In March 2019, I received the email confirming my acceptance into the JET Program and flew to Japan at the end of July. It was the first time I had ever lived completely on my own, geographically isolated from the rest of my family and friends. I was surrounded by complete strangers, but fortunately I made friends quickly, albeit haphazardly.

As luck would have it, I met a very good friend who introduced me to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and just so happened to be the Municipal Liaison of the Asia:Japan:Elsewhere Region at the time. She invited me to come to their kick-off event on November 3rd, and I took the opportunity to dig up that story I started back in 2017. I hadn’t touched it in a while considering the plot had taken a turn into a ditch, and I couldn’t quite figure out how to steer it back out. Whatever, I just started writing. And writing. And that’s the nature of NaNoWriMo: it doesn’t matter if it sucks, just keep writing.

Something in me clicked. Just do it? Even if it sucks? Sure, I guess. I did it. For the whole month of November, I wrote. I attended write-ins, I chatted with my friends, I met other passionate writers and artists like myself, and I just kept on writing.

As I wrote, I conjured beautiful and fantastical images, envisioning scenes as I put them down, and there was nothing else to do at home but chase that muse.

I soon wanted to put these beautiful visions down in more ways than just writing. I didn’t bring a single sketch pad with me to Japan, so I grabbed a piece of lined paper from one of my Japanese notebooks and drew some things.

Early concept sketches of two characters, Tika and Rono, from my story tentatively titled The Wanderers, December 2019.

They weren’t as pretty as I would have liked, but I pushed myself to keep going—similar to how I pushed myself to keep writing throughout November.

More practice sketches of Tika, December 2019

Given that it wasn’t a proper sketchbook, I felt more free to scribble, make mistakes, and just scratch lines on the page. But, it was frustrating; nothing I drew ever looked as good as it did in my head.

I started to lose steam, and god, I was so tired of my drawings never turning out right. Part of me wanted to quit, but the other part screamed: NO.

SHUT UP. SIT DOWN. DRAW.

So I picked up a sketchbook at Daiso and did exactly that.

I dusted off my old Pinterest account and practiced drawing from photos while also trying to draw from imagination.

I never understood other artists’ apprehension to showing people their sketchbook pages until my Japanese co-teacher encouraged me to show the sixth grade students my drawings for one of the lessons. In the words of those Japanese students: my drawings looked “kowaii” (scary).

Bad as it made me feel, I kept telling myself I needed to push through the pain; that was the only way to get better.

I took a systematic approach to improving my art. First, I found that just trying to draw the entire body, or even the entire face, was overwhelming. I needed to start smaller, so I broke it down into individual body parts.

A friend introduced me to Critical Role’s Pub Draw series, which had several very helpful videos with a professional guest artist who shared some of her drawing techniques and tips for character sketches. While sadly the series ended shortly after my discovery, it served as a valuable resource for me.

It reminded me that a large part of drawing is just making shapes, so artists will often warm up by just drawing circles over and over on a page. Very similar to how I just drew eyes, lips, and noses over and over to practice their shapes.

Some of the pages I filled to practice shapes and heads. January-February 2020

Towards the end of February 2020, my school’s admin staff announced that classes were cancelled for the next month due to the COVID-19 pandemic that had begun to sweep the globe. This meant I had more desk warming time at work—much of which I spent making class materials but part of which I also spent rewriting my story The Wanderers, which needed a lot of work.

Naturally from that story spawned a sequel with some additional characters that needed fleshing out. I played around with Nadia and Lola’s relationship, thinking it would be neat if they were friends. Then I played with the notion that they could be lovers, and, well, I figured if my story was lacking anything, it was queer relationships. So why not make it a little gayer?

In fact, why not make it a lot gayer?

To be continued in Part 4. . .