Exploits of a Teenage Writer

Ahh, fall. The freezing mornings, cloudy skies, rainy days that last for weeks, and the start of the holiday mania. It’s my favorite time of the year. And this year is extra exciting.

I’m sure many of you are familiar with inktober. I’ve done it for two years in a row now, and I plan to make this my third. This year I’m tackling two prompt lists, the traditional inktober one, and one formed by the artist Isabelle Staub called babetober. I;ve been working on thumbnails for the babetober prompts throughout this month, though I think that my inktober pieces may end up being tiny pieces sketched and finalized during the month or after.

Inktober normally is challenging for me to make complete pieces for during the month, but this year I have the added challenge of work and school. My first quarter of college is starting in three days, and I’m to be starting work shortly after. Between going full time with classes and working, I’m not expecting to have much time to work too much on pieces, so it may be that I spend most of my time working on them over winter break.

If you follow me on Instagram or facebook last year, you’ll know I did a series of Halloween looks to count down the days. I plan to do that this year as well, but unless I get some time to do a few more looks, it will be a lot less looks than last year had, so the count down will cover less days.

If you want to see my inktober pieces or any of my other work, you can find me on Instagram and twitter at Z_ZaireLee, tumblr as ZZairelee, and Facebook as Zaire Lee. You can also find me on Snapchat (also Z_Zairelee).

There’s still prints up on my etsy shop, if you want to support me I’d love if you checked it out.

Exploits of a Teenage Writer

A dark, swirling mist enshrouded the desolate scape of knotted trees, the claw like branches reaching for the sky as if trying to drag themselves to an escape. You stand alone, listening to the erie whistling of the wind, pulling your clock tight around your body in an attempt to fend off the chill of the mist.

To your side, a fallen branch cracks. Then another. Turning, you see a form hobbleing towards you, one hauntingly familiar. No, you tell yourself. It couldn’t possibly be… could it?

The form is upon you now, and you see you are right. It truly is…..

Another blog post! And one long over due. I apologize for my lengthy abscense, though I feel it was necessary as I got other tasks in order and took on new ones. Coming up with content for a blog post seemed daunting. But it was not an unproductive hiatus.

I’ve nearly reached the half way point in my rewrites and edits, and am finally on the last scene of a set of events that was incredibly painful for me to write. The outline for Necromancer is still in the works, but I have a lot of odd end notes to translate down.

On the drawing front, I’ve started learning to ink, and gotten better at drawing stylized faces. I went through a long phase where I only did uncolored sketches, and I started falling back into coloring. I never did much in the way of highlighting or shading my colored pencil drawings, and I stumbled upon a way to do so and make it look cohesive.

For the next month and a half, I’ll be getting as much drawing and writing done as I can before classes are done, and I plan on writing up a couple more posts for here.

Places you can find me: Intsagram:https://www.instagram.com/z_zairelee/?hl=en

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Zaire-Lee-498722127175462/

Snapchat: @Z_ZaireLee

My shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/ZaireLeeArt?ref=s2-header-shopname&fbclid=IwAR0jhOwWDSYUVCMZAK5Wds8-dIGVjY3pp-WXlLgZ4MEA8o9mBNwiVYWk8p0

Exploits of a Teenage Writer

You’ve caught me red handed. Last week was unproductive in my typical tasks. I did however, spend some quality time with a friend I hadn’t seen in person in several months, and took a trip around some very interesting places, such as a replica of Stonehenge built to honor those who lost their lives in world war one. It was a beautiful place, and possibly as close to the real Stonehenge I’m going to get. I’m looking forward to a chance to visit it again.

I finally found a book to get me out of my rut. After reading Ender’s Game, I found myself stuck for what to read next. Over the weekend I picked up Rick Riordan’s Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, and now I’m hooked. No matter how deep I delve into the world of dark and broody young adult reads, I’ll always love Riordan’s style of writing comedic destruction.

This week I’m mainly going to be focusing on editing chapter one of Ancestors’ Wrath. I’m at a point where I’m very nearly satisfied with it (for now), but I’m working on adding more of the ever important descriptions. I tend to have two modes of writing descriptions, packing too many in and over describing everything, or adding only a sparse few that tend to leave the reader clueless. It’s an on going battle to find the Goldie Locks zone of it all. I’m currently trying out a tip I heard a while back for catching mistypes and areas that don’t flow as well which seems deceptively simple- changing the font.

