JUNE 28, 2012

Managing The Crunch

It. Is. Crunch TIME! I am in the final two months of work left on book 1 and things are getting intense. I am basically doubling up all effort to be finished by the end of August. And that is a daunting thing.

For months now I have been doing a series of math problems based around the steps needed to finish my book and keep things manageable. The problems is everything would shift, or I would miss a day and then everything was thrown off and I couldn’t keep it all set in my head.

Then in the recent Making Comics interview with Kazu Kibuishi he mentioned how they had effectively managed this all themselves through using a spreadsheet and it would hold them accountable. I was really interested in this since I was already trying to do it and failing. Turns out a lot of my comics friends had the same reaction and we all started talking about it. After gleening from Kazu the basic idea of it, I set out to make my own version. I had my own set of goals in mind and thought how can I make this useful for others as well. So I mocked up a version of what I was looking to make and sent it to my buddy Chris Wharton and he worked his magic and made it a very nice and user friendly tool for everyone. ANDDDD we wanted to share it with you all!

Already it has been a huge benefit in just a few days. It helped me realize that I actually can have weekends off and enjoy some down time. While the workload is still really heavy it makes the crunch feel more like a video game and really helps you see the long term effects of today’s decision on your reaching your goal.

I hope it helps you all as much as it has for me…

Well, back to plugging away.