Don't worry about what anyone will think about your personal projects except for you. What do you like to draw? How can you set things up to shamelessly pander to yourself in every frame?

As an example, look at Mike Mignola's 'Hellboy'. Mignola likes drawing monsters, plain and simple. By making the central character of his personal project a big crazy-looking monster, he knows that whatever else he has to draw in a page, he's always gonna get to have some fun drawing a monster.

One other thing that's been working for me a lot is collaboration. I'm working on a comic book with my husband - we both created it, he does the writing, I do the art. I'm not the only person I'll be disappointing if it ends up on the pile of abandoned projects; I'll be disappointing him, too. Who's in your life that thinks close enough to you that you can get together and jam with them? (And yes, this comic is set up so that pretty much every page involves me drawing a mix of things that're a challenge, and things that are just plain fun.) It's on hold for the past couple of months because the Muses smacked me upside the head with a Tarot deck - but I'm aching to get back to it. Because I really want to see the final product.

And, of course, you need to take time to gestate something big and personal. Reading lots of weird things and letting them stew to see what ideas stay with you and want to be developed further is as much a part of the process as actually making it!