Summer Camp 2021 Imaginaerium: Day 8

Hello everyone!

One of my core world building tenents is that life is inherently ridiculous. For every big dramatic moment, there's elements of just slapdash nonsense in the middle of it. Humans especially have a tendency to do ridiculous things for silly reasons.
Today, I'm bringing you a Podcast that talks about some of these ridiculous moments: Ridiculous History. To quote:

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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 AmélieIS, countess of commenting, murder-enthusiast, and all around awesome person!

Tell us about yourself!

I'm French and I have a Graduate Engineer Diploma and MSc in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and a PhD in Biomedical Science. I work as a researcher in neuroscience in Scotland and I spend all my free time writing novels—and now worldbuilding too since I joined WA! WA also gave me an excuse to go back to digital panting. Otherwise, I like listening to university lectures by the Great Courses on lots of science and history subjects.
I mainly write fantasy—high fantasy, science fantasy, or alternate history—with romantic subplots, and I love to shove my passions for science and history into my writing :D My goal is to get those novels traditionally published and I have several drafts almost ready to submit if only I can drag myself away from WA for a week or two…

What world are you working on for Summer Camp?

I'm working on an almost brand-new world—I had this idea several months ago and the costume challenge in May fitted it perfectly and so was the perfect occasion to create the world in WA.
It's an alternate history set in 1840s France—so after Napoléon's time, but still during the era of all of our revolutions—and also in the middle of the industrial revolution. The main character of the novel will be in the military engineering corps, and so this allows me to go crazy with the science and history aspect of the worldbuilding!

Check it out here:

What is your past experience with Summer Camp?

This is my first Summer Camp! I only joined WA in January—I met the twitch streamer corps in November during Nanowrimo and learnt about World Ember, but I thought I would never had enough to say to reach 10k words. Of course, as soon as I did finally join at the end of January, I proceeded to do just that! I'm really looking forwards to the rest of July and all the amazing thing all those prompts will make me create :D

How do you go about generating ideas for the prompts?

Prompts fall into two categories for me: either I immediately have the perfect ideas for it or it takes me a few hours to find it. The thing I really do not want to do is write an article just to answer a prompt but not have it fit perfectly with the world or the vision I have for it. It's important for me to keep the novel in the forefront of my mind to avoid the temptation.
For example, with the first batch of prompts, I was really annoyed at those myth ones because I couldn't see a way to make them fit perfectly—I could of course make them in another world, but for me that would take away part of the fun of the challenge. In the end, I'm really glad I didn't since by brooding over them while doing other stuff, I got the perfect inspiration on how to twist them until they could fit in with the rest of the world :D
As an advice to others, I would remind you that while it may seem tempting to answer the prompt as well as possible so as to "get a good mark" like we do the rest of the year for the other challenges, it's not the goal at all here. So long as it can be seen to vaguely fit the prompt, go for it! Unless the end goal for you is the worldbuiding itself, of course :p

What's your approach to this Summer Camp?

Covid has prevented me for travelling to get my passport renewed, so I'm blocked in the UK all summer. Now that I've gotten over my annoyance at the situation, I've shifted my holidays plan so that they can overlap July: I'll spend 3 weeks not leaving the house, getting into a terrible sleep schedule, and writing and procrastinating all day in front of the computer :D This will allow me to go crazy and really do what I want for the Summer Camp articles instead of being pressed for time and only doing the minimum to fit each prompt. And of course I'm fully "Diamond or Die" :p

What's your tricks for staying on track?

The plan is to have one day max per prompt. If I go beyond that, I'll just consider it done for now and come back to it next month. My goal is 1) have fun, 2) get something that will allow me to write the novel in November. So far it has allowed me to refocus on the important stuff and to not get lost too much into the research.

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

Whether for worldbuilding or novel writing, when something like that happens, I go do something else. People always speak of burning out when they get too intense into something, but for me it's more that I get bored and my brain needs some new stimulation. A thing that I really love to do since I joined WA is to go take cares of pictures—either just looking for them online, photoshopping pictures together or doing some digital painting—and put something on youtube in the background. I find it super relaxing and it allows my brain to disconnect. Though, I also try to set myself some limits for how long I'm allowed to do that or I would never get anything done :p

How do you make sure Summer Camp stays fun for you?

I have found two ways to make Summer Camp more fun for me:
1) Reading other people's articles is super fun and a good way to find either inspiration or motivation to write something—not by copying them but thanks to the ideas that comes to me while doing so. I also like to know what all my friends are doing and to get excited with them about it :D Getting to talk with other people about our worlds is really the best aspects of WA for me :D (and having a reading break is a good way to procrastinate :p)

Can confirm, works amazingly well. :D

2) A good trick I've found to make my articles a lot more fun to write and to read is quotes. During the Costume Challenge I created the character of a snarky sergeant giving talks to new recruits and always joking about people dying and the darker aspects of my world. I've brought that character back for Summer Camp and I'm including him in all of my articles this month :D In my other world, I don't have one specific characters but instead I try to tell small stories in a series of quotes and to have stupid characters get killed because of their actions :p Murder makes thing fun

Can also confirm snarky quotes and murder helps too >:D

It's really a delight to liven the articles that way and I recommend everyone to try to find something like that to make the writing fun for you too :D
And those who love the sergeant can be happy, because now he has graduated to a fully fledge secondary character in the novel! Character article possibly coming this month :p

Many thanks to Amélie for sharing her insights with us today :D

Finally, some music to keep you company while you write:

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

— Maya Angelou