Post #20 (written before CTC)- Promises Promises

  I keep making all sorts of promises to myself. Tonight I'll get more sleep. Today I'll study more. Next week I'll start that paper earlier on.
Everyone makes these kinds of promises. They're like new years resolutions. I remember my psych teacher last year saying, "I came in to the gym today, and it was packed. All sorts of new people everywhere, it was awful. Completely unorganized. I asked the manager, 'What's going on? This is really annoying.' 'Ah, don't worry about it. January is our busiest time of the year. Give it two weeks, 75% of these people won't come back.'"

  I kind of feel like that with creative new ideas. "Ooh, I'm going to write about this and draw that and it will exciting and everyone will love it and everything will be so wonderful, by the gods my head just exploded from all the potential energy stored inside of it!" Well folks, this time I think, or at least hope, that I've hit the mark. I have about four pages written. You probably don't consider four pages to be a lot in comparison to say, a book, but think about it from a comic perspective. If I drew everything that happened in this comic and updated daily, say 8 panels a day like Dominic Deegan does, it would probably give me about two months, if not more, worth of updates, even if everything was predrawn before being uploaded. Also, books usually have been established and you sit down and say, "I'm going to read this book because it is a book and 250 pages is nothing!" No one gets online and goes, "I'm going to read this blog because it is a blog and 250 pages is nothing!" You tell someone you have 250 pages worth of blog posts and they'll probably assume you're a raving lunatic with an internet connection.

  If I release one page plus art every couple of days you wouldn't think anything of it. One page sound manageable, especially since Hyperbole and a Half said that you never want to hit your reader with a wall of text. Even thought it's formatted quite nicely like a book, four pages posted here would seem overwhelming because it's all continuous. Although, how many of you read the entirety of Comics Galore? Congratulations, you read seven and a half pages (to those of you copy and pasting into word, yes, I deleted the giant empty spaces between comics)! Chances are you wouldn't read that all the way through if I had posted it in bigger blocks without nice formatting. Also I'd like to point out that Cracked once mentioned this by saying that they can people to read 3,000 word articles by formatting it the way they do.

  The overarching point, and sorry for any digression, is that if it seems like things are going sort of slow, it's because I don't want to overload you with mass amounts of text. It also gives me time to keep writing because that takes time as well. With school, I only have so many hours to draw, which is really what probably takes the longest out of anything if I want it to be really good. It makes it feel more comicky rather than just a blog story as well as giving you time to digest the story instead of just trying to read it in one sitting and then everyone is done and we can all just go home. And if anyone knows anything about Variable Interval, it brings you back to my site more often (to anyone reading this in the future, if there are ads on my site, I wrote this pre-ads, so no, I'm not trying to randomly make mass amounts of money without work)! I like having readers because it also means you might read any in between posts, such as comic reviews (COMING SOON: Dead Winter, Tiny Ghosts, and Penny Arcade!!!) and interesting tidbits.

  So unlike most comic ideas I've had and/or started (Hiatus is almost always death for a webcomic. Veeery few come back from that- Thunt), I've started this story, I've put a lot of time and dedication into it, and I can promise you that I will try not to disappoint!
  -Happy Landings

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Building Comics One "Chopping Block" At a Time

  Everyone remembers where they were May 6th, 2009. It was a distressing day for all. Well, all who really cared. So me. I remember where i was May 6th, 2009. I was at my computer checking the mass amount of comics i had at the time (Pah! I think i was reading about 15 comics to the 39 i now read throughout the week. And to think i used to brag about how 15 was so many...). Click. Click. Click. Then, terror struck. Where was Chopping Block's update? "Hm. Maybe he's sick. That's saddening, but it's not the first time a webcomic's done that. I'll wait a day or two." So i came back to the site. Again, nothing. "Where was the update? He's a monday through friday comic, this is irregular!" A couple of weeks and no sign of an update...

  It was with a heavy heart that i did one of the few things that brings a sad disappointment to my day: i moved the comic to "Caught Ups". Now some of you are probably thinking, "pffh, so what? It's just a comic. Biiiiiiig deal!!!" Well when you spend as much time reading webcomics as i do, you start to grow attached to these characters and authors. Whether once a week or once a day, the author graces you with a view into their mind, and it's an absolutely wonderful feeling. The other thing to know is, "Caught Ups" is the back-alley hospital with direct-to-graveyard transport; AKA, where comics go to die. It probably doesn't put me in a very good light because that's also where i've stored the 8 comics that i considered hitting the Lull without hopes of coming back but didn't want to completely get rid of in case they do get better. That's where i kept LICD and looks where that's gone. For the most part, and the original meaning/use, that folder was for comics that either ended their storyline or just stopped updating, whether by notice or not. I've sort of digressed i feel...

  So anyway,  i've been reading a bit about Blind Ferret because the author of Goblins, Tarol Hunt/Thunt signed on with them. If my comicstory takes off as much as i'd like it to (maybe? please?), i might go about contacting them (do i have to capitalize my "i's" if they accept me?). I'm also writing a paper on newspaper comics going to the internet and so i was looking at Keenspot and i noticed they were hosting Chopping Block. "What's this? That's new, i could have swore he used to be self-hosted... Why would they pick him up if he's not updating? If they're anything like Blind Ferret that's incredibly unprofessional..." So I clicked over and... Lo and behold, Chopping Block has returned!!! It's only been updating since last monday, but hey, it has returned and is back to being updated monday through friday. The Aboot section warns you that it has bouts of hiatus, and apparently it's always been on Keenspot, so i suppose i'm just forgetful since that's not where i found the comic originally. So as with Least I Could Do, we welcome back Chopping Block to the Daily Checks!