One of Stephen King’s biggest bits of writing advice is, work on one story at a time. This makes sense, logically and emotionally. Pay the greatest amount of attention you can to the thing you want to do the most. When I read this, I connected to this philosophy because I am a natural monotasker.

But, we can’t all be Stephen King and the world doesn’t care much about our plans. So most of us have to spin multiple writing projects in order to keep the lights on. As this isn’t my default mode, I need tools to help me stay on top of things. One is word/page count trackers with friends. Another is sharing alpha pages to fuel the fire. And another one is open accountability.

This last method works well for me. It forces me to do the thing, rather than hide. And it’s easy to hide behind the other things we deem more important, or easier. Putting my advances and failings on display makes for a good carrot and stick system. I’ve found that sharing my ups and downs through the process helps immeasurably with my accountability, and fuels an internal competition.

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If you’re working on a comic book project and you care to share your development experience here, however you want. Or chime in with questions and zingers. Making things is tough and there’s a million ways to do it. I have my process, and it changes to meet different challenges. I’d love to hear how you go about your own projects.