A few years ago I asked an artist* known for (a)incredibly detailed pages and (b)sometimes missing his deadline by years how long it took him to do one of his pages. "Five days," he said.

This was something of a revelation to me. Aside from the fact that the guy had incredibly arcane working habits, I could not imagine myself having to get up each day and face the same page for a full working week. By Wednesday morning I'd be ready to open a vein.

It struck me at the time that this might well be why so many artists are so slow. Artists today almost all have appallingly bad work habits. They think nothing of staying up till 3 in the morning, sleeping till noon, hanging with friends and stumbling to the drawing board around midnight. Working like this -- as I know from personal experience, early in my career -- is not a good way to get the job done. Work is invariably left unfinished, and is waiting the next day like a teacher waggling her finger at you for not getting your homework done. If this continues over more than a couple of days, that unfinished page starts to seem like an insurmountable obstacle. (Even today, when I have sane working hours, and generally apply myself diligently thru the day, there are occasional times when a page does not get finished by quitting time. I have learned not to leave that page waiting for me, but to set it aside, do another couple of pages, and then return to the unfinished page. Far less daunting.)