I really like to draw. Perhaps I should say I like to doodle. I drew the Avatar of me on the right, and I am forever doodling on my desk calendar at work.

I've been drawing as long as I can remember. When I discovered comic books, i started drawing superheroes. For a time, until I got talke out of it, I even thought about attending an art school in New Jersey. Thanks, Mom!

To have comics to draw, I also had to write. Generally, I wrote thinly disguised Star Trek stories. I also wrote superhero comics. By and large, they all sucked.

A few years ago, I started scanning the pictures of my year as an exchange student in Japan. I wanted to save them before they deteriorated. While showing them to my co-workers, one of the ladies said, "I wish I knew the whole story." I tried to explain, that, well, this is the whole story. "No. There's more to it than that."

I spent a few months thinking about what she said, and thought I would write a novel/travelogue of my stay in Japan.

I made a few abortive attempts, trying to incorporate some of the stuff I wrote while there, and stuff done after I returned home. But I realized I was too far away from that time to do the travelogue properly. And since I didn't want to needlessly offend anyone I went to school with, I had created an alternate cast of characters.

I did a second outline of the story that removed a couple of extraneous characters, and eliminated the travelogue elements. Something still wasn't right, so I sat down and flipped through my pictures asking "What if. . .?" Then I found the story!

I did one final outline and started to write. I wrote about forty pages before I realized that a novel might not be the way to go. So I decided to draw it.

More tomorrow.