Updates issue: What would you do?

[djwaglmuffin]

I got an honest question for you guys and, those in similar situations might benefit from this as well:

I have some mental health issues PLUS a bunch of junk just recently happened to me which, long story short, put me WAY behind on my updates.

Still working as diligently as possible and stuff IS getting done but I don't really want to make my readers wait any longer for at least the story. I have pages inked and scripted but not finish-finished.

What would you guys do? My instinct is to post them anyway and finish them as I can but I also feel like this could be a bad practice.

I want to post and get these pages up but I also want to finish them! aaaaaa could use some sagely advice.

[BraniAndNess]

I say finish them! It seems you're in a situation of doing the comic for your readers vs. doing the comic for you. You're feeling pressured because your readers have been waiting a long time. But I don't think you actually owe them anything... And if you're having personal issues then you really don't need that added stress of needing to please your audience. Uploading unfinished stuff that you're not satisfied with isn't going to help you any, and you're probably going to feel the need to go back and finish them.. creating a vicious circle of even more stressful decisions to make. Do you go back to finish the pages the people have already seen, or work on some more that they haven't seen yet? My advice is, tell your readers what's going on and that the pages will be ready when they are. You need to think of you right now, not your readers

[spadesart]

i don't recommend rushing to draw pages with burnout, from personal experience the art quality can suffer a lot.

[feardeer]

I wouldn't recommend posting unfinished pages. I've seen creators do this before, and most of the time they never do go back and finish those pages. It's too easy to get stuck in a cycle of producing nothing but unfinished pages in order to keep up with updates. I agree with the previous posts.

[Shanny8]

Explain to your readers- I'm sure they will understand. I've taken a numerous amount of breaks over this current chapter of mine- whether it was mental stress or physical exhaustion.I'm 3 pages away from finishing my chapter and something came up out of the blue; I explained to my readers, and now I'm working to get pages done.

Stuff happens- half of the time, stuff you have no control over. Get the pages done before you post; I'm sure your readers rather have late fully finished pages than on time unfinished work.

[shazzbaa]

I'd take a hiatus.

With webcomics it's really easy to get into a mental place where you feel like you cANT EVER DROP THE BALL OR ELSE YOU'LL LOSE EVERYTHING YOU'VE BUILT, but I think, when real life interrupts so powerfully that you're struggling to keep up, sometimes what you desperately need to do is set that ball down. Intentionally give yourself time to step away and focus without rushing or pressuring yourself. When I took a 2 year hiatus for my comic, it was extremely scary and I really wouldn't have done so if I could've avoided it AT ALL..... but now that I've been back at it for a while, I'm so so glad I took that break.

"Post the pages now and finish them as I can" keeps that unfinished task hanging over your head, which in my experience is a huge source of stress. "Hey guys I had X,Y, and Z come up, and I need some time to put everything back together and get caught up on updates, I will be back in 6 months" feels terrifying but can be incredibly healing and needed sometimes.

[Draconic]

Take a hiatus. That's normal so you don't have to worry much about it.
If you need help, we're all here: For everyone who is having depression

I went on hiatus for the last 2 years due to depression and life happened, and I just came back last month. Everything is fine to be honest. You can see how long I had gone by looking at the release day of each episode in my project 'Random Life'.

After hiatus, I came back and start publishing my new project 'DarkBleeder' that I was working on while hibernated. I scrapped 80 pages, a full chapter, and have to publishing a new chapter right now because It isn't good enough to be published.

You have to feel okay and strong to be able to bear the uncomfortable, unhappy, and under-pressured.
You have to feel okay at being a failure before you can do thing right.
You need to have a comfort zone, before getting out of it.

If you can't handle it, you shouldn't do it and shouldn't care about it either.
But if want to, you have to try harder to handle it by the best as you can.

You can't lower the level of difficulty by ignore it.
So do your best to grind your level but feel free to take a break.

(P/s: why do I feel like I'm becoming a depression hotline... lol)

[Kura]

Don't feel bad about taking hiatus or being late on your comic pages due to health and life, you need to take care of yourself.

I know it's really difficult to do especially with webcomics where consistent updates are so important, but you need breaks, every artist needs them and you shouldn't feel bad about having to take them.

[djwaglmuffin]

Looks like there is a resounding "HEY, don't push yourself" theme going here.

All very good advice as well since PART of this exercise I am doing now is to take my time and a do a good job. Maybe I'm one of those people that needs to have a lot done to stay ahead and just not worry about it at all. I dunno.

Thanks to everyone who replies and yeah I hope this doesn't just help me, but anyone else who feels they're in this position.