Lackadaisy Flimflam

Answer Pile

Reponses to messages, including a lot of artistic advice of questionable value. 
This is huge, actually - more after the break.

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Q.  Hi Tracy! I was just wondering if you have a line-up of all your characters? Like a size comparison chart? It would be really interesting to see. Thanks for everything!

A.  There’s an oldish one here:

Full size here.
It’s pretty blah, though.  Maybe I’ll do something more interesting at some point.

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Q.  Dear Tracy, also being a person of bushy brows (but unfortunately being female), I have to ask what made you slap two fuzzy caterpillars onto Rocky’s forehead. (No offense. He’s adorable and just wouldn’t be Rocky without them)

A.  Eyebrows wield a lot of expressive weight, and for someone like Rocky whose expressions and emotions are characteristically over the top, prominent brows just seemed like a perfect emphatic.  I guess I see it as roughly the equivalent of having a pair of exclamation points permanently affixed to his face.

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Q.  What method did you use to study anatomy, poses and expressions? I know that you have to use reference and all, but what is going through your mind as you study? What should you be looking for? Also, I’m aware that you should not try to force a style. But do I really have to draw exact photorealism for about 10 years before cartooning? - A curious artist

A.  I’m not exactly sure where the idea that one must draw exact photo-realism for ten years before cartooning came from.  That’d seem rather draconian.  Perhaps you mean life drawing?  There can be overlap between that and photo-realism, but life drawing encompasses a variety of things - sketchy pose studies, blocky charcoal light and shadow studies, quick gestural scribbles, and so forth.  The unifying characteristic is that you’re working from real observation.
There’s such a multitude of things to learn from and look for in life drawing, it wouldn’t do much good to make a checklist.  Form and anatomy, proportion and posture, dimension, perspective and light are just some of the intertwined aspects of it, but a lot of the learning is a nearly unconscious result of the practice you put in.  The idea is to establish a working knowledge of reality and then to build onward from that foundation.  That’s where style comes in - it’s an abstraction of what you know.
It’s not as though you have to shun all forms of stylization until you’re awarded some sort of realism black belt, however.  Some parts of your style - whether you draw with sharp impulsive lines, or with swooping elegant ones, for instance - will come naturally anyway.  Experimenting with different styles along the way is something I would encourage too, just not at the expense of learning the basics.  The pitfall here you may have been cautioned about is picking a style early on - Disney and anime are common ones - and emulating it without learning the reality that the style emerged from. 
If you haven’t already established some foundational knowledge, your pet style will tend to suffice for that, henceforth informing everything you draw.  You may not see the problem until some point when you want to branch out as an artist, when you want to present a portfolio that demonstrates your ability to work in a multitude of styles, or when some employer or client requires some versatility from you.  But, dammit, all of your character faces look like anime/Disney character faces whether you intend them to or not. 
It’s very difficult to unlearn the things that have formed the basis of your understanding.

I’m going to end by linking to this Understanding Your Style tutorial (made by heysawbones).  It does a pretty excellent job of illustrating everything I’m clumsily trying to explain here.

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Q.  Hello. I wanted to ask you your opinion as a professional artist on something that I’ve been noticing in the art community that has been scaring me. I feel like many artist work with 1 or 2 hours of sleep every day to finish their projects. I understand this deprivation is necessary when a deadline is approaching, but all the time seems unreal. As a busy art student and aspiring comic artist, should I be training myself to last under this deprivation or what? Thank you.

A.  Well, it can be like that.  Finding a foothold as a freelance artist can mean having to do superhuman amounts of work in unreasonable amounts of time and, like you said, if you work in a profession where hard deadlines are involved, it’s bound to demand some weekend, late night or all night hours from you at intervals.  Still, while sleep deprivation is an occasional or cyclical evil among many art-related jobs, it’s definitely not a lifestyle you should expect to have to permanently adopt just to make a living as an artist.  It would be exploitative and counterproductive of an employer to require that of you for long durations without respite.  If you find yourself in such a situation, something might be rotten (see the notorious “EA_spouse” story from about 2004).

That said, I do know a number of artists who exist in a near-continually sleep deprived state but, in my experience, that ‘s usually because they’ve chosen to burn their candles at both ends.  Sometimes a little sleep loss is a small price to pay when you want to get more than a 9-5 job out of art, have further ambitions or labors of love to tend to.

