This is the story of how I went from doing normal things in a normal part of my day to creating a character, a story, and a new writing project.

Last Friday, I was alphabetizing a list for work, and I decided to write it out by hand instead of typing it. While I was putting pen to paper, a quote from an episode of The Office came to mind from a scene where Michael pretends to be a robot. Watch the clip below.

Then I imagined a robot in a field of other robots with a giant, red heart on his chest. And, before I knew it, I drew him—LoveBot 0.1.

Then I drew him again and changed a few features—LoveBot 0.2.

Then I drew him again with more changes and much bigger—LoveBot 0.3.

LoveBot 0.3

Now before you start getting all judgey about my ability (or inability) to draw, let me remind you that this is version 0.3. This isn’t version 1.0. Version 0.3 is a prototype.

When I’d landed LoveBot 0.3, I told Erin about it and sent her a picture. We talked about whether his arms were like coils or dryer vents. We talked about his personality and his primary directive and where he worked.

Then we agreed that LoveBot needed his own comic/graphic novel.

During my lunch break, I wrote a short story that—in my newest, biggest dreams—will one day become the first graphic narrative about LoveBot. It was a very simple day-in-the-life-of-LoveBot story, and I’m proud of it.

That’s it. And it feels so strange when I look back and can pinpoint the moment when I went from writing a list to drawing a robot. If I could bottle that up and sell it, I would.

For now, I’ve got some work to do:

1. Polish that short story I wrote about LoveBot and post it here in the next couple of days.
2. Find someone who will turn that story into a graphic narrative.
3. ???
4. Profit.