Summer Camp 2021 Imaginaerium: Day 13

Hello everyone!

Ologies is a podcast that talks about varies scientist in experts in various -ology fields, from Volcanology to Teuthology to Myrmecology. As the host Alie Ward calls it, 'asking smart people dumb question to learn about their professional obsessions'. Here are some links to those very 'ologies to get you started:

For today's Imaginaerium, we are going to peer into the brilliant minds of the Anvilites who are taking part of Summer Camp and see what advice they have for us. One of WA's greatest assets is its amazing community, so lets get better together. Today, we'll talk to KrostaTina, who's work you should check out!

Tell us about yourself!

Hi! I am Simo, a 42 years old Italian vet surgeon, now living in UK with my husband and child, all Anvilites.

What world/s are you working on for Summer Camp?

During Summer Camp I'll try to focus on S'ard, my personal alternate history project, and on my secreted blue world that to date is still unnamed.

Check it out here;

Onfalu - S'ard land

Generic article | May 6, 2021

What is your past experience with Summer Camp?

I joined the WA discord community just short of 2020 SC and jumped straight in. Best choice I've ever made (ok, maybe ofter the one of starting to date my husband). I managed to finish all 33 prompts, and that gave me confidence on the fact that I can create an habit for writing, but by the end of the month my articles went from polished articles that I was proud of sharing to the community, to 300 words worth of sparse ideas for something just barely linked with the rest. And at the end of SC I just didn't have the energy to get back to fix them (some are still hidden in draft form). So overall I would say that while it is a good exercise and got me in an habit of thinking outside the box in my worldbuilding, not everything that came out of it was relevant to my world or interesting for the reader or for me.

What did you learn from the past Summer Camps?

I learnt that I love working side by side with other people on similar challenges. Or maybe I just love my WA found family.

How do you go about generating ideas for the prompts?

What worked last year was just throwing the silliest ideas to each other doing as much lateral thinking as we coud. I hope to have the time to do it this year too, because it was really fun.

What's your approach to this Summer Camp?

As I pledged, I plan to recover the pleasure to write just for fun. I don't have any commercial plans for my writing projects, so I will avoid to fix a quantifiable goal to it and I'll just enjoy the adventure with my people and look at the end of the month how much my world has grown.

What's your tricks for staying on track?

I'm not putting down a track this time, so I guess I don't plan to stay on it.

How do you handle those bad days when we get stuck or can't seem to get writing done?

I think the good thing of SC is that we have the prompts in batches so there is always something different to work on. When writing just doesn't come, I usually just switch to prettifying the articles I already have or just jot down a list of ideas.

How do you make sure you keep your personal goals realistic? What do you do if you realize a goal is not realistic?

I am usually very bad at keeping my goals realistic. I always try to pick up one more plate as soon as I free a bit of my schedule. As a business owner and vet (and homeschooling parent in the last year), I need to set goals all the time and they are quite heavy on my levels of stress and take away a lot of enjoyment from tasks. I decided that worldbuilding doesn't need to become another chore for me, so I am purposedly not setting goals that attach a number to my success, because the goals for my worldbuilding is the escapism and the friendships I made through it. And I am fairly sure those will carry on through SC.

Thanks Kros for joining us and sharing her wisdom! :D

And when you're done with that, here's some music to keep you company while you write... With a lot of really cool imagery!

"What if I fall?" Oh, my darling, what if you fly?
— Amy Tangerine

by Illahie

If you like what you've seen here and found it helpful, check out some of my other work and see it in action.

Mankind are not masters of this world, but children fumbling in the dark.

Araea is a weird-fantasy setting in a world where humanity has been forced to survive deep underground since time immemorial. The surface of the planet is a barren wasteland plagued by radiation, vicious storms and terrible beasts. In the dark, mankind have built cities and civilizations.

Araea

Welcome to the Megacorpolis! Greatest city in the world; run by marketing campaign and middle mangers, fueled by java and profit margins.

The Megacorpolis is a city of the future, free from notions of nationality or patriotism. It is a city ruled by corporations, by profit margins and marketing campaigns, run by middle-managers and algorithms. All under the watchful surveillance of everyone's friend, The Computer. Come on into the greatest city the world will ever see.

Megacorpolis

“They sacrificed to daemons, no-gods,
Gods they had never known,
New ones, who came but lately,
Who stirred not your fathers’ fears.”

The world stands at the dawn of the 21st century, entering an uncertain age. Monsters and magic, powers ancient beyond measure, lurk in the dark. In the shadows, another world lies next to our own, both a sanctuary and prison - a place beyond the reach of mortals. Welcome to Shedim, a dark occult world of horror and wonder. It is our modern world, where magic lurks in the dark and hides in an alternative dimension called the Shadow. In it walk both heroes and villains, prisoners and jailors, horrors and hope. In it, armaggedon awaits - or salvation.