Well-loved.

I always keep a notebook. I’ve had this red one for ages. It was assigned as my notebook for creative writing, and my first entry was in August 2011. I drabbled my way through the pages over the years. No really, years. I’d put together a few words of random dialogue and see where they’d lead me. I’d imagine a nugget of story and play out a scene. The ideas would emerge, some of them pretty good ones, but they’d inevitably fizzle out. The first half of the notebook is disjointed. Scattered. Unfinished.

Then, in May 2015, I had the wild idea to make a webcomic.

So many pages!

The entire second half of this notebook is filled with prep work for Dog and Bird. Character development, long-term plots points, drafts, jokes, re-written jokes, re-re-written jokes. Far from fizzling, I felt like I always had thoughts on where the project might go or how to make it better. Even when I was stuck, the work still felt so satisfying.

I’m a writer first and foremost, so finishing off this notebook is an exciting milestone. It’s the first artifact I have of Dog and Bird’s beginning. I’ve re-read all of the notes and drafts a few times since beginning work on the project, and each time I do, I get excited about it all over again.

Some early drafting of strip #6.

Thanks for being with me for these 50-odd strips and the many hundred pages of behind-the-scenes work that helped make them happen. Here’s to lots more comics and many, many more notebooks.

(P.S. – If any of the hundred-some folks who found this via Reddit have stuck around, hello! Welcome to the party. I hope you like puns!)