Who I am

I am J D Lear, lover and dreamer about all things writing and writing craft. At the risk of sounding like a cliché, I’ve been writing since the moment I learned how, and, if you believe my parents, even before that, telling mindless stories verbally before I learned how to hold a pencil.

After finishing high school, I turned down a programming scholarship in order to pursue writing (still not sure if that was a good idea or not). I was accepted into a prestigious Bachelor of Fine Arts (Creative Writing Production) which I took slightly longer to complete due to spending a year on an exchange program in Wales. Best decision ever.

After finishing university, I worked as a technical writer in the IT space. It was a job that taught me discipline with my writing, and how to write about something I didn’t really enjoy, but in the end I burned out and had to resign.

I pivoted careers a couple of times since then, becoming a game tester, freelance writer, and an Assistant in Nursing for aged care. Now I finally feel ready to dedicate myself to my first passion once again: writing!

What to expect

Drafts and Dreams is all about writing skills and our dreams of perfecting the craft. There are stand-alone articles about a single topic of interest, lengthy article series where we do deep dives into the art of writing, and a serial cyberpunk fiction (sorry, this has been paused while I transition it to a different format).

I post every Sunday (Australian time, so GMT+10), and the content I post rotates between:

• A free article posted on a single stand-alone topic. These will always be free and you can read them at any time.

• A lengthy, in-depth deep dive, currently into creating engaging characters using Enneagram. This is paid content.

• Once a month, I’ll do a writing update, a more personal blog-style post where I share my ups and downs as an author.

The newsletter will keep you up to date whenever I post something new so you’ll never miss out on anything.

I will also include book reviews for free as I finish reading them. This won’t be to a set schedule as my reading speed varies depending on what else is going on in life at the time.

Finally, I will never use AI to write my articles. It’s all human generated by me.

Paid Subscription

I love all my subscribers, truly I do! You give me the courage and motivation to keep doing what I do, and if I can help improve and inspire you, then all the better. So if you can’t afford to (or simply don’t want to) become a paid subscriber, that’s perfectly fine, no guilt!

However, if you would like to support me in my writing life, you will get a few benefits beyond my undying appreciation.

• Access to article series, posted every second Sunday (again, Australian time, so GMT+10). Some topics are large and in-depth enough that a single article isn’t going to cut it. For example, the first series I covered was a Save The Cat Story Structure Breakdown, where I go into detail on each of the story beats this famous narrative structure uses. The next is Creating Engaging Characters with Enneagram. In situations like this, I’ll be posting articles in a series and these will be exclusive to paid subscribers.

• The ability to comment and be part of the community on any paid articles and, again, I will be replying personally to all comments!

• Access to the archive of all previously written articles.

I look forward to connecting with you all, and thank you for stopping by!