In the period between "Rave Master" and "Fairy Tail", all but one of Mashima's assistant's left, and the artist said making sure that the three new ones knew what to do was the hardest thing throughout the first year of serialization. Mashima described his weekly schedule for creating individual chapters of "Fairy Tail" in 2008: script and storyboards were written on Monday, rough sketches the following day, and drawing and inking were done Wednesday through Friday; time in the weekends was for "Monster Hunter Orage", a monthly series Mashima was writing at the same time. He usually thought up new chapters while working on the current ones. Mashima had six assistants in 2008 that worked in an area with seven desks, as well as a sofa and TV for video games. In 2011, he stated that he worked six days a week, for 17 hours a day.