Why «Everyday Matters»
My editor frowned and said that wasn’t really how books worked and that I needed to come up with a theme, a story, an arc, a reason for anyone to care and keep turning the pages. After some head scratching, I decided that maybe the theme could just be «A New York diary». Again my editor frowned. «Just ‘New York’? What about it? What’s unique about your perspective?»
My next idea: maybe it could have something to do with architecture (I had already drawn quite a lot of buildings) and she asked me from what perspective, what did I know about architecture, what was my POV on buildings and I said lamely, «I dunno, I just draw a lot of them.»
Finally, one tense Thursday evening she said, «Look, why do you draw? Why have you always drawn?» I snapped back that I hadn’t always drawn, that I’d only started a few years before, in my mid thirties. I guess I’d never told her that. «Well, why did you start?» she asked.
I explained that the reason I’d started was private, not something I could share in a book, too personal, too private. She kept prodding me until I explained that my wife had been run over by a subway train and that in the months after I had begun to draw and to chronicle our lives and stuff I liked and places I went and thoughts I had and so on.
There was a longish silence.