Night Shift--opinions solicited here.

[Prankster]

OK.

Of the various projects I've got going right now, the one I'm easily least passionate about right now is Night Shift. And personally, I feel like it's starting to affect my output. And yet, I'm still getting people tell me how much they like it, including a guy who, just a day or two ago, told me it was "better than ever". It certainly seems to be more frequently-visited than ASR, though it may be sorta tied with Pogo Stick.

Anyhoo. I don't want to let people down, so I'm going to open up the floor to discussion. I don't want to END Night Shift, but I was toying with a sabbatical. A month or two, maybe. And not anytime soon--I still have plotlines dangling. Maybe in the new year. But I'm starting to feel like the strip is sliding, and will continue to do so unless I put it on the back burner for a while.

I really am a scatterbrain. I get excited about whatever it is I'm NOT doing. So to be honest, I'd rather be doing ASR, Freak U. and another strip/graphic novel I've been chewing over (and overseeing Pogo Stick) without five new Night Shifts a week getting in my way. NS is *easily* the hardest to write...both ASR and Freak U have some very twisty plotlines planned, but I'm BREEZING through them. No sweat. But coming up with five punchlines a week is murder.

So, would you be crushed if NS took a vacation? More to the point, would you stop visiting the site? I *could* keep on with Night Shift, I just don't want it to suffer in comparison with my snazzy new ideas.

[Prankster]

Wow. Thank you, Opal. I've actually heard a fair amount back from people since I posted this missive, though, obviously, not so much in this forum. I've quickly realized that, the more positive feedback I hear--especially from people who don't already have a stake in webcomics, like yourself--the more I do want to continue onwards with it.

The main problem has to do with getting strips done. I often sweat blood over a strip I have to get done for next day, knowing that I'm going to have to repeat the process the next night. But writers' block is just a part of life, really. I was just worried, as I say, that it was starting to show in the quality of the work.

But apparently I'm just nuts, since no one has sent me a message saying, "Hey, the strip sucks lately!"

Actually, it's been coming a bit more easily these days, and I'm hoping I can build up more and more of a backlog...I actually have a huge ASR backlog (well, two weeks' worth of strips) which I feel is a real accomplishment, since the further in advance I am of that strip, the better it looks, whereas I can grind out a NS strip in ten minues (art-wise, that is).

The storylines and the funny have been flowing more easily lately, so with any luck I can get really far ahead, like a month, and then take a break from it to work on other things. I think that at this point, the sabbatical will probably come, but it'll just be a couple of weeks, and that probably over the holidays, when viewership is down anyway.

Thanks again for writing, just hearing from people like you make me want to keep going.