Start at 8:00am, end by 9:00pm. The time in between is spent drawing pages and little else more because my lost pages have been retrieved and I am now playing catch up. And although each day ends with a couple of pages penciled in, I find myself retiring to bed feeling frustrated because I know I still have quite a few pages ahead of me and still the entire lot to ink, and I'm so terribly behind schedule.
This is for a 14-page comix-essay thing (an essay told in comix format), which I'm now wishing I would've condensed into fewer pages, because working on it means time away from THE SOLAR GRID which I am also terribly behind on.
When you're behind, you find yourself working round the clock and never being satisfied with your output because no matter what you produce, you will still be behind schedule. It's an awful anxiety-ridden situation to be in and the only remedy in my mind is to develop better assessment abilities of how much time making something will require, in addition to accounting for potential mishaps/illnesses/special-circumstances that could delay production, and design your deadlines as such. Yet, I still plan everything according to best case scenarios which is wrong.
Also, one must account for doing other things. Ideally, you shouldn't have to spend your entire day at the drawing table (or writing table/computer desk/etc.). You want your day to be a good mix of work/exercise/reading/cooking/socializing, so best plan your deadlines with the idea of having only a handful of work-hours per day and definitely take weekends off. Be very vigilant about that.
Wife and kid in Mexico City for the summer. She made plans with the idea that I might be able to work remotely, which generally speaking is true (after all, this comix essay doesn't require me to be in Houston), but I do need my setup to be able to do what I do. Things like: drafting table, scanner, and all my tools and paperboards. But my plan is to catch up with them next month in time for my son's birthday. In the meantime, I have this comix essay to finish before Oslo which I still have to prepare a presentation for.