On Getting Started and Staying on Task

So, a few words on what's lead up to this point.

For many months (or years) now, when it comes to my personal work, I've wrestled with managing my time, energy, and productivity. I've never had a problem coming up with story ideas, particularly in the last few years- they seem to flow quite freely. A good thing; but it became frustrating when slowly they piled up, creating a backlog of stories to tell, but no actual work was getting done in the way of telling them.

I've heard it said that execution is more valuable than ideas, and none of my ideas or plans were getting executed. This went on for years. I'd dream up a cool idea and then fantasize about how great it'll be when it's unveiled to the world.



Basically, there was lots of dreaming and fantasizing but very little action or execution.

In the last year or so, after I'd moved from Seattle back to Denver, Colorado (to be closer to family and figure out my next steps), things have started to become clearer in my head about what I needed to do. A number of things lead to this (including doing away with my usual and beloved evening beers), but chief among them is the ongoing talks that my lovely and talented partner-in-crime Lyla Warren and I often have regarding creative projects and how to ensure progress. We seem to never tire of the topic, and it's so much fun. We trade input on each other's current projects (and future ones too), and generally keep each other excited and fired-up to keep working.

In the course of these talks, one pitfall that we'd identified in the creator-owned passion project was a lack of deadlines that matter. I'd never had a problem working on deadlines commercially, whether in games, comics, illustration, whatever. I'd pull the late hours or all-nighters as I needed, and enjoy the satisfaction of pleasing myself and the client. I'd enjoy the high- intensity hours, the creative buzz, and the comradery. But when it came to my own labors-of-love, I'd never been able to stick with it. I'd lapse into laziness or find excuses to stall. There were no actual deadlines that mattered, so I didn't have any motivation.

To that end, Lyla and I formulated a crazy idea... one that would either keep me on task, or else... More on that soon!