What no longer serves you?

[Maps]

I’ve been dealing with this for a while.

[rajillustration]

Trying to be perfect every drawing and painting. Nowadays I tell myself if the page is 90% done you are done.

[ratscout]

Lately, I've been trying to give up on excessively editing each chapter of my story. XD It's just been slowing down progress way too much and I need to remind myself that I want to actually FINISH the darned story. Major edits can be done later, after all.

[Hodge]

Putting too much pressure on myself and have stupidly high expectations. I don't want to be a classic case of a comic artist that dies young from overworking themselves in bad conditions and repeatedly burning out. The do or die mentality has worn me down considerably this past year.

I'm gonna develop a healthier sense of discipline, exercise regularly, regulate my sleep schedule, go out more, make friends, and stop punishing myself cause I feel guilty for being an artist.

[nostalgicroxas]

Stop counting word count numbers as a "this is so long, no one will read it" negativity that encourages me to stop writing. I started keeping track of word count as a curiosity at first to see how long I was naturally making my chapters, then I was starting to try and hit goals so they averaged the same or didn't end up "too short" on the average spectrum It got worse and worse from there, turning into an unhealthy mindset that, boiled down, ended up discouraging me from continuing a story that I enjoy writing and reading.
Now I keep track of word counts, per chapter and total, but I have to remind myself that it doesn't matter "how big" the monster is. Yes, it is big. That does matter: to other people. Not to me as the author, and not to me as the reader. I ended up coming to that conclusion about this time last year, and earlier this year, and have been practicing year-long to try and get rid of it.
Keeping track of word counts "no longer serves me" in the sense that it had become something toxic. Now, I check in to my word counts only when I've finished, and that's roughly it.

[bear1]

Copic maker....I sold off my collection last summer since I wasn’t using them for a while. It kinda felt like letting go of an old friend since I started using copics since the early 2000’s. But, yeah, I’m not using them anymore. Too much time doing illustration and too much wasted space...

[Freemints30]

Well I gradually getting rid of my 3 sketch process when drawing. I'm mostly now just drawing 2 sketches and then inking and who knows it might one day come down to one.

Im also giving up any resolve on focusing one project. I have been trying that all it does is hurt me, I can't do. So I have a web comic being drawn, a second comic being scripted and having concept art drawn and a third project which would eventually be a comic but its just me world building a entire fantasy universe in google docs at the moment. So when I get bored I will just switch to working on something else and thus the my creative process is on constant rotation.

[Kudos26]

I've stopped playing all games pretty much, but I haven't stopped going to steam or gog and buying them, even if I know I'm not going to play them. haha.

[MaggieW]

I've given up on putting effort in the backgrounds for my comic x) People tend to skim over the panels as they read, so really just a few suggestive lines (doesn't have to be clean) will be enough detail for the reader to make out what is behind the character. At least, I think it beats not having a background at all.

Of course, I'll put the appropriate amount of effort into a panel where the background is the main subject x) but generally, starting this year I'd been putting about half the effort into a bg compared to my characters

[LCT_m_a_d]

I like your impressionism. Definitely gives personality

[LCT_m_a_d]

It's awesome to hear. Developing a healthy "normal" lifestyle is one of the best and underrated ways of developing a creative framework.

[Luminosophy]

I gave up my art itself actually. Sounds very weird but totally freeing. I don't care at all anymore how much or what kind of attention something I make gets, so I have zero reason to stress about making something unless I genuinely just want to make it for the hell of it. As a result I don't care about tracking numbers on social media or my pages either. \ o /

[LCT_m_a_d]

Doesn't sound weird to me. I've taken a similar approach to my art. Although I'm a perfectionist, I'm only focusing on the things I feel matter to the art.

[rajillustration]

Personally I love lots of words in a book. Mmm words.

[nostalgicroxas]

Yeah but when you're hitting 340,000 words and all of google says roughly "books shouldn't be longer than 120,000 words" you get a little discouraged.... Thus the murdering of googling up stats like that and comparing them to my own. It's a hard change since I like being informed with how I'm progressing... tableflips

[rajillustration]

that's a book for print though, where books have to fit on the shelf a certain way, and the price of paper and way they're bound constrain how long a book tends to be...but on the internet...there's no page count. Just your own will to read words.

[AyAyRonM]

bruh... The Government...

[PaulDevers]

FireAlpaca. I used to run it to draw my lines in and doodle in, but Clip Studio Paint is just superior in every way to it. Coloring and especially borders and such for comics just make it too practical! FA was free and perfectly fine when I was just starting out, but now, I like CSP better.
This really isn't a negative change, but it's still a major change for my comic-making process.

[akemikae]

I mostly started this already, but I'm gonna take breaks more often. I thought taking less breaks would get me further, while it did for a bit, all it ended up doing was burning me out. So here's to taking more breaks!

[zoehh]

I'm dropping my high expectations and how I'm always reaching for perfection. Perfect isn't real, but improvement is. Also, my traditional mindset of "work as hard as you can = instant success". Work smart, not hard. After all, why take the long way when there's a shortcut?

Let's work smart, peeps!