A long explanation for the long hiatus...

As you are aware, the latest MIDTOON comic strip was published on December 12, 2010. Up to this date there has not been a new strip published and no announcement has been made as to whether MIDTOON would continue or it would be over without a proper end.

Several people have asked various forms of the question WHAT is happening to MIDTOON and WHY.

I believe that once you enter the public life as a published author (even if it's a self-published webcomic with a small audience), you are entering into some kind of arrangement with the public. This arrangement may not be enforceable by law when both the commodity being offered and the method of delivery were free of charge, but there is still a sense of commitment that needs to exist, even if it is as simple as "You come to my page and I'll have something there for you to see".

For those who are interested in knowing why MIDTOON went into an unannounced recess (or hiatus, as others like to call it) I decided to post it here.

Last June, me and my family moved from our old place in Pacifica CA to a new apartment across the San Francisco Bay. The move was done to support my wife's career aspirations, so she could attend the University of California at Berkeley. There was no question about moving to support my wife, because she has already moved several times to support me (and may have to do so again in the future).

The move increased the length of my commute by almost one hour each way if driving or almost two hours if taking public transit. Reaching home later meant having less time (and energy, as I find commuting exhausting) to work on my comic strip.

My original plan was to lower the frequency of publication from three times per week to "whenever it gets done" and to work on the strip a little here and a little there as time allowed. Those who followed MIDTOON from June to December 2010 (and those who check the dates on the comic strips themselves) know that the publication schedule during that time was very erratic. My plan for working on the strip as time allowed was not very successful. I found that whenever I started working on it, I couldn't put it away and several nights I didn't have enough sleep. If I am not mistaken, the last strips I posted were drawn during my vacation in Puerto Rico.

Every time I wanted to work on MIDTOON and there were less than four hours available as a block to do so, I felt I couldn't do it. I never managed to convince myself to work "as time allowed" and I ended up frustrated and discouraged because I could not do something I love to do and I was not only "failing" the fans (if I'm allowed to call them that) of MIDTOON, but also losing the loyalty of the followers and the trust if the subscribers. The one things I wanted to avoid more than anything was to keep making and breaking promise after promise, thus the elimination of "Monday-Wednesday-Friday" from the website and from ads.

As of now, I really feel the need to get MIDTOON rolling again, and need to figure our the way to convince myself that "a little here and a little there" is better than nothing at all. I will have to figure out how to compartmentalize tasks to make it easier for me to interrupt the making of the strip and resume it at a later time.

For the time being, the schedule of MIDTOON will have to be unannounced. It will have to "be ready when it is ready" and hopefully people, including I, can live with that. I know I will lose a fraction of potential public by not having a regular schedule, and I don't know how significant that portion may be, but at this time the number of people visiting the site is zero, so I can't be too concerned with potential traffic losses.

One thing I would really need to avoid is unannounced pauses. If there is not going to be a new strip for a considerable length of time, I need to somehow let the readers know. Maybe update the status of the next strip in Tweeter or something like that. I would like to avoid sending status updates via email to subscribers because I have too much respect for my subscriber's mail boxes to be sending messages like "Hey I inked Erik's face today, working on Mabel's hair!"

As the week progresses and I organize my work, I should be able to get a better idea of the way my new work flow will look.

Now, let me finish this to get back to draw that hair...