The creator of this tip claims that changing the font provides the writing in a new light so your brain process it differently, allowing you to find the mistakes its accustomed to seeing and fix them. I’m not sure the validity of the statement, but it doesn’t hurt to try. I may also end up popping it into google translate and listening to it read by the AI to check that it all flows nicely (yes, I could read it aloud, but, honestly, I find it to be very awkward to read my own work aloud). I don’t remember the claims of the tip I got it from, but typing in comic sans is supposed to help with creativity or some such, so that’s the font I’m working in for the time being.

Exploits of a Teenage Writer

March was a productive month. I finished several art pieces and got further along on one than I’d anticipated, posted a video on youtube for the first time in ages, and recorded a new one to go up later this month. I met my goal for amount outlined in Necromancer and edited in Ancestors’ Wrath, enough so that I feel comfortable enough to give myself a little more to do this month.

This months goals consist of editing two chapters of Ancestors’ Wrath, getting to the three quarters mark of the outline for Necromancer, posting more both on here and my social medias, reading more (so far I’ve only been reading a half a book a month and I want to get up to reading three full books in a month), and working on more art projects, one of which is the long awaited canvas version of my map. I’ve been putting off working on it for quite some time now, for fear that my skill doesn’t match the quality it needs to be, but this month I’m pushing myself to get the sketch layer done and fine tune the skills I need for painting it.

I’m rather eager to work on many of the projects I have planned out, and feeling optimistic about keeping myself in line with posting more often. While I don’t think I’ll be back to my daily posting here any time soon, I do plan to get back on track with once a week posts.

Enjoy your April fools!

Exploits of a Teenage Writer

A note to any beginner writers out there: even if you don’t make a proper outline, at least jot down all the plot points you are considering, and if you have a scene running through your mind, write it out as soon as you get it (or in the next reasonable moment you can). I failed to do either with most of the scenes and plot points I’d created for Necromancer, and as I’m going through and making a proper outline, I’m finding I have to spend much more time than would really be necessary trying to remember the flow of events and exactly how I want certain scenes to play out. While I’m fairly certain I’ve got all the plot points I’d though of, I could be absolutely certain if I hadn’t decided to only store them all mentally.

Despite not writing out the plot points, I’ve managed to make quite a bit of progress on the outline for Necromancer. I’ve only got two more chapters left that have already be written out to tweak and outline, then comes the challenge of outlining without a base (wish me luck).

I’ve finished working on the page for Yelena, and got a final design for Aria and Eralei’s weapons. I’ve moved onto the coloring portion of a digital portrait and learned that the color picker can sometimes be unreliable. I’ve also started planning out two of the trees that will be in rather important drawings for Ancestors’ Wrath and a page for Naln, one of Aria’s mentors.

With only three days left in February, I’ll be spending most of my time working towards completing my goal of having the last two written chapters of Necromancer outlined.

Exploits of a Teenage Writer

It’s been a couple weeks since I posted, but fear not, for I have put the time to good use. I’ve finished with the outline for Ancestors’ Wrath and made it several (very detailed) chapters into the outline for Necromancer. Surprisingly, though I detested the outlining process originally, I’ve been rather enjoying it now. Coming up with all the plot points and details is making me ecstatic to get to a point where I can fully write out the scenes.

I’ve recently been working on my digital art skills. One of the hardest parts for me in digital art is the sketching process. I’m prone to turning the paper when I work traditionally, and as the tablet I use for my digitally drawing is a gray slate, turning the work surface in photoshop (or turning the tablet itself) confuses me and messes with the way everything is meant to lay. Most of my focus has gone into figuring out how to sketch on it, and I think I’ve mostly nailed down the positioning and work flow for sketching. I’ve also found a brush that lays down color in a style that I like, and discovered the magic of the mixer brush. I’ll be posting some of my work on my social media this week for you all to see.

Aside from those two things, I’ve made some progress on outfit designs for a couple scenes in Ancestors’ Wrath, and started refining the weapon designs I’ve already made.

