Hello my gemlins!!
I'm still deep in the comic trenches, working as hard as I can on Shallow Sleep! Chapter 10 sketches are all finished now, the image up top is one of the pages :3c Progress has been steady, and I think I can finish all the sketches for the rest of the story until December is over.
The original plan was to finish the entire comic until the end of the year but I've accepted that's not gonna be possible, no matter how long I work every day. So the plan for now is to push through and get sketches and speech bubbles for the remaining 40ish pages done until the new year, so that I have at least something kind of finished that I can send to my publisher to gauge interest. I'm definitely gonna need another 2ish months to ink and colour. So outside of streams + Discord activity I'll probably still remain pretty quiet on here as I'm trying to lock in and get this done.
I just spent a weekend with my bestie who came to visit me with her kid, and upon returning to work on Monday I realised that drawing suddenly felt a little bit easier again. Who knew that actually taking 2.5 days completely off from work and not even having time to THINK about work because I was busy having a nice time with my visitors would help me get back to work with renewed vigor for a little bit 👁👁 Crazy, I know.
I still struggle with the work/life balance thing a lot. I've talked about it before, but even when I'm forcing myself to rest the guilt is always there, my mind always wanders to work, I can't remember the last time (before this past weekend) I was actually able to relax without an intense feeling of guilt and constant "I should be working instead" at the back of my mind. Paired with burnout and other situations that were out of my hand this year, which slowed my progress down a lot, it's become a vicious cycle of never getting enough done, beating myself up because I should be getting more done, but also being mentally and physically incapable of getting more done, rinse and repeat 😂I feel like I'm aware of the situation I'm in but a big part of me is still in denial and trying to push through it somehow anyway. Which is what I will be attempting to do once more with the final stretch of Shallow Sleep, hence I might be quiet on here for a little while longer.Two more months, I can do that.
After that I will have to sit down, properly analyse what's going on here, and then think about how to proceed from here on out. I do know that in 2026 I will not be immediately starting a new long-form comic. MAYBE a short story. But while I still love comics and wanna keep working in the medium, I am going to need another break from it. I want to explore some other creative avenues that are open to me for a little bit and I am very excited about that.
I'm so glad that I am still excited about and looking forward to making things, whatever shape they're going to take. There have been a few moments this year where I felt like I was slowly losing that spark. But the compulsion to create and tell stories is still there, but also there's only so much output that can be done without really allowing myself to fill up the pot of inspiration again, so that's what I'm gonna do after SS is finished.
Anyway lol, I had no plans to start yapping so much, I just wanted to share a WIP 😭😭 But here you go, this is where my mind's at these days.
I'm gonna call it an early night today, so I can dive into Shallow Sleep chapter 11 sketches tomorrow~~ 💜