Creative Fatigue, anyone?

The silent battle no one really talks about. Plus...pretty pictures!

I don’t know about all of you but I started the new year off tired.

If one makes comics long enough, well, first of all, that person is probably crazy (looks in mirror).

You eventually reach a moment where you stare at a blank page or computer screen and think, “I have done this exact thing infinity times and somehow it has not gotten easier.” This is usually closely followed by the thought, “no one cares if I keep going anyway.”

That’s when, if one is self aware enough (I’m not … usually), they may realize they’re suffering from the kryptonite of all creative types: CREATIVE FATIGUE.

Creative fatigue shows up—not with a dramatic, smash-the-door-down entrance but as more of a dull, persistent resistance. Your hand knows how to draw the panel. Your brain knows how and what to write. Your heart, however, has stepped outside for a smoke and hasn’t come back yet.

Comic book creation is uniquely exhausting because the job asks you to be several different people at once. You’re the writer, inventing worlds and dialogue. You’re the penciler, translating ideas into storytelling, anatomy and perspective. You’re the inker, committing to decisions with no eraser safety net. You’re the letterer, quietly responsible for whether the whole thing reads smoothly or looks like a ransom note. You’re the colorist, trying to save the page with no time at all when the ball was dropped along the way. At every stage, you’re making hundreds of tiny choices, all of which feel important, and most of which no one will ever consciously notice.

Early on, adrenaline covers a lot of ground. You’re fueled by the idea that this project might be the one. The one that gets noticed; gets traction. You imagine readers discovering this thing you’ve been working your ass off to create and feeling exactly what you felt while making it.

That optimism is real, and it’s useful—but it has a shelf life.

Over time, the math becomes harder to ignore. The orders come in low. You realize how crowded the field is. You see how many good books disappear quietly. You start to understand that quality and hard work don’t necessarily equal success.

That’s when the fatigue deepens. When the idea of quitting begins to whisper in the back of the mind.

The desire to quit rarely arrives as a clean decision. For me, it shows up as avoidance. I check my email compulsively or tinker endlessly with page one instead of starting page two. A google search, a walk, a snack … a million forms of procrastination. Anything but the next panel. The work hasn’t become impossible—you’ve just grown tired of carrying the weight alone.

And yet, many of us keep going.

Part of that is love. Not the loud, infatuated love of early projects, but a quieter attachment to the language of comics itself. The way a page turn acts like a cliffhanger. The satisfaction of spotting blacks correctly to guide the viewer’s eye. The pleasure of a perfect line of dialogue. Even on bad days, there’s something comforting about the ritual: the page, the panels, the slow construction of a moment that you dream will resonate with the reader.

The other part is stubbornness. Creative stubbornness is refusing to let exhaustion have the final say. It’s continuing not because you’re confident of success, but because this is how you’ve learned to think. Comics are how you process the world. Stopping would feel less like rest and more like …cheating on oneself.

One of the most effective ways to survive comic-related burnout is deceptively simple: stop doing the part that’s draining you, and do a different part instead. When the writing feels impossible, letter a few finished pages. When penciling feels like wrestling wet cement, switch to inking and let muscle memory take over. When inking feels terrifying, do layouts. When everything feels heavy, organize files, prep pages, clean up dialogue. You’re still working—but you’re working sideways.

This isn’t avoidance; it’s rotation. Comics are modular by nature. Each stage engages a different mindset. Writing is expansive and vulnerable. Inking is decisive and physical. Lettering is technical and quietly creative. Moving between them gives your brain a chance to rest without fully disengaging. The project stays alive, even when your enthusiasm needs a breather.

There’s also a psychological relief in completing small, concrete tasks when the big picture feels overwhelming. Finishing inks on a page—even if the series feels doomed—still feels like a win. It reminds you that the work exists, that progress is measurable, that you are capable of finishing things even when belief is in short supply.

As optimism about commercial success fades, something else often takes its place: clarity. You stop making comics for an imaginary future audience and start making them for the person you are now. There’s a massive amount of freedom in not giving a fuck what anyone else might think. The work becomes less about breaking through and more about staying honest. None of it makes the creative fatigue disappear, but it makes it quieter, more manageable.

There’s humor in this phase, too, if you’re willing to laugh at yourself. The absurdity of pouring this much effort into a medium that requires folding, stapling, and convincing people to read left to right in tiny boxes. The private joke of knowing exactly how many hours of work went into a panel someone will look at once, for 4-6 seconds.

Soldiering on in comics rarely looks glamorous. It looks like working on page seventeen when no one is watching. It looks like switching from writing to inking because writing feels impossible that week. It looks like continuing even after the fantasy of making it has dimmed, because the act of making gives you meaning.

Creative fatigue doesn’t mean you’re finished. It means you’ve been at this long enough for the work to matter. And love—paired with a healthy amount of stubbornness—has a way of carrying you further than optimism ever could.

Every year for the last eight or nine, I’ve checked the creative furnace to see if there’s anything still burning down there and told myself, “OK, sucker. One more year.”

So here we go again. One more year. Second wind … activated!

All the art seen in this post is from the New Pain Two-In-One campaign currently running on Kickstarter, featuring the final issue of JUMP and our second collection of cover art, UNCOVERED #2. I’d love for you to check out the end result of my struggle through the last few months of creative fatigue. The end result is always worth it.

Your best friend,

Keith Champagne