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Q.  Does Rocky really have a thing for Mitzi, or is he just jealous or “sentimental”?

A.  What does it seem like?  I’m not trying to be elusive, I’m just honestly curious. 
Some aspects of a story are only diminished when an author makes well-meaning efforts at delineation instead of allowing readers to do their own deciphering based on the information given.  That’s not to say that the author should be vague and non-communicative either.  There’s a thin line to walk there, and I’m anything but steady on my feet as a writer.

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Q.  Hi, love the comic. This had only just occured to me, but Mordecai actually calls Mitzi, well, “Mitzi”. Wouldn’t you think that by his professional nature he would call her by her real name? Or is she so wrapped up in her “Mitzi” identity that only a few people like Zib or Atlas would probably have known her as “Mary Ellen”?

A.  Mordecai calls her Mitzi because that’s the name she’s gone by for as long as he’s known her.  Addressing her as ‘miss’ would be generally consistent with his formal affectations, but that doesn’t seem to be an esteem he’s willing to afford her.  Zib is the only one around who would have known Mary Ellen.

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Q.  How do you pronounce the title “Lackadaisy”? And what does it even mean? Where does it come from?

A.  It’s pronounced much the way it looks.  Lack-a-daisy.
It’s not a word I invented.  You can find it in the dictionary.  The modern use of the word is usually in the form of ‘lackadaisical’, describing listlessness, the careless whiling away of time - but that’s the tail end of a rather lengthy etymology.
It’s earlier form, around the 17th century, was more like a melodramatic expression of languishing remorse for something gone awry, some personal injury - “Alack the day!” 
‘Lack-a-day’ seems to have evolved from there, the implications eventually softening from languish to languor.  With some further jaunty embellishment of rhythm, there’s ‘lackadaisy’.

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Q.  Why did Mitzi kill Atlas?

A.  Did she?

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Q.  I was wondering, was Atlas meant to be older than Mitzi? I mean significantly older though

A.  It depends on what you mean by ‘significantly.’  He had roughly a decade on her.

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Q.  Is it possible that Mordecai “bats for the Cubs instead of the Cardinals?” if you get my drift. It seems like he has the personality for something like that. (What with being a neat freak/ good mannered and all.

A.  Possible.  He’s not much of a lady’s man.  Then again, he’s not much of a man’s man either.
In any case, I know the stereotype, but I’d hate to think that being neat and mannerly is really an indicator of one’s sexual preferences, or lack thereof.

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Q.  Tracy, have you considered including political or philosophical content in your comic? I mean, I´m not talking about some mind-bomb like 1984, but would you like to “say” something with your comic? You know, “make a point” with it?

A.  I have zero interest in using this comic as an excuse to bang a saucepan with a spoon over my pet political and philosophical ideals.  I haven’t the skill and experience to handle that sort of thing with any deftness, I haven’t got any points to make that the world hasn’t heard already, and since stories that employ the Hamfisted Message-Delivery Service are a reading experience peeve of mine, I figure I best avoid self incrimination. Still, I’d have have difficulty living with myself if I were smearing more asinine kitsch around the internet without also attempting to inject some modicum of meaning.
It’s not all just surface area.  The story does have an intended subtext, or more accurately a few different but related themes that should become more obvious and begin to converge as the story, uh, wobbles along.  Of course, it’s entirely possible I’ll completely botch the execution…and then I guess cats-with-guns will have to suffice for substance, and I will owe Michael Bay some sort of mental apology.

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Q.  Was there something that happened to Mordecai as a child that made him a Sociopath?

A.  Well, there wasn’t a singular defining occurrence that made him who he is, but there are things in his history that seem to have scrambled some of his grey matter.

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Q.  How do you decide which reader questions to answer? Do you just do the ones you have time for, or do you try to do all of them (that aren’t repeats, of course).

A.  It’s kind of all over the place at this point.  I try to answer things I haven’t already answered first, but I’ve done a pretty thorough job of falling hopeless behind on my backlog of messages.  Apologies to those I haven’t responded to yet. 
If you have some pressing or time-sensitive matter you need to get in contact with me about, it’s probably best to email instead.

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Q.  where do I find your books, I have looked every where

A.  The Lackadaisy Volume 1 book is available on Amazon.  It’s also available from the publisher’s online store (that’d be the place to order from if you’re outside the US).  It’s also stocked at a variety of comic and book shops, but listing them out wouldn’t be an easy task.

