Personal Background and Career Origin

• Speaker is cartoonist who feels like outsider, missing "memo" about basic social interactions
  • Examples: dinner planning, elevator conversations, line cutting etiquette, leaving dinner parties
• "Tendency to see world like from outer space" was childhood liability but became career asset
• Started making cartoons for New Yorker ~decade ago
  • Initially kept ideas light, quirky, non-personal
  • Avoided being "too specific, too hard to relate to, possibly too female"

Transition to Autobiographical Work

• Breakup catalyzed shift to autobiographical drawing
• Used drawing as "strongest problem-solving tool" to diagram relationship pain
• Revelation: autobiographical work helped self-understanding AND showed people could relate
• Applied drawing method to various life problems:
  • Scheduling issues
  • Time management
  • Dating challenges

Genesis Graphic Novel Project

• Identified complex problem with God (Jewish, Old Testament context)
• Issue: God seems too confident, has everything figured out
• Speaker's view: creation = problem-solving/figuring things out
• God strikes speaker as "more king than Creator" - can't be both
• Experiment: remake Book of Genesis as graphic novel

Reimagined God Character

• Version of God: not confident, possibly woman
• Minimal changes needed to original sparse, ancient text
• Key reinterpretations:
  • Opening: God floating aimlessly due to artistic despondency over "messy wet mixed up dark first draft"
  • God draws horizon line, things fall into place
  • Adam/Eve banishment: not for disobedience but because they outgrew created world
  • Tower of Babel: scattered for God's introvert privacy needs, not power threat
  • Noah's flood: God incensed with herself, not mankind - knows she could have done better

Creative Process and Outcomes

• Final product: creation story with false starts, absurdities, but still creation story
• Features "self-conscious woman" who worries, makes mistakes, but remains "successful committed artist"
• Personal impact: new connection to Torah God, increased religious belonging
• Broader impact: reduced loneliness from feeling abnormal
• Comfort in world "created for her by equally awkward self-conscious God"

Current Perspective

• When worried about basic tasks (dinner planning), reminds self "God wouldn't know either"
• Drawing from life creates anxiety but gives confidence to "embrace cluelessness and just wing it"