Welcome To The Downjot

Lee Ball — Sun, 24 May 2026 06:35:16 +0000

Hi, I’m Lee, and I want to welcome you to the first post of my brand-new blog. If the name sounds familiar, it should. A few years back I had a little blog, my first blog, called Downjotter.com and I was pretty proud (I was so naïve). It ran from October 21, 2015 (my first official post) until now; unfortunately, my last post was September 7, 2021. Technically, it is still active and can be visited by clicking the link in case you are curious as to how this all began. Around my last post, life in all its glory and horror began to take center stage in my life. On top of that, the site began experiencing technical issues I could never get ahead of. Rather than walk back into that dumpster fire, I decided it was time to start over and do things the right way. So here we are.

The creative bug first bit me way back in kindergarten. If a five-year-old can really be considered focused, then my focus was on drawing cartoons characters. I drew mainly Peanuts, Beetle Bailey, and a few others from the Sunday Funnies section of the newspaper. Talk about showing my age. Throughout my learning years, I dabbled in the written word when it was necessary to keep my grades up. I would have to write the occasional story for Grammar class and then it was back to drawing.

It was during these early years, I fell in love with reading. I would read whenever I got the chance. Initially, my choices of reading material were history and space; I couldn’t get enough of either. Then, I was introduced to comic books. It was the perfect combination; new things to read and new things to try to draw. I still enjoy reading them. Close on the heels of comics came the gamechanger for me. I discovered fantasy novels. Conan the Barbarian by Robert E. Howard opened me up to worlds I had never imagined. It was somewhere in the majestic nation of Aquilonia where Conan became king that I ventured away from the aging barbarian to explore on my own. My journey led me to Middle Earth and J. R. R. Tolkein, and it was here among the hobbits and orcs, elves and wizards, dwarves and dragons, that something awakened deep inside of me. I wanted to be a writer, to adventure in my own worlds with my own characters. I wanted to create the people, the places, the monsters, that others wanted to adventure with. And that is what became my new focus.

High school is now 4 decades plus behind me and a pen and paper have been my constant companions. I have written everything from poetry (which provided me a steady income to buy comics in high school) to super-hero fan fiction, to short plays, to science fiction and fantasy. Through the years I have seen a couple things in print, as well as won an award on the national level for a religious poem. I have yet, however, fully committed to seeing a full body of work in print.

Throughout my long, and somewhat lackluster, writing career I have learned a lot about the craft and it is with this blog I intend to share some of the insight I have gained over the years with you. In addition to this accumulated knowledge, I intend to introduce you to the many authors through short bios who have influenced my own writing along the way. Many of these authors, in years past, have left behind their own accumulated knowledge concerning the art of writing and I will be sharing this as well.

So, there you go. Now you know what the future holds and, hopefully, you will check back in and see what I’ve jotted down.

Welcome to the Downjot

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Tolkein Archives - Downjot

Welcome To The Downjot