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Q.  You know, you haven’t explained why the St. Louis Police Department wants you for murder and why they’re confusing a picture of a happy, minor Freckle for you.

A.  Long story.

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Q.  Does Calvin have any real friends? Are any of them significant enough to appear in the comic? I’m guessing No.

A.  No.  He has casual friends - the sorts he might play baseball or eat a hamburger with - but the greedy, divergent sway Nina and Rocky hold over him doesn’t seem to leave room for much of a social agenda.

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Q.  yazminthornber asked you:
One day can you please come to London’s Anime MCM expo? I actually can’t think of anyone I’d rather see more :) ~Yazz x

A.  Aww, thank you.  That’s awfully kind!  I don’t presently have the time or the means to make it to London for a convention, though.  Perhaps someday.

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Q.  ribbonlace asked you:
Which character do you think you’d most likely relate to/identify with? As a writer myself (and hopeful artist/comic artist with my other half, Lace), I love to identify with my characters, even if they’re complete slime balls. I make an effort to be able to think, feel, and see what my characters would think, feel and, see and view things through their eyes, but also view those characters through my own eyes. Heh, sorry for rambling. -ribbon

A.  I’m not sure I identify with one specific character over the others, but I understand what you’re saying.  It’s important to find ways to relate to them.  That becomes a sort of portal into their heads (this is starting to sound like a Charlie Kaufman film) where you can see things from their perspective for a bit, and then write them with that more intimate understanding. 
I suppose I’d liken character writing to acting for the stage-shy.

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Q.  cyzzane asked you:
Hi there, I realized this is the Lackadaisy tumblr but I wasn’t sure if you had a personal one. My question probably dates me as to how long I’ve been a fan of your art but do you ever intend to finish the Ainessa’s Martyrs story? I enjoyed it way way back when it was anthropormorphic art then really fell in love with it later on with the gorgeous illustrations you’ve done for it along the way. Just a curiosity for me. Thanks so much! ~Cyz

A.  That’s something I started working on when I was…oh, geez, 14 or so.  I grew up a lot along the way and hesitated too much to ever just put it out there.  Instead, it had numerous false starts with revisions in-between to match whatever my state of mind was at those intervals.  Ultimately, that made for a convoluted, mutated abomination with too many eyeballs and tiny vestigial limbs sticking out in all directions, uncertain what it was even supposed to be.  I had to drag it out behind the shed and kill it with a shovel.
It was a learning experience at least.  Maybe I’ll revisit it at some point, but if I do, it’ll necessarily be much different.

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Q.  I love your comic! But I just noticed something and wondered - why do the females grow hair on their heads, but the males grow only fur?

A.  Thanks!
It’s nothing more than stylistic.  I didn’t want to go without the iconic women’s hairstyles of the 1920s, but I found drawing the typically short-cropped men’s hairstyles of the 20’s on cat heads to be an awkward, unappealing fit.  So, for the male characters, I opted for more varied head shapes instead.
I realize it’s rather silly when analyzed, but…analyzing it at all is probably over-analyzing it.

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Q.  Might we get some descriptions of how and where the other characters live (unless it’s somehow tied to the plot of the comic)? We’ve seen Viktor’s place, I think you’ve said that Mitzi lives above the cafe, Calvin lives with his mother, but what about the others?

A.  Mitzi lives on the top floor of the Little Daisy building.  That has appeared in the comic already, in part.  Wick’s house has already featured too.  Ivy’s dormitory and the Savoys’ place of residence will appear in Volume 2, so I should probably just let the comic cover that.  Zib’s place may come up in Volume 3 if I don’t rewrite that part.  Mordecai is not inclined to show anybody where he lives.  Rocky…mostly lives in La-La Land.

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Q.  How old are Ivy and Calvin?

A.  18

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What’s your stance on dogs? Are you an all-out cat person, do you not care about dogs, or do you perhaps like them?

A.  I love dogs.  Well, okay, I’ll qualify that - I love them when they’re not uncontrollably hyperactive, cacophonous crotch-sniffers, though arguably, that’s more of an owner problem than a dog problem.
I’ve been designated dog-sitter in my small social circles since I was a kid, and would take that over a babysitting gig any day of the week.  I’d have a dog or two of my own now if I thought I could afford them proper attention.  As it is, I work too much.

