Tip #4: Minimum baseline
What is your minimum baseline for doing your Zero Draft this month?
When we say minimum baseline, we mean a length of time and a frequency that feel doable for you. Easy, even. If you set the bar really low, you can always do more — but set it too high from the start, and you may suffer disappointment in yourself. We’re not here for that.
My minimum baseline for 2025 is:
I will ONLY work on my zero draft during our sessions. That’s the minimum I will do each week, and if I want to do more, that’s a bonus!
I have two major comics projects right now on top of being the Festival Director for the St. John’s Comic Arts Festival and working part time at a comics shop. Monday to Friday, I have festival tasks and work shifts to focus on, and my relaxation is built around drawings for big project #1. I have been hesitant to start project #2, which is a collaboration — and our zero draft sessions are the one time each week that I will be focused on project #2.
My role in project #2’s collaboration is to create drawings from someone else’s writings, and for both of us to write the structure and form of the book together. So, during our zero draft sessions, I’m going to be structuring the book from my perspective so that my collaborator and I can compare our visions and start to merge them. We need materials from each of us to start this process, so that’s what I will create in a quick, messy, zero draft style!
In fact, drawing a Zero Draft already IS a minimum baseline. It’s drawing with the minimum of legibility, for an audience of one (you), and committing to that low standard is facilitating a more difficult goal: getting it done.
Using this mindset of the minimum baseline is a trick for the brain. If what you choose to do seems mind-numbingly easy, you’re right on track.
Another trick that can help is to think of certain times in your day, or week, or month, as being emptied out for this purpose. We’re not looking to cram as much as possible into a small space. We’re clearing a small space of everything else so that we can enjoy this project fully, for a short time.
Enjoying yourself is the best way to ensure you’ll come back to your project after a pause. And coming back is the most important action, because comics are created over time.
That’s what this is all for anyway: fun! Keep the bar low, and remember we’re here to support each other to bring the joy.
To prepare for July, practice using the minimum baseline for another part of your life, and note how it feels! For many folks, the biggest challenge is to set a small enough goal. We often choose things that are too big to repeat, so I use a rule of halves: if you set a minimum baseline and you did not complete it EVEN ONCE, you chop it in half and go from there.
Tell me what you think! How does it feel to set really tiny goals for yourself? Is it easy to repeat them, or do they become harder in repetition?