beginning

"It's been a dark winter. I haven't been doing much."

"Yeah. Me neither."

"Do you ever feel like you're not what you say you are?"

"Yeah."

"Like really, you're no good?"

"Yeah. I have no idea how to write a book."

"I have no idea how to draw."

We look at each other across his kitchen table and our beasts look at each other too. My robber-barons who spend all day whispering fraud, fraud, fraud into my ears, his into his.

He gets up to pour coffee and I watch absently, thinking He has no idea. I can't believe he has no idea. He's so gifted. He sits again with a mug and opens his sketchbook.

"I like this." He looks down at my pieces of paper, pieces of story. "Let's do it."