Writing Excuses

A workflow that made daily writing (and comics) possible—Howard Tayler takes us through two decades of the delightfully eccentric process behind Schlock Mercenary: text boxes in landscape Word, laser-printed pages he inked by hand, and a system that kept comics coming even through long COVID and chronic fatigue. The conversation shows how craft can stay constant even as ability, tools, and energy change. Howard shares how he rebuilt his systems to protect his writing time and created processes that served him. He also dives into practical hacks—index cards, banking writing time, moving your desk, and borrowing ideas from other creators. Expect puppy-training metaphors, unexpected tech, and a reminder that satisfaction can be the metric that matters.HomeworkTake a stack of index cards and storyboard one scene: on the front draw the panel (stick figures are fine), on the back handwrite the line of dialogue (add a little arrow to mark the speaker). Treat the scene like a comic—sequence the cards, play with the i