How to successfully return to work
And House Of The Dragon's greatest trick
Hello from Castrum Lusitania, my fortress in northern Portugal. Welcome to another edition of our weekly newsletter.
I’m back after a lovely week off with the family and that got me thinking about the strategies I use to easily return to work. Overall, I don’t really feel like I need a break - at least one that lasts for 7 days - but I’ll confess that stopping for 2 or 3 days alone is enough to make me come back itching to get back at it with enormous energy, so a couple of weeks off per year might be exactly why I don’t feel like I need a break. In any case, I do like taking a week off so I can be with the family without dividing my attention, so that would be motivation enough for it anyway. Case in point:
Good times. But since I got back I immediately hit the ground running with work. Here’s how I do it:
How to successfully return to work
First of all, I’m fortunate enough to be doing exactly what I want to be doing: creator owned comics. So that helps. But still, it can be hard sometimes.
So I employ a trick I learned in my days as an architecture student and that I’ve been applying ever since: take five minutes before wrapping to prepare whatever comes next, instead of leaving something brand new to resume work.
I use this on a daily basis to great effect (take 5 minutes to set up whatever comes next day) and I apply it to a bigger scale with larger gaps (vacations, traveling for conventions, etc).
Example: if I’m writing and I finish a bit, I’ll dump a few lines of ideas of whatever should come next before calling it a day. Doesn’t need to be organized or make sense to anyone else but you. If I’m drawing a very complex panel first thing the next day, the day before I’ll pencil the perspective grid and maybe quickly rough out some parts. That way, when I get on my desk again I can immediately pick things up without thinking, which prevents you from procrastinating to avoid the mental wall that is starting from scratch something you know it’s gonna be hard. If the ball is already rolling, everything is much, much easier.
For longer gaps, like taking a week off, ideally I prefer to wrap an entire stage. Finish writing an issue, or doing all the pencils, all the layouts, all the inks - you get the idea. In this case, I worked very hard to finish pencils for the entirety of The Sacrificers 13. I managed to do it and just fast enough so I could still print them (I pencil digitally) and have them ready, on my desk, so I could return with a clear plan of what to do.
Upon my return, on Monday morning I sat down, cracked open the ink bottle, grabbed the nib and I didn’t even had to think twice. To town we went:
Now to be honest: sometimes, it’s not possible to have such a clean break like this. This was an ideal situation - albeit one I worked very hard to create. But it was a close call finishing the pencils. The key point, though, is to leave the bit where you’ll pick up ready - whatever that might be. Be it for the next day, next week or next month.
Works wonderfully for me - which doesn’t mean it will work wonderfully for you. But as always, I share this so you can extrapolate in way you can/want.
And because you’re cool, two uncut clips of me inking from this week. You’ll recognize the image from the pics above:
These are bits I used to assemble this reel:
House Of The Dragon’s greatest trick
Spoilers for HotD ahead.
In the latest episode, House Of The Dragon did it. The thing we all wanted. War came and with it, the dragons. Yes, plural. Dragons fighting each other in actual combat in a lengthy, tense and spectacular sequence. A dragon war has been promised since the show begun and in the middle of season 2, we finally got it.
And this is HotD’s greatest trick and one of my favorite storytelling tools: setting up a promise and then delivering on it.
It had already been employed to enormous success in Game Of Thrones (until they ran out of books and it all went tits up at least), so let’s be fair and call it George R.R. Martin’s greatest trick. The trick (the word trick doesn’t make it justice, but allow me the usage of the word) involves setting something up and then delivering it without rushing. Work on it. Build it. Talk about it. Set it some more. Hold…hoooolllddd….. and release. Ned Stark’s death. The Red Wedding. Joffrey’s death. The winter is fucking coming. The war of dragons. And so many more great moments… some truly unexpected, some fairly obvious but all so satisfying. So well deserved. So well earned by both audience and writer(s)/actors.
Martin is one of my favorite authors and it’s great to see HotD crafting the exact thing that made GoT so good and that was lacking in the end. The build up to an amazing payback. I loved season 1 of HotD but season 2 is feeling truly sensational and rising to the occasion. It feels unpredictable, nerve racking and full of well earned moments.
Nothing beats good storytelling. It’s what makes things last forever.
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See you next week!
André