At 6pm, my phone unexpectedly uttered a loud notification alarm, followed by the rattle of a small device vibrating on a tabletop. The little plastic trackball shines the occasional yellow before fading to darkness. 

When I unlock the device to see what it's on about, I'm presented with the picture of a little pink squid. Above the chibi mollusk, a yellow speech bubble reads off "Time to work! Draw something!!!" This isn't the first time it's done this; in fact, it's been doing this for over two days now. Each time reading messages like:

• Stop snoozing! Draw something!!!
• No more postponing! Draw something!!!
  
  ...and...
  
  
• You can do it! Draw something!!!

The reminders come from a small application called Asterid, that's synced to my RememberTheMilk account. It was easy enough to put it off the first time, but it's becoming more and more difficult to ignore my squidform task master. 

Oddly enough, I have been finding myself with the growing desire to draw. This has been a problem for me for over two years now. I simply haven't had it in me to keep it up. The reasons are only outnumbered by the excuses. I'm curious, however, if by going out of my way to add a task to my list, schedule a time or day to attend to my derelict creative pursuits, that I've subconsciously given myself a reason to draw something, rather than not.

Imagine your a novelist.

You have carried around a story in your head for almost an entire decade, but have been unable to write it. There have been several attempts, rewrites, false starts, and even one successful but aborted attempt. Life interrupts throughout all of this, making any attempt to sit down and get the damn thing onto parchment impossible.

You know the story covers about a year of time, encompassing four seasons in a familiar but alternate landscape. You want to see your story as short series of graphic novels -- four to match the number of seasons. You know that the seasons probably won't divide easily, but that's not your reason for selecting the length: Four books just feels right. 

And then you sit down and start running numbers. The first three books will be some 120 - 150 pages, so you agree on an average of about 137. The last book will be longer, almost 200. You decide to be ambitious and say 199. Okay, so you add it up: 137 * 3 + 199 = 610 pages.

610 pages.

Before you let the implication of that number set in, you decide to subdivide each book. A chapter runs about 23 to 27 pages. 25 on average. Divide. Average. You arrive at an estimate of 24 chapters.

610 pages. 24 chapters. 

24 stories. "Make bigger stories from several smaller ones," you recall from A Drifting Life. Use the smaller stories to resonate or explore the larger arcs. You look are your setting. Your characters. Subdivide. Take those subdivisions and explore them. Follow the characters as you look at that avenue. Is it interesting? How does this reflect on the overall theme?

Stop! Wait! you think, You can't possibly build a story like this! 

Or can you?

Sorry for the poor quality, I was in a dark room and only had a cell phone camera.

One of my favorite characters to think about in the Paper Girl story is Rasa. She's brash, highly technical, often snide, and very, very sure of herself. She's also of Punjabi decent.

One of the first challenges Pazi posed to me when working on the story was the race of Rasa and her twin brother Rama. I inherited the names from a friend's project, and -- like most caucazoid authors -- completely failed to consider race at all. I had felt obligated to avoid the issue entirely rather than step on people's toes. Pazi convinced me otherwise. I expect to make many, many stupid mistakes while writing Rasa. Hopefully she'll kick me in the ass when necessary.

You might have also wondered why I said Punjabi and not "Indian American". That's the funny thing about Paper Girl -- while it's set in northern Minnesota, it's not set in the United States...

A completed version of the previous Jhum pic. It turned out surprisingly better than I expected. The background really brought the piece together. The mist was also a complete mistake -- I had intended to render earth but the rendered greyscale looked much better.