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Q.  Hiya Tracy! Just curious as to what your methods were in designing the wallpaper background seen in the Deadeye, Dotage, and Defiance comic strips. I think they’re absolutely beautiful. Love the comic, by the way. Keep up the amazing work, but more importantly, take some time to rest!  Don’t want you to get over tired =)

A.  Thanks very much for the kind words. =)
I started out by looking at some reference samples of late 19th century wallpaper, penciled out my own pattern, then essentially made a tiling texture map out of it with Photoshop, which I applied to the wall areas of the scanned pencil art for the panels.  I did a lot of patchy, low opacity erasing to make it look sun-faded, then painted water stains, speckles, scratches and tears on top to texture and age it further.

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Q.  what war was vicktor in?

A.  WWI…or the Great War, as it would have been called before the sequel came out.

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Q.  I have a hard time getting my family to read a period at the end the a sentence I wrote. How is your family when it comes to the comic? Do they read over things for you or support you when you’re writing/drawing it, or have favorite characters?

A.  My parents read the comic.  I find that unsettling, although I’m not sure I can explain why.  It’s somehow easier to show my work to strangers than it is to show it to people I know.  Anyway, they seem vaguely amused by it.  Mostly, I think they’re just curious to see what Rocky is up to.  He’s more or less a dramatization of a cat who was our cherished family clown for near twenty years.
I only see my family about once a year during the holiday season nowadays.  Arriving at my aunt’s house on Christmas Eve, I found my mother had apparently liked a ridiculous Lackadaisy holiday card comic I had made, ordered a bunch of them from my publisher, and in her zeal, sent them out to the whole of the extended family.  They’re a pretty traditional bunch of young couples busy making babies and old people busy being religious - not very acclimated to internet culture.  Terms like ‘webcomic’ would only earn blank stares in response.  Needless to say, they don’t read the comic and must have been fairly disconcerted by their violent, context-less, talking-cat holiday greetings.  Judging by the looks I got, the cards really only served the purpose of making them concerned for me.  It was pretty mortifying.
Anyway, I was touched by my mother’s somewhat misguided support, but maybe it’s sometimes best if the family isn’t inducted into the readership. =)

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Q.  Was Rocky raised by Aunt Nina?

A.  In part.   When he was a child, his parents were living, but not always capable, so the McMurrays were Rocky’s surrogate family, sometimes for long durations.

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Q.  pandamore3 asked you:
Have you ever been accused of art theft? If so, how did you handle it?

A.  Not to my recollection.  No serious indictments, at least, that weren’t easily defused by pointing out the date at which I posted my work publicly online as evidence of which piece of art existed first.
I’m not sure it qualifies as straight-up art theft, but someone accused Lackadaisy of being a copy of Blacksad at one point.  At the time, I had seen pictures from Blacksad around the internet, but hadn’t yet read any of it.  Now that I have, I suspect the accuser hadn’t read Blacksad either, or hadn’t read my comic for comparison, and was simply making presumptions based on the talking-animals-in-historical-settings theme.  If that was their honest opinion, though, there probably wasn’t much I could do to refute it.  I’m pretty sure I responded to that by ignoring it.

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Q.  Does Mordecai know Hebrew/Yiddish?(seeing as he’s Jewish)

A.  Some Hebrew, plenty of Yiddish.

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Q.  When you create a character for the comic what kind of process do you go through?

A.  Hard to describe.  I don’t have a formalized step 1, step 2, step 3 assembly-line process I go through for each character.  They each tend to start as a sort of pea-sized ember of an idea, and once I start rolling with that, the resulting cumulative snowball effect - sometimes controlled, sometimes veering off wherever -  is I guess what would be called a development ‘process’. 

For instance, when I say many of the Lackadaisy characters are based on cats, what I mean is that a cat’s name and the elementary idea of their personality (arising from whatever human characteristics we tend to observe in or project onto our pets) served as a sort of convenient leaping-off point for some tumbling-down-the-mountainside creative formulation.
As I started sketching, trying on different visual representations like trying on clothes, thinking about what they might think about, sound like, and where they might come from, their blank surfaces were being scored, almost unwittingly, with the symbols and sigils of whatever natural associations I’d make among these things. Between the markings, veins of connection emerged and became themes.  All the while, they’d siphon influence from other works of fiction, be embedded with pieces of historical gravel, graft patchwork skins of personality and mannerism from people I’ve known, leave their backstory trail behind them, and essentially just take on the shape of whatever I had made available for them to roll through.

