1
Sure, it’s a tiny book made by hand. And sure, one could say it took this form because I’m too lazy to withstand the traditional publishing process. And sure, one could also say it’s because I’m a control freak and, as a response to making a living writing for other people, I had to have absolute control over my book from beginning to end.
All those things are true.
Still, I made a book. And I love it.
2
How long does it take to write a book?
If you want the easy answer, this one took about six months.
But if you want the real answer, years.
If I were to pinpoint when it all began, it had to be when I took a bookbinding class.
No, it was when I spent that summer out West and discovered zines.
No, it was when I coveted other people’s artbooks at artbook fairs.
OK fine.
There wasn’t really one moment, just a bunch of tiny ones that led up to this. In grad school, a lot of my professors mistook me for an art director. I was so upset I figured it was racism—like, OK why does the Asian have to be an art director and not a writer?!?!
I mean, both things can be true. There was some racism. But it was also because according to them, I drew like an art director—at least the kind from back in the days when people drew with their hands.
Quick, clean lines. Just enough to tell a story.
I’d like to say I got over it and embraced my penchant for words and visuals like an Asian, less illustrious and less talented Saul Steinberg, but no.
Fuck you, I told the skies. I’m a Writer with a capital W.
So I wrote short stories. Essays. Long form. Things with words and ONLY words.
“Up to you,” I’d tell the visual types at work. “I don’t have an opinion on what looks good. I’m just a writer!”
It was a lie, of course. I totally had opinions.
3
Over time, in between freelance gigs, free from the pressures of making money (because I paused my student loans and started living off my *gulp* savings), I let myself make what I was drawn to (pun unintended). Some words. Some visuals. My portfolio morphed. And instead of writing the essays I’d been writing since I could, well, write, I ended up making comics.
Unlike my other writing experiments, this happened on my own, outside of a program or a job.
Because I didn’t have to rely on it to eat, it was allowed to evolve on its own terms. I took breaks. Sometimes months. Sometimes I got into a groove and posted consistently. In full transparency, it was a pandemic anomaly. A moment in time where I could devote all my creative energy to a singular thing outside of work because the world literally shut down, and I was bedridden.
There wasn’t an outside entity telling me I had to do things a certain way within a certain time period.
It was self-directed. Short. Long. Funny. Sad.
With no purpose other than self-expression.
It was, I guess, art?
Which was weird. I never thought of myself as someone who made art.
When the world reopened and we were forced into a performance of normalcy I lost my creative routine. I had to redefine it. I knew I couldn’t dedicate the same attention and time I once did. I mean, there were places to go, boroughs to bike through, a man to marry.
4
But there’s just something about the intimacy of books.
That one-on-one conversation between the author and reader. How it belongs to a different time. How once it leaves my hands I have no idea whose hands it’ll end up in. What if it ends up on Beyonce’s dining table? Or at least Beyonce’s mailman’s cousin’s neighbor’s dining table?
That would be pretty sweet.
5
Compared to the internet, books reach far fewer people. But I knew the people mine would reach would be the people it was meant for.
The only problem was: I had no idea how to make one.
So, I had to be patient. I had to accept a few things:
- It would take longer than I wanted. Much, much longer.
- I would be bad at it. At first. And possibly 50 tries in.
- I would fail a lot and often.
- Finishing it would be enough.
In a world and industry where it’s easy to allow yourself to be defined by money, awards, scale, likes, visibility, applause or whatever, my barometer for success was finishing it.
And, well, I finished it.