A Matter Of Life And Deadlines

So - come next month, I'll have been freelancing for four years.

Wow.

This is the thought that occurred to me this morning as I plucked my toast from the toaster, and sat down with a steaming cup of dark coffee, before weighing up whether I'd work my day job today or not (long story short - I'm self employed in both my vocations, so I have the luxury of choice on a miserable day like this).

So, slurping my wake up juice and munching my barely cooked toast (just how I like it!) I started thinking about my experiences over the last few years.

Something that strikes me is that a good number of my fellow freelancers - people I admire, respect, and in a few cases call my genuine friends - often comment on things they feel have been great assets to me as I went about finding work in comics. Sometimes, there's criticism, which is helpful. Other times, the things that get brought up - things that I'm apparently getting right - seem mundane. I'm sometimes commended for nailing down what seem like basic things. Things that, to my mind, surely ANYONE desiring success in this field is going to make a point of approaching properly.

Frequently, though, I'm surprised at how wrong that assumption of mine can be.

A while ago, I was chatting on Facebook with a published artist friend of mine about our career paths. Both of us have had some difficulties lately, but we're now back on track. Something that came up during this conversation was the matter of deadlines.

Now, deadlines are one of those seemingly mundane things I mentioned before. If you have a deadline, you work to it, right? But, evidently, this causes some folks a lot of hassle. In the case of my afore mentioned friend (who I'm not naming to spare any professional embarrassment) he relates that he went through a phase where every deadline seemed impossible to meet, and his schedule - his balance of day to day activities, day job and comics work - seemed unmanageable.

He's since, I'm at pains to point out, identified this as a problem and addressed it. But it was refreshing to hear somebody else confess to finding deadlines intimidating. When I first started out lettering comics for cold, hard cash, it was the single biggest worry I had. Would I be able to make deadline? What will the deadlines be like? What if something goes wrong? These were all questions that buzzed in my brain, which is all too quick to find problems at the best of times.

My personal approach - which others have told me is what stands me in good stead, and ensures I get asked to letter books for the same clients more than once - was to view my deadlines as absolutely, incontrovertibly, utterly sacred. The due date, in my mind, is cast in stone. To miss it equates to failure. And I do not like to fail.

And yet, for a comics freelancer with just four years professional experience, it seems that missed deadlines have still caused me a great deal of grief.

But, with my attitude, I hear you say, surely I never miss a deadline? And, at the time of my writing this journal, at least, I never have. But other people working on projects I've lettered certainly did. And you have no idea how that impacts upon me.

So, yeah. My thanks to you for persisting with this entry so far - and also, my commiserations. Because right now, as you might have detected, I'm about to do what EVERY comic book freelancer LOVES to do (and if they deny it, they're lying) and have a really good bitching session. However, as always, I hope that my irascible tendencies might go some way to informing, or raising some awareness. So here goes.

Hitting deadlines is good. It's very good. We have deadlines, because they ensure a baseline standard for the product. If everyone gets their work in on time, the book can go to proof in a timely fashion, and edits and tweaks can be made to ensure the comic is the best it can possibly be by the time it rolls off the press. My experience has been that the vast majority of my clients have allowed a sensible amount of time for the work to be done, so there aren't often any problems.

But when deadlines are missed… oh my. Oh, my oh my oh my.

Here's a little insight into how I make my particular line of work in comics profitable: I'm only able to make lettering a worthwhile, bill-paying endeavour if I take on multiple projects at once. I'm careful not to overload myself, and I try to manage my time properly so that each project gets an equal amount of care and the best attention I can give it. I don't want to knock out crappy work and lots of it. I was told back in the 1990s that's career suicide.

So, I'm happily doing my thing… until a project starts running late.

Now, a project can run late for all sorts of reasons. It's not always due to missed deadlines. And I can deal with that. It'd be poor show if I couldn't. But there have been a few cases where deadlines haven't just been missed… they've been overshot by a long mile. And the more time passes after the due date, the bigger the problems that can cause. Certainly for me.

Working in comics, for me, is one of the greatest joys I've ever known. Nevertheless, there is no feeling of frustration and no stress greater than that which I feel when I'm juggling three projects at once, trying to service them all equally, and having to contend with all the myriad other problems that can plague comic production at the same time.

There have been a few occasions where I've spent 24 hours plus without sleep, chained to my computer, only venturing away from it to make a cup of coffee. I've eaten in front of the computer. I've not showered. I've even - and this is AGONIZING for me - turned down the offer of a frosty pint in my favourite pub with friends, when debatably that tall, cool glass of beer would be good for my sanity. All in the name of getting the work done and turned in on time. And every time, I've done it.

And, almost every time, that discomfort would have been avoidable, if only somebody else before me had hit their deadline.

Missing a deadline sends a message, and it's an intensely negative one.

Missing a deadline says "I can't manage my time properly".

Missing a deadline says "I can't prioritise this work adequately".

That, in itself, says "I don't care enough about this work."

Missing a deadline says "I don't care about the inconvenience this puts the rest of the team to".

And, worst of all, that says "I'm not a team player".

I cannot stress enough - turning your work in on time is a HUGE part of that otherwise nebulous beast we call 'professionalism'. The people who get the work, and get it again, and again, are generally the ones who have proved they can deliver it, without fuss, without drama, and without adding to anyone's stress.

If you're absolutely, without doubt, DEFINITELY going to miss a deadline, then all is not lost. Communicate. That wispy, ill-defined animal we called 'professionalism' earlier? Communication is a big part of that, too. If people know work is coming to them late, they can plan accordingly. I've had plenty of experience of this. There are pages and projects that got knocked out when I should, by rights have been working on something else. I have literally no complaints in a situation like that, because the time I set aside to work is still filled, and I'm still able to stay on top of everything. But without communication, that's not so easy.

Your deadline is NOT a suggestion. It's not a guideline. It's part of the terms of your contract. It means something. In fact, as we saw above, it means a number of somethings. I hear too many stories of aspiring talents failing in this regard, and even name talents from yesteryear who fell out of favour by disregarding a publisher's timetable.

To conclude my rant: The comic book industry is built on many factors. Perhaps the largest of these is good old-fashioned, simple, honest, hard work. More than that, perhaps: work ETHIC. Reliability. Dependability. There's a certain amount of respect for these qualities, I've found, and they tie in with what's said here.

Rant concluded. I hope this helps somebody.