In the summer of 2016, I took cartoonist/writer (and creative crush) Lynda Barry's week-long Writing the Unthinkable workshop in upstate New York hoping it would help my writing. 

It did. It also blew open a world I thought was off limits to me, a world of drawing and painting, two things I hadn't done since I was in grade school. She taught us, among many other mind-blowing things, how to draw quick 'headshots' of people. I was hooked. For the next week, when we weren't in class, I drew hundreds of people, their heads and shoulders, on 4x6 index cards. And after the class was over, I kept at it.

Joseph, the opening drawing in Wish You Were Real from Gus Town Books was one of the first ones I did during the workshop. As I colored in his portrait with watercolors, some biographical details started to come to me. I wrote them down.

He was in the first grade. He was a farm boy. He smelled like woodsmoke. His hair might feel like silk if he allowed you to touch it.

As I got going, the life stories got longer and more elaborate. Some days I was enjoying myself so much I felt euphoric. Art high!

These people (and one dog, a potato, and a whisper) feel real to me, even though I made up most things about them. This project was finished long ago, but in my imagination, these good people are alive and well and maybe traveling in each others' orbits as they go about their days.