Weekends don't count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless.

Until you stalk and overrun, you cannot devour anyone. -Hobbes

I've never sat down to quantify how many hours I actually spend on the strip. I use the deadlines to estimate my progress; each month I know that I have to produce so many strips, and by the end of the month I'll make sure that I have.

HOBBES: Virtue needs some cheaper thrills.

I don't think I'd have been in such a hurry to reach adulthood if I'd known the whole thing was going to be ad-libbed.

United Features had given me a development contract, which meant I was to work exclusively with them and rather than completing everything on my own and turning it in to them and having it rejected or accepted, I was working much more directly with the syndicate, turning in smaller batches much more frequently, and getting comments on them. The idea was that they would help me develop the strip and then, assuming that they liked it, it would flow into a normal contract for syndication.

Too often cartoonists just look at other cartoonists and, after a lot of inbreeding, everyone has the same funny look. The challenge of drawing is that there is no one right way to visually describe something. It's a good thing to confront your limitations and preconceptions every so often.