Hello~

I'm Lavender, and I've been... going at this for a really long time, but I haven't had any luck yet, but I'm still trying.

I say "Story Creator" because that's really what I'm focusing on - creating stories. Which is the tricky part, because writing nice sentences or paragraphs, or drawing nice panels, isn't my main focus. My main focus is creating characters as three-dimensional people with emotions that draw you into the stories; and believable worldbuilding that reflects my values and ideas. It's... difficult, because I can't find a lot of people who are focused on those things. But I'm trying ^_^

 

My large projects are, and have always been, my stories. I say "novels", but I might draw them as comics. I drew one of my main characters there, his name is Claudio. ^_^

I have four story projects in progress. They range from short - "Celestial Stone" and "Emerald Prince", both of which I intend to write as plays that can be performed at one time (because I like theatre and probably read/watch more plays than any other medium), and then adapt them into comics or novels; "Crown of Altair" (which is what Claudio is from), which will be a series of 3-5 books; and "The Royal Archives", which is going to be a really big project with a lot of worldbuilding, that I'm just jotting down and saving ideas as I come up with them, but I don't intend to work on that until the two stand-alone books, and at least the first book of Crown of Altair, are finished.

I am not sure how many I can finish in a year. The answer so far has been a solid "0", but I think I might be able to finish one by this time next year, if not by the end of the year. Once I finish one, each subsequent one will be easier in some respects (though more difficult in others, as I try to accomplish different things), so I will be able to develop something of a routine and plan by it.

 

My medium projects are chapters and illustrations for the stories. The "chapters" part is difficult, because I want to write the whole novel, and edit it as a whole piece, before I start posting it, and that's part of why I haven't been able to finish one yet... but in some ways, hopping between projects, starting and going as far as I can go before I get stuck, over and over again, has helped me figure out how not to get stuck, and... I've learned that I need to stop trying to force myself to do things this person's way or that person's way - if I meet a group of ten people, and they say that they all write their stores one chapter at a time, and post chapters before they've written the next part, and that anyone who doesn't want to do that is just fake and old-fashioned, ... that doesn't mean I have to force myself to do things their way. The same way doesn't work for everyone. 

So, in the sense of posting, individual chapters will serve the function of a "medium project", but in the sense of actually creating them, I'm not really dividing my work that way, the novels are really just large projects. So, for the sake of planning, illustrations might be the sort of "medium project" that I should factor in. 

 

My small projects will be either WIPs of illustrations, or simple sketches, to post to Instagram and Twitter, as well as to my personal blog that I've registered and need to set up. I will also post brief written scene sketches or worldbuilding notes that way. I realized today that I have barely said anything publicly about something in the CoA world called Cantrile, which is an opera/musical theatre style that Claudio and the other characters are studying. I've done a lot of worldbuilding about how the style works, and how it related to the cultures of that world, and I've come up with a lot of the details for the two languages that the plays are usually written in, as well as trends in the stories of the plays, and the way they adapt that world's history and mythology, and how those have changed over the years. So, even before I have chapters ready to post, I can write some blog posts about those, and link to them with drawings of Claudio and the other characters singing, dancing, and playing instruments (one character has a one-of-a-kind handmade lyre... I need to do a lot more research about what exactly that would look like, and how to make it functional yet believably peculiar, because it's peculiarity ties into the character development... but anyway). 

So, that can be a way to build community.

I have in the past been that type of person to just pressure myself to draw something new every day for Instagram... every MerMay, I burn out completely trying to fill a 24-page sketchbook with fully watercolored mermaid versions of my characters, and end up leaving most of them as line drawings and not drawing anything in June, though this year, I got a lot done on developing version 3 of Emerald Prince, which I'm further along with than I've ever been. 

 

I've... been posting online for years... over 10 years, though I admit, it's only the last two or three that my art has been anything remotely worth following, if even that. I... haven't been able to find any online friends, I comment on a lot of artists, try to make conversation, etc., but people don't respond. It could be because I'm too wordy, it could be because my subjects are too different from theirs... it's also possible that my language and location confuse the sites too much, and people never even see my posts (I live in Japan now, but I lived in the US when I started my accounts, and ~90% of the accounts I follow post in Japanese. I post in both Japanese and English... I realize that the field of how to do things like this in Japan is completely different than in other places. The people who have followed me and regularly like my posts (less than 10 people, and they never comment) are mostly in either Southeast Asia or Europe, and I've never lived in either of those places, but I imagine that shipping to there would be just as complicated from the US or Japan... )

Anyway, I'm just... sort of confused, but I guess the only thing to do is keep trying.

.... sorry this ended up being long. 

Anyway, thank you for this course, I think I really needed to hear this right now. 

I can't wait to watch some of your other courses.