I was asked not long ago by a reader who also does webcomics about how I maintain such dedication to my work to keep such a regular, frequent update schedule. Of course, you don’t need to post a page every two days to be dedicated to what you do and posting every two days doesn’t mean that you are, so at first I wasn’t sure how to answer him. I could have said it was time management, but I manage my time about as well as a rock eats fruit. I could have said that it was because what I do means a lot to me, which it does, but that can be said of many, if not most creators in any field. Then I remembered a conversation I had with Rori on the subject months before. Very simply, I can maintain my dedication because I decided to do.

I first started making comics when I was five years old. And they were terrible. I kept making comics until I was in my 20’s…those were terrible too, but I was still doing it because I loved comics and making them was a lot of fun. I wrote them, I drew them (or someone else did) and from time to time we would find a photocopier and a stapler and make more to sell at the local comic shop. It was fun…but for all I dreamed about having a career in comics, I wasn’t really doing anything to make that happen. I was just having fun. Then I started doing Pictures of You.

Pictures of You is a big story. Big. Not Cerebus big, but maybe Strangers in Paradise big, and the size of it was daunting. It required more than just wanting to have fun, it required a commitment of years. Even after the first rudimentary plot was flushed out, I joked that it was so long I could never get it done. I rewrote it a few more times, and while I won’t say I shouldn’t have done it, I was stalling on actually making it. It got shelved several times while I went off and “lived my life” instead. I kept coming back to it, though without a clear idea of what I was going to do with it, if anything…and for a long time, the answer was nothing.

Then, a few years ago I was lucky enough to have a short piece chosen for publication in an internationally distributed anthology, and they even paid me for it. I’d done a fair amount of commissioned illustration and design work, but this was my first truly professional published comic. After it came out and I wasn’t overrun by the adoring public I subliminally thought was just waiting for my genius, I realized something. The Blue Fairy wasn’t going to sweep in and hand me a career in comics. If it was ever going to happen, both creating the Pictures of You series and having any hope of achieving the dream of a professional career, I had to make it happen. Too long I (and so many people I knew) waited for some magical benefactor to discover me and hand me a golden ring, but that was just fantasy. Everyone who ever makes it in comics, or any other field, everyone who achieves anything does it by making it a priority in their lives. I had to make comics a priority…not just Pictures of You, but any kind of comics. I had to stop thinking about making comics and make them, promote them, sell them, and to do all of this even when it wasn’t convenient or desirable.

I had to get serious.

Now, this didn’t mean that I had to stop having fun with it, I haven’t and I’m sure most comic professionals would say the same thing. What it meant was that I had to do it even when it wasn’t fun, when it was work, because that’s what I wanted. I wanted a career, not just a hobby. I wanted full-time, not spare time. I had to decide whether getting that was worth the sacrifices required of me, both in social and personal life. I won’t go into detail about what that meant to me in particular because it’s different for everyone, but anyone who is serious about what they do will make that choice.

It’s not something that’s for everyone, and that doesn’t make the work those people do less valid, but there is a distinction for those who choose it. Those are the people who have the chance at reaching their dream. No one hands out free rides, no one scours the far reaches of the comic galaxy looking for rare gems. There is far too much talent in the amateur comics pantheon for publishers or anyone else to bother looking for it. The ones who succeed are the ones who work, the ones who sacrifice, the ones who make the choice to dedicate themselves to what they do.

So, my advice to anyone who makes comics is very simple:

Are you serious?