I don’t know if I’m doin’ it right by whatever literary precedents might exist, but it seems to serve my purposes well enough.

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Q.  bookworm773 asked you:
I have a very strong feeling that Rocky likes raw cake batter and cookie dough. Is this correct?

A.  A fair bet that he is.  Possibly, he’s descended from humming birds and honey bears.

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Q.  callmekj72 asked you:
I have two kittens at home, and one acts like Zib, therefore was named so, but it brought up a question or two about Zib. Firstly, what sort of cat is he? I can sort of figure an Egyptian Mau mix in my head, but that’s just me. Secondly, does he snore?

A.  Aww, wow…well, that’s an honor!  I hope your cat doesn’t smoke as much as Zib, though.
A lanky sand-cat like an Egyptian Mau isn’t too far off the mark.  He’s got a lot of caracal in his design, actually, along with some regular old tabby-striped alley cat.
He says he doesn’t snore.  Mitzi might beg to differ.

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Q.  ohmygiddygodspajamas asked you:
I absolutely love Lackadaisy. It’s my favorite webcomic ever, and it got me into an obsession with the Jazz Age and flappers! :) Anyway, I was looking through Louise Brook’s wikipedia page and realized that Ivy looks a lot like her. When you were sketching out your characters, did you base Ivy’s look on Louise Brooks?

A.  That’s who she borrowed her hairstyle from.  A lot of girls did so back in the 20’s, actually.  Louise Brooks’ bobbed cut was all the rage.
That’s about where the similarities end, though.  Brooks played both flappers and vamps over the course of her career, but her photos have an almost unerringly dignified, elegant maturity about them.  I’m sure Ivy would like to think of herself that way, but she’s more of a teeny-bopper sprite at the present stage of her existence.

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Q.  speaksick asked you:
Ivy is a very small girl. I sympathize with her greatly. What does our tiny flapper do in a big buck’s world? Does she ask for help, or does she do the same thing I do and cause countless accidents with self-made stepladders?

A.  She’s not averse to climbing, even if she’d be scolded for unladylike behavior by any number of stodgy Victorians.  She’s also not averse to wrangling Viktor to reach something for her.  If nothing else, it’s an excuse to engage him in her ritual sport of gab and pester.

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Q.  grimogretricks asked you:
Okay, so sorry for repeating this from the Lackadaisy forum, I hope you don’t mind me duplicating it here. How do you see issues of race playing out in the Lackadaisy context, given that these were highly segregated, racist times, and yet the characters are cats? Do you see it as analogous to the human world this way? Is race something you intend to deal with in the comic at all and did the historical context of racism inform the depiction in any way of Serafine and Nico?

A.  Serafine and Nico are largely a reflection of my impressions of an interest in New Orleans and its rich, magnetic amalgam of cultures.  That encompasses a variety of languages, ethnicities and races, as do those two characters, but they aren’t intended as an anchor point for introducing racism as a theme into the comic.
Racism was indeed prevalent in the 20’s (and, well, for the whole of American history, really), but Lackadaisy won’t touch on it very much.  If I had intended it to, I probably would have either made the characters human, or else might have employed some visual device as metaphor for differences of race or nationality the way comics like Maus or Blacksad have done.
My general glossing over of the issue of racism isn’t an attempt to candy-coat or dispense false impressions, though.  For any snapshot of history there’s a world’s worth of zeitgeist, culture, politics, societal attitudes, religious influences, trends and fashions, social progress and setbacks, new technologies, wars and conflicts to consider and, realistically, for any given story, you have to pick which things among all of that will carry much plot-weight and which things won’t.

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Q.  where is zib from???

A.  Milwaukee, originally.

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Q.  girlwithgreenglasses asked you:
I regularly alarm my roommate by giggling incessantly at Rocky’s antics. Do you ever write or draw Rocky’s part in the comic and then sit there giggling to yourself for ten minutes, amazed at your own brilliance/clear signs of insanity?

A.  Well, I’m glad he amuses. =)
I sometimes laugh at what I’m drawing while I’m drawing it.  I generally leave the triumphant, self-congratulatory laughter up to Rocky, though.  Mine’s usually more of a, “This is so stupid.  I can’t believe I’m going to put my name on this and then let other people look at it.” kind of laugh.

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Q.  What is the most creepy “fan” letter you ever recieved?

