seems to be the ideal and suffering for your art makes for great poetry, but when one’s goal is simply to live another day so one can write another poem, I don’t imagine getting braces for children’s teeth is likely to be much of a concern.)

Then there are the day-to-day distractions of paperwork and the ringing phone and the office clutter in which hours of time get wasted when this paper gets misfiled or that bill gets lost. Lose only one hour of time per day to disorganization (and that is a conservative, average estimate most time management gurus agree on) and you’ve lost 365 hours of work per year. That’s nine weeks of work time down the tubes; two full months! Multiply that lost time by your hourly income, and you really see how time is money.

How many pages could you have drawn in nine weeks? How many paintings could you have completed? How many stories could you have written? How much income did that disorganization cost you?

Time is your money and time is your life. If you want to piss it away playing video games when you ought to be drawing, and hanging out with your buddies when you ought to be writing, go ahead. It’s your life.

But if you want to make the most of that time as a professional, then you’ve got to start taking a serious look at how you manage your time resource.

Aspiring professionals are true masters of self-delusion about their time management. They arrive at conventions with scant portfolios, telling editors and art directors how little time they had to create new works to show. If one is having that much trouble coming up with the time to create pages and paintings when one is an amateur, how the heck does one expect to find the time to do the work as a professional?

You’ve got time to go to the movies. You’ve got time to watch television. You’ve got time to go to a convention. Then, you’ve got time to get some work done.

Here are some time management tips for pros and aspiring pros:

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When these articles were first published some years back, I got mail from people who expressed concern that I was working too hard. One wrote me an extremely silly and impassioned letter that if I didn’t take more time with my personal life, I would be lonely and sad in the end, with nothing but a stack of comics for comfort. Since my articles had absolutely nothing to say about my personal life, I can’t imagine how anyone could have drawn any conclusions about how I conduct it, but one thing’s for sure, I got the distinct impression my concerned correspondent was hoping to provide some personal comfort. What a treat.

And just for the record, I don’t have very many comics in my house, so maybe I will have to settle for my Lord of the Rings collection. That Boromir figure from Sideshow WETA is looking pretty good to me right now…

From foreign climes, I received a slew of posts about how Americans are obsessed with being #1 (because my one article is evidence of the behaviors of 300 million people, and if they are teaching reasoning and rhetoric in the schools from whence these posters come, I saw no evidence of same), and nobody but NOBODY works (or should work) as hard as what I describe in these posts.

Considering the short work weeks in some places, people who actually want to work hard probably do seem aberrant to those who consider a 35 hour work week too much to bear. If I were required to only work 35 hours a week, I would be gnawing at my own leg in frustration.

So, for those who think that no one but NO ONE would REALLY want to work this hard…um…well, yes they do, and if you had any imagination at all, you might actually be able to dig down deep into that creative well of yours and imagine people who are different than you are.

People you’ve never heard of whose work goes nowhere don’t, which is why they are on message boards complaining about how hard other people work. Other people working makes them feel bad.

Obsessed is just a word the lazy use to describe the dedicated. I have no idea who said that first, but I am pinching it here.

The interesting thing is, creators who love their work don’t always feel like they are working. They feel compelled to create. It makes them feel GOOD.

When I can’t work, or am not in The Zone, I feel awful. I rarely (if ever) feel genuine depression, but when I am not able to work, my energy level plummets (or vice versa). I don’t find a 40 hour work week enables me to get what I want out of my time. I like a 55-60 hour week, and find that comfortable.

I gotta have my Gotta.

If you don’t got The Gotta, as Stephen King calls it, then maybe you ought to be considering another profession. Those who’ve got The Gotta don’t doubt for one minute that creating is wonderful, and they wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.

If you don’t got The Gotta, there are a lot of other people out there who have it in abundance, and they are going to be out there plugging away 100 times harder than you. They are getting the gallery exhibits, and the contracts, and the book deals, and the assignments.

And the ones left behind are complaining that other people work too hard.

Boo hoo.

That doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with dabbling, or doing art on the side, or enjoying a weekend painting session. But if you are taking a step forward to be a pro, be aware that the habits of the dabbler won’t do. Period.

If you want to be a part time creator, you will likely get part time results. Being a full time creator who actually makes a living at it requires the investment of effort and focus, and the realization that you will be compelled to create and produce EVEN WHEN THERE IS NO GUARANTEE OF MATERIAL REWARD.

Decide what you want for yourself.

Sitting around and complaining that people who work harder than you get more than you do in return makes you look like an idiot who can’t do simple math.

No investment = no return.

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Clean up that clutter!

Let’s face it. Most creative people are disorganized slobs. I am usually horrified by what I see when I go to other people’s studios. I once apprenticed to a world-famous artist. His studio was the most horrific thing I have ever seen, a mass of books and art and files and boxes and piles and piles of art supplies and manuscripts that filled every single room of the six bedroom house. Nothing was ever thrown away. There were six or seven tubes of every kind of paint or a half dozen of each kind of varnish because he kept losing them in the bottomless pit of his workplace and buying more. The waste of money was appalling. The waste of time was worse.

I used to be a clutterbug myself, but compared to most artists, I am an ascetic. However, a few years ago, I resorted to hiring a professional organizer service to come into my home and studio and help me get it together. It was some of the best money I ever spent. I learned some great tricks for controlling papers and keeping them under control. I will probably write a separate column about that later. But the most important and simplest thing I ever learned was to simply learn to throw things I don’t use out. Learn to get rid of what you are not using or have not used in a twelve-month period. Clothes, comics, books, you-name-it, if it isn’t useful or beautiful to you, then you should dump it. That doesn’t mean you have to throw it away. You can give them to charity, sell them, or give them to friends, but get it out.

Clutter is a kind of visual noise. It is distracting and demoralizing. It will impede your ability to work. An inability to find important documents or file effectively will eat into your work time. Think of that seven hours a week that you are probably wasting struggling with your clutter right now. You can either use that seven hours to create more art or you can have more time to play. It’s your choice. Clean it up or live with it and live less well. That’s all there is to it. However, don’t try to clean up the whole pile all at once. Start small, with a small corner and work your way out from there. Stay on top of incoming paperwork while committing a little time every day to eat away at the old. (Your trashcan is your friend. Open the mail over the trashcan. Throw away anything you do not need, immediately!) When I finished my household/studio purge, it took several Salvation Army trucks as well as dozens of hefty bags of trash to get rid of everything I wanted to get rid of. When I was done, I had so much room in my home that I was able to move my studio back into my house and now I don’t have to pay studio rent anymore.

One very poor friend got much of my old furniture and I found so many valuable books and art that I made a small fortunes selling some goodies I didn’t want to collectors, enabling me to get new living room furniture and put some money into investments. De-cluttering can be very good for your spirit, but it can also be very good for your wallet. (more…)

Overcome procrastination:

I suppose procrastination is different for everyone, but for me, procrastination is more about performance anxiety than anything else. It has been crippling at times. I suppose that getting into comics in the 1980’s when women creators weren’t very welcome had a rather serious effect on my self-confidence, and no matter how many nice things are said about my work, there is always the little voice in the back of my head telling me to go work at McDonalds.

Every piece of blank paper is an enemy. Every deadline is terrifying. For someone who absolutely loved to draw and was winning awards for it from the age of five, performance anxiety is a learned behavior and like any learned behavior, it can be unlearned.

I went to great lengths to learn how to control the anxiety even going so far as to do one of those motivational fire-walk seminars where a stroll across a bed of hot coals was the graduation ceremony. All procrastination is linked to some kind of anxiety or discomfort. In other words, the pain of producing the work becomes greater and more real than the reward of doing the work. This can simply be knowing that you are working with a difficult creative team, or having a really tight deadline that makes the job unpleasant. Whatever, the trick is to learn how to make the pain of not doing the work more real than the pain of doing it.

