Maideneir Blog Post #3: THE SCHEDULE!!

Hellooooooooo Everyoooooooone!!

I'd like to talk to y'all today about the schedule! I've never really been concreate on exactly what my release schedule is. And I've done that for a reason. When I started making comics, I had a dream... I would post a story every week! And I did with A Gray Day. Every week I had between 28-36 single pages that made up a part of a chapter. That would roughly be about 6-7 pages the way I make comics now.

The thing about those 28-36 pages a week was that I started them the Saturday morning after the Friday release. So basically my schedule was like this.

• Release a part on Friday

• Quickly do about 15 pages before Monday night for the preview for best buddies.

• Regret certain things I did in those 15 pages, but try and make up for it the next few days before the next Friday release

• Finish up Friday just in the nick of time (Sometimes I had to push the release to Saturday and have even less time for the preview.)

And I did that for A LOT of the chapters in A Gray Day, and some of the other shorter comics I released at the time. I stressed the crap out of myself. I could never seem to get ahead because I didn't want to go a week without posting anything! I felt like a bad person when I did that. And there were times when I didn't want to write anything and nothing felt right, but I just forced myself because I felt like I had to...

It is a contributing factor to why I went on hiatus. I was burnt out. I thought that I must just hate making comics. But, we've been over that. I realized I liked making comics and I really wanted to make them again and now I'm here! But when I started up again, I tried a new approach.

What I did was, early on, when I WAS SUPER EXCITED to be making comics again, I wrote a lot. Like A LOT A LOT! The first chapter I really came back for was chapter 3 of MY TOY. But those first two weeks I started up again back in May of last year, I wrote as much as I could! I made Gaining Control, I made a couple little 3 page comics on DeviantArt, I made a little 5 page comic called My Genius Daughter Turned Me Into Her New Mama, that turned into a comic way more than 5 pages.

But the thing was, I made these all really quickly! My idea was that I could build myself a little buffer. For example, on September 29, I released MY TOY Chapter 9 on Patreon, Chapter 5 on DeviantArt, but I was already working on Chapter 11. At first I felt bad, because I felt like I was betraying my original philosophy that I wanted to share everything I make with you guys. But when my move came up suddenly I was so happy that I had that buffer! I was able to take almost two months off to move to a foreign country and I never had to take a hiatus!

And when I finally got my computer here, I did the same thing. I spent a week getting really far ahead! That way, I can go back and just do a once through and do a little bit of editing before the final release.

Now for the current state of things! I don't think I've ever outright said it, but my release schedule works like this. 2 Monday's of previews for the Best Buddies, then a full release to all the Buddies on the First and Third weeks of the month! (Except for all the times I forget to press the publish button and it's a day or two late...) And then I try and post something for my BESTEST BUDDIES, as often as I can...

My job has me running all over the place all the time, I don't get a lot of time to just sit in one place and make comics anymore. So, I guess the moral of this post is, I do bi-weekly releases instead of weekly releases because I do a lot of my writing in a monster-fueled all nighter every couple of weeks or at like 1 page per night. And I post to make sure that if I have to go away for a month or two I don't have to say "sorry guys I can't post for the next month."

For example, I'm literally about to go to a month long school tomorrow, where I won't have access to my computer at all. But I already have posts scheduled until I come back! And I have my phone so I can respond to all of your comments!

LOVE Y'ALL! PEACE!!