a daily dispatch

student. artist. writer. reader. thief (of inspiration)

[hobipowers]

going into the new year with the same chaos 😂

[neil-gaiman]

I fear mortality any advice

You only really have one thing in common with everyone else who has ever lived, which is you are alive. You're part of a marching band of billions of people -- homo sapiens and the other variants of our species who added their DNA into the gene pool. So you're afraid of the big thing we all share. They were here, and then they weren't. We are here and one day we won't be here. And whether we fear mortality or regard Death as a comforting friend, we are all travelling down the same road, the one everyone travels.

And that's all the advice I've got.

[velinxi]

Hi I compiled all of my dvattra sketches into a zine. It's 62 pages of pure delusion and self indulgence, bon appetit.

[LINK]

[an-artthief]

daily dispatch 11: editing is unglamourous

helloooooo,

I have been MIA mostly because I'm trying to figure out a writing routine while falling back into a new full-time job. I've been a student all of my life, and this is the first time I have no plans to go back to school in the near future. So, I've been experimenting with when is the best time for me to work on all my writing projects.

It turns out 5:30 AM before my 7 AM start time is the best.

I've been editing the little romance story I wrote before The Cloak Maker. So much reworking haha! That first draft was missing so much. While it's been a real slog to do, I've been enjoying the process. It's mostly me rereading stuff I wrote and filling in 300 gaps that I left when I flew through the first draft.

During her segment of I Ain't Saying No Names on the R&B Money podcast, Jordin Sparks spoke about laying down different melodies and then piecing them together afterwards to find what she likes. I feel like that's how I write most of the time: write a bunch of different scenes and then piece it together better as I go.

[yuumei-art]

Weather Balloons 🎈 🌨️ ☀️ 🌧️ ✨

[rufinoniku]

[bonksoundeffect]

[Judgement intensifies]

[yeehawpim]

we go together Is a surreal slice-of-life webcomic by Pim updated three times a week

Edit: school pt 2

[an-artthief]

daily dispatch #10: first draft done?????

This is a hilariously ugly photo but the words THE END are all up in there!

This is the second first draft I've finished in a month! The Cloak Maker is done!!! This one is significantly longer than the little romance piece I wrote and finished a month ago. (It was also meant to be an in-between piece while I let that piece mellow. The Cloak Maker took on a life of its own.) I've had a lot of time on my hands and I'm very grateful. Writing has been very fun.

I love the whole writing process, but the editing process is so fun to me. Maybe it's because it's pretty technical and analytical. A little low-stakes battle between myself, the author and myself, the reader. This is also the first full-length story that I've shared with people that I know in the real world in many years (I've been writing around on the Internet for years), so I'm actually excited to have people who know me read something I've written again. The only stuff they've seen me write is policy assignments until this point.

I'm on a hiiiiiigh (and already thinking about the next project to work on lol). Maybe I should eat some chocolate as a congratulations.

[missfisherandjack-deactivated20]

1x07 Murder In Montparnasse

[thundergrace]

Just a couple of dudes reminding you that Aldis Hodge is, in fact, the sexiest man alive. In addition to being a horologist, he's also a painter and a violinist. He also went to school for architecture.

[an-artthief]

"Good intentions don't always mean good outcomes."

-an excerpt from a book i'm writing

[an-artthief]

daily dispatch #8: a mini comic

Just to kinda steer away from The Cloak Maker (writing today was more of a struggle, because everything I wrote seemed wrong), thought I'd show some of the process of a short comic I'm working on.

This scene from Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon Vol 2 (I'm currently reading the manga for the first time) had me thinking about soulmates. I'd read a soulmate fanfic around the same time too, which had me thinking about all those stories about soulmates and the different ways to discover them (i.e., no colour until you meet your soulmate, the red string of fate, being able to feel what your soulmate is feeling, writing on skin, etc).

I did a messy sketch of Her. I'd also started rewatching Cardcaptors on Netflix, hence the staff in her hand. (These characters don't have names so I've just been calling them Him and Her.)

I couldn't seem to get Him down at all though. Everything I was comfortable drawing and used to drawing didn't seem right. But I figured I'd just storyboard the comic and play around with Him until I found something I liked.

I managed to do some messy sketches for what I want the comic to look like. I'm horrible at drawing environments and characters doing things other than looking pretty, so this was an interesting challenge. And as you can tell, basically stick people at this stage.

I've started doing more refined sketches and have decided what I think I want Him to look like. I want to paint it traditionally since I feel a lot more confident doing that, so I'll need to lightbox these onto some watercolour paper eventually. I have dreams of doing a graphic novel and a children's book that way, so this is also a good test for the process.

Kinda in the mindset of "I'm never going to feel good enough to do it, so might as well do it anyway. Otherwise it'll never get done." So far, so good.

[an-artthief]

daily dispatch #7: writing intense scenes

Action scenes are always so interesting to me when I write them. I feel the emotions I'm trying to convey when I'm writing. Happy, sad, smutty, action. I feel all the things while I'm writing them.

I just finished writing an intense section of The Cloak Maker. I wasn't expecting it to be intense, but this story just seems to be telling itself. So, my heart is currently racing in my chest and I feel really on edge.

I'm not even sure how good any of the words I wrote today were. The scene kept moving forward and I was just along for the ride apparently. There's an element of mystery that I had expected when I first started writing this story months ago, but I didn't know what the mystery was going to be. At this point, just over 30000 words in, I'm still not 100% sure what the mystery is or what the motive is.

I guess my characters and I will discover it together.

[foxspirit1928]

Miss Fisher Snippets (163)

While Hugh was learning about the concept of “a paradox of pursuing a modern woman”, Dot was shedding tears in front of Miss Phryne, agonizing over “the way things are for married women”. As usual, Phryne provided guidance while letting her protégé reach her own conclusion, but this was such an important yet difficult life decision that for once Dot was probably hoping Miss Phryne would straight up tell her what to do.

(Posted 21-Oct-2023)

[an-artthief]

daily dispatch #7: word count & tracking

I'm always curious how other authors keep track of things. I assume for plotters, it's clearer where they are because they have a plan beforehand. But for those of us who don't do that, how do you keep track of what you've done? I only just recently started putting in titles (changed them for the photo) for things, since I'm jumping around from scene to scene when I write. It's been especially helpful for The Cloak Maker. And makes it easier for me to jump back down in the doc to where I'm currently writing.

But it's the word count that shocked me today.

For the longest time, the fact that I even had a chance to write was enough to know that I'd made progress. This month though, I've been writing SO much that the easiest way to keep track of what I'm outputting is word count. And it's blurry in the picture but that says 51 pages, 25807 words. I picked this story up again four days ago and had about 6000 handwritten words. So, that's almost 20000 new words over the last four days.

Just a little snapshot of the way I've been tracking myself in Notion. Rudimentary word count tracker and then all the projects that I have going in a database. While The Cloak Maker is in the writing stage, the only other thing I've been working on is the project I'm currently editing, so I guess all the others should technically be on hold.

[riibrego]

pumpkin patch 🎃

uncropped phone & tablet wallpaper sizes //  prints