By the end of this week, I plan to have another chapter and a half of Necromancer outlined, the clothing designs finished, and the final bits of color added to a digital piece.

Exploits of a Teenage Writer

Got quite a bit of work done this week. I finished chapter six, and started chapter seven. My characters are nearly out of the woods (and into the forest). I had originally thought that chapter six was the last chapter fully in the elven kingdom, but I’d forgotten I decided against merging chapters seven and eight, so my characters have still not ventured outside their homeland. After I type up chapter seven, I will be doing a thorough round of editing on everything I’ve written up to this point.

I also did some watercolor work. I followed along with a skin painting tutorial from Danica Sills, and the result surprised me with its quality. It’s my best skin painting yet. Aside from that, I made progress on my concept page for Yelena, and started on a drawing for clothing for a couple of the characters to wear to a celebration.

Exploits of a Teenage Writer

So I might’ve got a little caught up in the making of Christmas presents and the over all holiday buzz during the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but I’m back!

Some of you may know that I was working on a secret project throughout November and December. The time has come that I can share was it was.

I drew and colored thirteen portraits for my best friend and his family, seven of which were their pets, and sent them as their Christmas gift. I’d drawn my best friend twice before, but I’d never attempted to draw the rest of his family, and most of my experience drawing pets or animals was bubble creatures, so I spent most of my time dedicated to making them all as perfect as possible. It was a welcome challenge to try and draw their fluffy cats.

Now that the holiday’s are out of the way, I’m turning my attention back to my book. Back in 2017, I came up with the goal to have my book ready to publish, or at the very least, ready to be sent off to a professional editor by the end of 2018. Sadly, I didn’t meet that goal, a fact I’m a little disappointed by. While I didn’t meet that goal, I made some prudent and enjoyable edits to my book, and this year, I’ll just keep working on it to get it to the point of completion. I do have a goal of being reasonably done with it by the end of August, just in time for me to be hopefully entering my first year of an associates degree.

2019 is going to be a busy year for me.

Exploits of a Teenage Writer

Been a bit since I made a post, so here’s a quick one to recap what I’ve been doing.

I’ve started on sketch book pages for each of the important characters I’ll end up drawing for my book. The pages include things important to the characters, like their weapons or the way their spells appear (as in the case with on character, Eralei, his often appear as geometric shapes with runes around them), items particular to them (necklaces, books, and the like), their hair and facial feature as a reference for future drawings, scars, piercings, and tattoos, including their placement, and a typical outfit for them. I’m making this simply to play around with their features and the differences between them (I have several different races in my book, so drawing them out to find what differences would be iconic between the characters is helpful, and it’s just nice to have a layout of the differences between the same race, so everyone looks different), and to have something unique to each character, so if I get stuck with ideas for them, I can look at the layout and see what might suite them. 

I’ve gotten more practice in with singing, piano playing, and dancing, even learning a few new moves and keys. I’m nearly to the point of playing two handedly, and I’m working on regaining my vocal range. 

I’ve gotten nearly all of chapter five typed up, and I’ve made some edits to it as well. I took a break from writing more of chapter eight to get the already rewritten chapters typed up. 

I’ve also made lovely progress on my side project, and though I’m not functioning on the time frame I’d originally planned for, I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. It’s proving to be quite the challenge, and it’s forcing me to expand my skills. 

Exploits of a Teenage Writer

Took a little break off, but I think I’m ready to get back at it. Over the time I’ve been inactive, I’ve gotten a little bit of writing done, as well as some work on my secret side project. I was given a manikin head over the weekend, and I’ve practiced my styling skills a bit too. 

Today, I’ll be writing a bit, and working on the canvas version of my map. I haven’t finished the portrait of my main character, but I’m still working on rethinking how I want to proceed- or if I even want to proceed. I’m tempted to erase it all and start completely over. I’ll also be putting in some time on my side project, hair styling (I’ve been practicing Dutch braids), and singing and dancing. 

Some of you might have been following me long enough to know I’ve been working to get my middle splits. I’ve finally been practicing consistently enough and pushing myself enough to almost have it. I’m close enough that I’ve started making a list of stretches I want to get after words.