A.  Well, I once had an email correspondence with someone that started out innocently enough as a request for artistic advice (to which I responded) and spiraled into a baffling, unsettling affair.  We had probably three of four intermittent email exchanges on the subject of art, friendly but brief and certainly not romantic…which is why I was later perplexed to find that this person had called my place of employment (the office number was available on the company web site), had somehow figured out what my extension was, and had left me a long rambling marriage proposal voicemail.  When I failed to respond favorably to this, this person then set about sending me emails of a decidedly agitated tone, claiming psychic ability with which he could see the interior of my home and predict things that would happen to me.  There was a side-slathering of insults, warnings and accusations included in these emails mixed among offers to forgive whatever transgression I had made in his estimation, and implications that he was considering flying to St. Louis to see me.  I told the sender to stop writing and when that failed to work, resorted to ignoring the emails suspecting my acknowledgment of them might be fueling ongoing attempts to reach me.  That seemed to do the trick, fortunately.  Anyway, that was some number of years ago but certainly stood out as..uh..memorable.

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Q.  saitenyo asked you:
I know Rocky was based on your real cat of the same name. Was he a lynx-point siamese mix by any chance? I have a lynx-point named Apollo, and Rocky reminds me of him quite a bit, in both appearance and slightly deranged personality.

A.  He was indeed!  I’ve heard from a lot of people with lynx-points since I did this painting of Rocky (the actual cat).  Perhaps I’m cherry-picking my data, but it seems an overabundance of personality is a common feature among them. =)

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Q.  phoenixblueart asked you:
Tracy, your art is wonderful, and the stories you tell seize the imagination. I know you’re very busy, but… if you could give a piece of advice to an aspiring artist, what would it be? I find it very difficult to motivate myself to keep practicing when my work goes unnoticed and unwanted. Sometimes it feels like it might be better not to even try than to spend a lot more time and energy only to fail. Did you ever feel like that?

A.  Thanks very much!
I have experienced the sense of futility before, yes, not to mention the jealousies, frustrations and indignations that, I suppose, go hand in hand with being an artist on the internet.  Some of that’s unavoidable - we’re all human after all - but you have to fend off the dejection or learn to work through it to get somewhere. 
It helps not to define all sense of failure or success by how many people notice you.  Base it foremost on artistic progress milestones you set for yourself.  I you couldn’t draw feet very well, but after a lot of sketching practice you finally got the hang of it, that’s a success.
Lastly, remember that being noticed and wanted isn’t an instantaneous reward.  It’s not owed you the moment to deem yourself an artist.  It’s the eventual result of a lot of trying, a lot of failing, and a lot of time and energy spent.

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Q.  How did Rocky get into Zib’s band?

A.  With the aid of some compassion on Mitzi’s part.

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Q.  Something that has been eating at my mind is this: pronouncing Asa’s name. Since you write your comic’s text in all caps, I can’t tell if his name is supposed to be read aloud as A.S.A. (letter by letter, like initials for some other long first-middle-middle names) or as “Asa,” one word, two syllables, azzzzza. I believe it’s the second, but my friends keep calling him A S A. Can you set us right once and for all? Much obliged!

A.  It’s Asa.  The pronunciation is roughly Ay-suh or Ace-uh.  Rhymes with mesa.  Like a lot of names common in western culture, it’s of biblical origin.

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Q.  What could we do as readers to help make Lackadaisy more of a wage earner for you?

A.  It’s thoughtful of you to ask.  I appreciate that you’d take any interest.  Thank you.
It’s not your duty to be concerned with that, though.  If I want it to pay my bills, it’s my duty to figure out how to build a viable business plan around it, should that be possible.

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Q.  halogram asked you:
How do you keep making your lovely comics? What inspires you to keep going? I’ve tried several different ideas, characters, settings, etc. for my comics but I always lose interest in it at some point or another. What deep secrets do you possess that keeps you so determined to finish your story?

A.  It helps to make it about something that you’ve had an ongoing or longstanding interest in.  Lackadaisy is built around stuff I like and probably will never stop liking.  It’s pretty self-indulgent that way, but writing what interests you keeps you interested, as it goes.
Energy and inspiration tend to ebb and flow in fickle ways.  It’s gloriously easy to find the determination to work when it’s there, but if you wait around for it, you won’t get anything done. Instead, you’ll often have to substitute some self-discipline in its place, dig your heels in, stop goofing around on tumblr and get some damn work done.
Oops, I had better go. =)