Round 2 - SummerCamp Pledge 2022

Last year was my first time participating in SummerCamp and it has accelerated my writing tremendously to the point where I am still, one year later, trying to write daily and push out articles for my world.

Current word count: 77587

I pledge to exceed the 100.000 word mark in my world by the end of Summer Camp 2022

— Me, a madlad, yet again.

Have I learned anything from my World Ember 2021 Pledge? Yes! Setting a large goal can push me to achieve great things, but deviating from it to pursuit waves of creative inspiration is just as valueable. As for this Summer Camp, I have an additional set of goals that I intend on following through.

Creative Goal:
I want to continue working on the foundations of my world!

My Motivation:
I want to start a campaign by the end of the year 2022!

Challenge Goal:
I aim for Diamond, but most importantly I want to have fun!

Themes

There are four main themes this year during summer camp: expanse, leadership, discovery, and montrous. Since I'm still working on the foundation of my world, these will be some epic prompts to move my setting forward and get a start on a proper campaign!

Expanses

There are a couple expanses on my map of Eshil that I should fill out. I intentionally left some spaces on the map relatively empty and vague which gives me some room to play around and add new things that come to mind without shooting myself in the foot of redoing the map again. I'm hoping to incorporate some of the summer camp prompts into Eshil, since that's the starting region for my campaign and fleshing that out is fairly important, I would say. The expanses that I cannot put in Eshil, I'll put somewhere else in my world because I can. ^^

Discovery

For me, discoveries go hand it hand with expanses as you can put interesting things to discover into the newly created expanses! Furthermore, Eshil is still fairly 'bare' as it comes to interesting things to discover that could be related to plots. Having a helping hand with the prompts should give me ample opportunity to create some interesting plot hooks to get a nice setup for the campaign. ^^

Eshil of Illtresi

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Leadership

As of now, I have the country of Illtresi which is likely to be a kingdom of sorts. However, all of this is still very vague. Besides, leaders come in all shapes and sizes for all sorts of organisations! Getting some extra inspiration to fill up the region and get a better grasp on organisations and leaderships will help immensely with further developing the world.

Monstrous

We all need our villains and bad guys. For that we need conflict, of which I have... none. ^,^" Fortunately, there will be some prompts targeted to make me think about these things. I hope to incorporate them all, or at least half, into Eshil to further enrich this region where I intend to start my campaign!

Inspiration

Coming up with new ideas and keeping them going requires a lot of motivation and inspiration. There are so many sources, but I do have a few primary ones that always help me push through. It isn't tied to worldbuilding, as I use them in all situations I come across.

Music

Music has always played a huge part in my life. It has helped me in times of need, but it has also brought me so much joy. I play the piano (mind you, I'm not the best player but I just enjoy playing a tune) and listen to music all the time. For me, I always try to find music that suits the situation and/or my mood; something that feels right for the moment. Here is a small subset of artists I've listened to recently: Ludovico Einaudi, Two Steps From Hell, Sabaton, Infected Mushroom, and Solence.

How does music tie into inspiration? Sometimes, a specific moment or a particular song stirrs up a certain feeling, or ideas. When listening to 'battle music' it's much easier to envision what it looks like, how it climaxes with horses charging into a wave of dwarfs, don't you think? It might just be me. ^^

Garden

Some of you may know that I have a little veggie and herb garden since the past few weeks. But I can hear some of you wonder already: how does a garden help with inspiration? I think this is a personal preference, but I love doing something with my hands. However, the most important part: it's highly rewarding. Nothing feels better than to tend to a plan, care for it, water it regularly and seeing it grow! Hell, I have tomatoes and paprikas! It excites me every day to find my plants actually producing things. It just makes me happy. ^^

How does this relate to inspiration? Well, doing the work and just fiddling around helps me calm down, and that's usually the moment where ideas will spring up. It's only a matter of quickly noting it down on a piece of paper, finish work in the garden, and get to my laptop to put it into an article.

World Anvil Discord Community

Sparring with other people about ideas and listening/reading about their ideas is super inspiring to me. It has resulted in so many ideas and articles in my world. Some born out of a little challenge, like the Lileon (which I later revised into a more proper article), and other rose just from interacting with people and getting excited about new ideas and perspectives. As someone who doesn't have many friends that do worldbuilding, the World Anvil Discord Community provides the perfect space to share ideas, gain new perspectives, and just banter with fellow worldbuilders.

My dear Hubby

Life would be very boring without another madlad. Sure, he knows nothing about worldbuilding, and it doesn't interest him one bit. However, when I need some help and am just venting left and right, he's always there to give a new take on the subject. He's also the one pulling me away from worldbuilding when I need it most, often without me knowing that I need it most. We all need to take care of ourselves during summercamp (and outside too, of course!), and there's no shame for getting a little help in that department. ^^

Regular Writing with Support

With my work schedule and the tendency of life doing what life does best, I'm certain that I cannot plan writing sessions every day. However, that doesn't mean I cannot get things done. I have two plans that I'm hoping to achieve during summer camp:

- Write 100 words every day before starting with work

- Write ideas in my worldbuilding notebook whenever they spring up

These two habits I'm hoping to develop should help me out a lot when I find time for a writing session to push out the articles. Having done some groundwork beforehand means I have more time to think how I want to write it, because I have covered the what with the above two habits. Will it work..? Who knows! It's a little experiment, so we'll see how it goes.

But writing alone without support is boring and demotivating. Therefore, I plan to hang out in the World Anvil Community Discord plenty times as well. Helping others and inspiring them for articles will likely help me with my articles as well. Furthermore, it is so much more fun to share ideas with others because the wildest additions can occur from these sparring sessions. Will I see you there, too?