Some long term readers of this blog, or of my twitter feed, will be aware that i suffer from a chronic illness that causes a lot of pain and a reduction in my ability to move, walk and sleep well enough to recover quickly. People on twitter also know I suffer from bipolar disorder, a mental illness that has plagued me for many years and caused me to very nearly fail my first degree (“very nearly” in this case meaning going from a First to a passing grade).

When one of these illnesses is playing up, life gets tough. Recently I had a bad time with depression and started stockpiling paracetamol, fully intending to take my own life. As you can tell since I’m writing this now, I did not go through with it. I pulled out of the depressive cycle before I had enough energy to go through with the plan.

When I pulled ’round, I relaunched ink proof cannon. You can see how long the good time lasted.

Now I am pulling through a bout of chronic illness brought on by eating pizzas despite being allergic to wheat. This is my bipolar acting up again, which I realise now my head is a little clearer. I’m still down, I’m finding it very difficult to motivate myself enough to do any work, and I feel like there is too much going on for me to cope. Nevertheless my brain is clearer now and I think I may be over the worst of it all.

If I am, you can expect more comics, more of my nano novel and more videos. If I’m not, expect some quiet time before I show up much again.

Rest assured though, I will be back. xxx

I struck me earlier today as I was working on comics that the strips I have running right now eat ideas for breakfast. They literally suck them in, chew them into a meaty pulp and crap them out a little later, in a form that is no longer usable. It’s quite an ideas mill we have going here.

This presents a bit of a problem from my point of view. On the one hand, I have to get a new strip out every day, Monday to Friday. On the other hand, there are only so many jokes I can make with the characters I have available. What, then, is a person to do?

Well it’s simple really. Either I revisit old topics and try to put a new spin on them, or I bring in a new character to change up the dynamics. Alternatively, I can move the story to a new setting and bring in difference that way.

At no point should “just stop the comic, you’re done” be something that is considered. Rest the comic, perhaps, if you really feel you need time away from it, but don’t drop it altogether because I guarantee you’ll start thinking up new ideas for it; probably right away.

Over the last few weeks I’ve tried all three of my options to bring life back into the comics. The Life of Nob T. Mouse got a new character recently in the form of Speckleton Q Speckworth, the Journalistic Reporter of Newsworthy News. He has let me make fun of traditional print media and the way newspapers were a vital part of frontier life when towns were just being formed in the Old West.

Not that you’ll see that in what has happened with him so far, of course, since I now plan storylines out in full before they get released. I learned that the hard way after the last storyline, with the Abstract causing all kinds of trouble for Nob Mouse. That was supposed to be a three week long story but it went on for so long that I went house hunting, arranged a mortgage and actually moved house during the time it was running. Never again am I getting into that trap. Never again!

The other two techniques came up on All over the house. Firstly I have been revisiting old topics for a while over there because it’s part of life that some things repeat but play out differently, so going back to the ideas well makes for a more realistic strip. I repeated a topic within the first fortnight of the strip running, in fact, (episodes one and three are both about “interactive telephones”) and I’ve no problem doing it again.

Lately Emily moved jobs, getting her own government department to run. This introduced a whole new dynamic for the character and opened up far more joke and storyline potential. It is part of a long-running plan for Emily’s character development so it’s not like I did it on a whim because we ran out of ideas but it does serve to demonstrate how a bit of a change of scenery lets us do more with the character than we otherwise probably could.

Today is episode 335 of All over the house. The strip has now run to more episodes than Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation combined. If we add to that the 300 or so episodes of The Life of Nob T. Mouse, you can imagine that I might be thinking about the possibility of running out of ideas for these strips a lot and it’s true, I do worry about it.

Nevertheless, as long as Jenny and I can keep coming up with new jokes, we’ll keep running the comics. It’s just too much fun to be stopping now.

'Preparing to novel', by me, via Flickr

When you wake up coughing, have a splitting headache and can’t move without your brain throbbing, you know it’s going to be one of those days. It’s times like this that require a decent work ethic if you are going to make it as a self-employed person.

Jenny and I are both ill at the moment thanks to picking up some virus or other from somewhere. We’re pretty sure it wasn’t from my Mum, sister and two nieces, who visited over the weekend, because colds have a nine day incubation period and it has only been four days since they arrived. It must be something we picked up somewhere else, so it’s not like we can even fume about the culprit. Ah well. There will be other times for that, I’m sure.

In other news, I have hardly made any videos for about a week because work has taken so long and it has to come first. I do sometimes wonder if I have too much to do each day, which is why it all hardly ever gets done, but then I remember that making these videos means only half an hour or so out of my day, on average, per channel. It’s not like I’m doing a full-length film every day here.

The comics are back on track however. Keen-eyed readers will not that we are updating The Life of Nob T. Mouse and All over the house every day, Monday to Friday, and we hope to keep up this pace well into the future.

I love drawing comics, it’s a fantastic change from my usual workload of finding information, absorbing that information, and then explaining it in words everyone can understand. With comics, I just try to make people laugh. It’s like going from swimming to singing, it requires different muscles so it’s a nice change.

As well as seeing family over the weekend, which was amazing fun, Jennifer and I attended the Trafalgar Night dinner hosted by Bolton Sea Cadets. It was a brilliant night and I thoroughly enjoyed it, as did Jenny.

It is great to get out and meet new people, chat with them and, basically, have a change of environment for an evening. Plus Jennifer got invited to the Mayor’s parlour, which apparently is some kind of meet-and-greet thing. It seems being an indie author has its perks after all! She says I have to go along as her “plus one”, on account of being her publisher. I’m sure I can cope with that.

Anyway, I’m rambling now so I’ll leave you with today’s videos. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them!