So, confession time. I've been having people ask me what's happening with my webcomic, and I've been kind of quiet on the issue thus far. Reason is, I'm a little ashamed at the answer. But in the interest of full disclosure, the sake of openness, and the blind hopes that someone here might be able to help, I finally feel obligated, and ready, to share.

I've never been very good at writing comedy. I know that sounds like an exaggerated attempt at modesty or low self esteem, but consider that professional cartoonists pump out seven strips a week, and even most webcomics run three times a week or more without a break, usually in full color. Me, I can't even hold down a twice-a-week schedule for more than a couple months straight. What's worse, almost every single comic I've ever done has run out after a few years. I just now added up all the comics I've stopped writing in my life; Podunk U, which ended last May, brings the total to ten.

Ever since I started inking Mandy strips I've been kidding myself about being able to keep up a regular schedule. The first several were pillaged from one of my other comics, whose canine protagonist didn't even talk. When I finally launched the comic, I did so knowing I hadn't written any new ones in months, but hoping that tying myself to a regular schedule would force the creative juices to start flowing. They did, but the results were disappointing. I devoted almost a year to a single storyline that still hasn't come close to reaching an end, when I had planned for a mostly gag-a-day series. I have also missed several updates, including an entire month last April, for lack of ideas.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. My website mysteriously goes down, as it had a few times before. After doing a little digging, it turned out the new company that had bought out my webhost (months ago, without my even being aware of it) had, without warning, spontaneously discontinued the free hosting service the previous host had offered. Add to that, a redesign of my website had been in development for a while, and due to compatibility issues with Safari, I decided I didn't want to re-launch the old one but instead wait till the new one was finished. This plus the search for a new host would take an indeterminate amount of time—indeterminate enough that I didn't want to get anyone's hopes up as to how soon they could expect the site to return.

And then, all those nagging feelings of impending failure crept right back up. Those voices that reminded me how poorly I was doing at maintaining a regular webcomic and asked, sincerely, how much longer it would take before I ran out of ideas and just gave up, and how much time, effort, and money I would end up investing in it before I finally admitted it to myself.

Fact is, I'm way better at creating comics than I am at actually writing them. And I am getting progressively worse: looking back at some of the comics in my folders from several years ago, a lot of them aren't very good by my standards now, but they clearly were for the time, and I was pumping out a lot more than two a week! That was just in the hours I had after school and homework; now I'm out of college with no day job and I'm feeling less inspired than ever. It's like somebody infected me with LIV (the Lack of Inspiration Virus) around the onset of college and my condition is gradually deteriorating until my idea-organ eventually fails and I die in a puddle of creative juices.

I don't know if there's a cure. I don't know if there's a treatment. And until one is found, I don't know if there's a snowball's chance I'll ever write comics again.

Is there a doctor in the house? :(