Welcome to the eighth writing club update!
Happy mid-February. I hope folks are keeping safe and comfortable. I managed to experience some crunchy snow finally, so that’s nice. Crnch crnch crnch, snow underfoot. In my list of sonic experiences this rates as high tier, maybe even higher than crunchy leaves.
If I had one piece of unsolicited advice it would be to take a long walk with only a notebook for company.
Okay that’s enough musing. On to the stars of our show - the Writers:
Please see last month’s post if you need to refresh your memory on what your goals were.
I can’t wait to hear your updates!
Heyo everyone! Grrgyle invited me over so I’m diving in right away!
What I’ve done this month:
- Completed the translation (to Italian) of Simulacra Navigans
- Written the fourth short story of Meteorina (7k words, in Italian) for a scifi contest
Goals for next month:
- Pick up Words of Tomorrow to add some scenes here and there before sending it to the editor (hopefully last time I tinker with that story)
- Finish sketching out the five stories and the worldbuilding for Kanteletar (solarpunk novel set in a library across 400y)
- Read the fourth solarpunk anthology by Italian authors (should come out next week)
Welcome to the writing club! I’m so glad you could join us.
That’s a real impressive introduction. What’s your secret to writing so much?
Being unemployed 😂
But when I still had a job I used to dedicate weekends to writing and weekdays to ponder ideas, so then when I sit in front of the file I can get a lot of words down with as few conceptual speedbumps as possible. I think that method works very well for me.
Rofl fair enough. I know what that’s like.
Although i do most of my writing in short (10+ minutes) bursts throughout the week. I would like to get better at committing to longer writing sessions.
This month my writing involved lots of notes & i got side tracked for a while creating concept art and world building for a pretend video game. I’ve thought about turning it into a fake game guide similar to Vermis.
Right now most of my writing is by hand since I’ve been getting inspired at work. This month I’m hoping to get my notes moved over to my home server and to continue plucking away at whichever project catches my eye.
I’m also hoping to get into a routine of writing everyday (grrgyl inspired me lol). I’ve been writing alot, but I’ve had a hard time keeping up momentum on one specific project. I’m hoping writing everyday might help keep up momentum on specific projects. Early morning would be best because it tends to be when I’m most inspired, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to get myself to wake up early enough.
… building for a pretend video game. I’ve thought about turning it into a fake game guide similar to Vermis.
??? Pretend video games??? That’s amazing. What a wonderful idea. I’d sure love to see what you’re working on there, if you ever feel like sharing.
Good luck with your morning writing!
I’ve done a little bit more work on my short story (I highlighted the 2 new paragraphs in green - at the bottom), including these attempts to describe a market in my world. It’s all very unrefined and WIP, but I think that might be my actual aesthetic. 🤷
What I’m currently most happy with is a very decent 2 week morning writing streak that’s been going on so far this February (left-most column is word count):
After reading this blog post I decided to set a goal of writing at least 100 words every morning, with 0 intention of sharing. Separating the writing process into these two modes has been hugely helpful:
- writing (just like dredging up words and putting them on a page),
- editing (removing, refining, considering an audience)
So for next month, my goal will be to continue this “streak” more or less - maybe doing some refining on the weekends. I hope to come up with at least a few good paragraphs that I can share.
Congrats on keeping up the streak! I like the new things you shared too :)
& just my opinion but I enjoy your writing style in that paragraph, it has stream of conciousness vibes
Your writing discipline is commendable! I myself have been struggling with working on my thesis. It feels like a chore. I’d rather write anything else, but can’t overcome the guilt of deviating from my duty.
I’m not sure theses are ever easy from everything I’ve heard over the years. Is there a way to break the task down into more manageable chunks?
Easier said than done, ofc… sorry lol, I don’t know why I can’t resist giving little unsolicited advicelets.
PS. Thank you very much for your kind comment. :)
We finished up the first playthrough of the campaign and I organized a second group with the intent to do another - it sounds like the new group is going to approach it very differently and I’m looking forward to seeing how it runs! The first group happened to play basically my ‘default’ expected approach and character types, so this will be interesting! It’s also kinda their first big exposure to solarpunk as a genre so I’m excited to help introduce them (and a little nervous).
I’ve been working on cleaning up the campaign book, writing in a bunch of sections that were incomplete before, editing existing ones, adding and upgrading character art, and making a bunch of locations art to make presenting a few complicated or detailed locations easier/faster for the GM. One of the Fully Automated devs is helping, he’s spin off his own version with the intent to try a few organizational structures and to eventually recombine the good changes into mine. He’s also been adding stats and backgrounds to the characters. Fully Automated NPCs tend to get a block of facts about them like what their education/work history looks like, their relationships, how public their presence online is, etc. I didn’t do any of that and just wrote a block of prose backstory for each. It looks like we’ll combine the two versions and make it a separate document from the rest of the guide (so it’s easier to navigate).
So yeah, we’re putting the polish on and doing some more playtesting since running it for the first group was both a great motivator and helped find and add a lot of circumstances and content.
We finished up the first playthrough of the campaign and I organized a second group with the intent to do another - it sounds like the new group is going to approach it very differently and I’m looking forward to seeing how it runs!
For a second I thought you meant you were running 2 campaigns simultaneously! That would do anyone’s head in. That’s cool that your two groups are coming at the campaign from different angles. Have you found any “bugs” or unexpected behaviour, or has it been pretty smooth sailing?
As an aside I played a casual game of Animal Adventures (D&D but you play animals), and I think I’ve become so steeped in the solarpunk ethos that it seemed strange to just dive right into a “traditional” hack and slash campaign. Like we just kill these henchmen? Why are they even henchmanning? Are they just pure evil?
Things I wouldn’t have questioned playing D&D back in the day, but now seem so odd.
We definitely found some situations where the first group did something very sensible that I hadn’t expected and had to write content for (much of that went straight into the guide) but no major bugs yet, just skipped or missed content. And I wrote the thing with the expectation that any group of players would only see a fraction of the content.
I do feel like FA does a good job of allowing you to act “reasonably” in any situation. I’ve seen it said that tabletop games tend to be better at (or more fun when) simulating fiction rather than simulating real life. Fiction tropes, movie set-piece action scenes, etc all sort of work better than mechanically-codified real life. But for some reason FA kinda hits this effective middle ground where it’s still a bit escapist but you can generally act how you would in a given situation IRL if you want. Somebody gets if your face, you de-escalate, etc. The big climactic situation at the end of the first campaign featured a single guy holed up with a bunch of weapons and a whole lot of regular people trying to solve what could become a lethal situation. It was quite tense (especially since I didn’t know how they’d handle it). And the players found a very clever set of solutions to eventually take the guy down without hurting him so he could face justice. Their plan (which included a drone they’d stolen from the bad guy, an item they crafted way back in the third session, some smooth talking, a sudden rush, and several great rolls) surprised me in the best way. And for bonus style points, the the one who ended up tackling this aged, old-world fascist was the group’s fairly meek environmental restoration specialist.
In everything up to that, they generally behaved like competent, clever, but otherwise ordinary people in a rather extraordinary situation and I really enjoyed watching them go.