I use a simple two-step process. First, I recreate the feelings and circumstances that enabled me to work at a time when work was pure pleasure. The best time for drawing and writing for me was when I was a kid in my room and I spent hours and hours working on my stories or drawing pictures simply for the fun of doing it. The work was not meant to be seen by anyone. It was just for me. I sat on my frilly canopy bed with a lapboard on my knees and worked for hours every single day and it was heaven. Whenever I hit a snag, I go right back there. I get away from the drawing board, I grab my lapboard and I go to my room. I put up the frilly pillows, put something silly into my DVD player, and get something to eat or drink that is bad for me. It takes me back to the time when I was a kid drawing for fun and it never fails to work for me. (more…)

Here’s a great list of ten tips for starting and running a small business that also apply to freelance creators. Remember, freelancers are small business people. No matter how iconoclastic you are in your art, it doesn’t hurt to exercise some discipline when it comes to your studio.

At the top of the list, is Set Work hours and Stick to Them. I used to be a lot more disciplined about time management myself. Nowadays, I’ve been working 6 hours one day, and 14 hours the next. Not so good. I pulled out all of my time management training tapes and motivational tapes, and have been a lot more disciplined since January. But last year was a very disruptive one and I eroded my time management and personal discipline skills. So, it’s back to boot camp for me!

A rule I used to break all the time: Even when you really need the money, don’t take just any assignment. While I thoroughly reject the psuedo-mystical explanation provided in the article that “…the universe will take cues from your behavior and provide for you accordingly”, the Occam’s Razor explanation is simply that taking any old job for a buck is depressing, demoralizing, and likely to lead to more bad jobs simply because you won’t do your best work, and the best clients won’t see the work of which you are capable. If people only see second-rate work from you, then you will get second-rate jobs.

The longer you can keep your expenses low, you will be able to afford to take jobs that inspire you until you are on your feet and self supporting. Moving out on your own or getting a nice studio is great, but hold off on acquiring the trappings of success as long as you can. Keep your surroundings modest and try to only take work that allows you to do your best.

This is a REALLY important one: Communicate with clients to keep them happy, even when you mess up. When you are running behind schedule, or overbooked, or your cat died, it’s important to let your clients know if you are going to screw the pooch. They need to know where the project stands, so they can make other arrangements. Editors aren’t ogres. Many of them can squeeze a few extra days (or even weeks) out of a deadline, if you really need it.

What they can’t stand is the freelancer who simply drops out of sight, or, worse yet, the freelancer who treats them as if they are some kind of confession booth. Your editor is not your friend, they are not a psychiatrist. Don’t share every problem and setback. Just let them know you need more time.

If you are too open with your personal problems, the editor will begin to see YOU as the problem. Don’t run to your editor with every little thing: your annoying neighbor, the flu, the car had a flat, etc. These are things that happen in the normal course of everyone’s life, but when that is ALL the editor ever hears from you, they will eventually hear your name and think, “What is up with that loser, now?”

I used to be a lot more chatty about minor personal problems with my editors (and even online) but people have long memories, and they often remember only the bad stuff.

For example, sometime in 1994 or so, I had an accident and got chemical burns in my eyes. I am blind as a bat and picked up swimmers ear medication thinking it was my contact lens drops. The problem cleared up in about three months and there was no lasting damage. However, last year, an editor with whom I have never worked inquired about it, wondering if a twelve-year-old injury might impede my ability to get a job done! I had almost forgotten about it, but 12 years later, that editor had not.

And last year when I postponed a meeting with an editor by one day so I could get over a migraine, the editor’s first question was “Do you get those a lot?” Well, actually, no, but an editor is going to want to know if you have a lot of health problems or personal problems that will make meeting deadlines difficult.

Don’t tell your editor anything about yourself they don’t really need to know. If it’s not relevant to the job, it probably isn’t any of their business.

Editors can be great people, they may even be friends, but in the end, they are talking to you on company time on company matters. Behave accordingly.

Reposted and updated from the old blog. Hope it’s of use.

c