SC23 Reading Challenge
Thoughts & Resolutions for the Remainder of 2023
It would be very wrong to say that Summer Camp wasn't rough this year. After finally moving house, I proceeded to get a new job that focused a lot on writing and creation that stunted a lot of my creativity when it came to this hobby. Right out of the gate, I started strong with articles, but as the month went on, I realized that burnout was going to happen if I didn't take a step back.
That being said, I wanted to look at the prompts that I did succeed in and look at how others completed these prompts so that in the future I could put out better content when I did feel like writing. So many people put out amazing work this month and I couldn't read them all, but here are a few of my favorites that drive me to be better.
A Powerful Organization in Your World
High Kingdom of Albis
I honestly could spend hours reading the articles Mihkel Rand puts out in his various worlds. The layouts are always stunning, the information answers any question the reader could have, and his maps are absolutely *chef's kiss*. While my husband has been the one focusing on writing our countries and kingdoms, reading the High Kingdom of Albis does give me an idea of how we might "level up" our writing in this area by delving more into political factions and past and current rulers.Shadow Council
Clandestine organizations steeped in secrets are great to add to any world but I feel like C. B. Ash does a great job with the prose and overall feel of this article and organization. The prose-heavy descriptions drew me in and kept me reading while the fact that such an organization was not infallible made it so much more realistic. Isekai is not free of such organizations but it is not something we have yet jumped into. Such groups have been alluded to, in our worldbuilding and within various TTRPG sessions, but it is something I would love to do more with and this article is a great inspiration for that.FAF
Sometimes I think when we write fantasy, we forget about the mundane things that can make our world more realistic while still being highly fantastical. I loved reading this article from Jaime Buckley because the topic is close to my own heart as an archivist. Such a topic may not be the most interesting to everyone, but Jaime's way of writing always draws me in and makes me want to read more, something I hope that I can give to readers in my writing.A Seat of Power (Of Any Kind!)
Etetol
Words are the meat of an article, but graphics can add so much more information without bloating an article with unnecessary paragraphs. Catoblepon usually stuns with CSS but the graphics and breakdown of this article very much draw the eye and add to what was written. I love this article for so many reasons, the coloration, the content, and the graphics. While I know very little about CSS, I honestly want to take inspiration from Cato (and TJ as well) and add graphical information to my articles going forward.Coruscia
If you want to talk about depth of detail, I think Han did a spectacular job with this article. The amount of detail about the city and the individual districts gives the reader a much fuller picture of the city. Overall, this is a stunning article. Cities are something I enjoy writing, especially large cities, and Han has given me a mark to strive towards going forward in terms of depth and breadth of information.Barcelona
Writing about places that exist in real life without being just another Wikipedia article is difficult, but Ondo succeeded with this rendition of Barcelona. This really gives me hope that I might be able to continue my second world in a similar manner when I always seemed to get stuck before.A Conflict Between Two Unequal Powers
The Customer is Not Always Right
I love conflict articles that are far from what you expect and this is definitely that! Mochi creates a conflict that I feel some of us know only too well and makes something somewhat humorous when conflicts are often considered darker and more upsetting pieces to write.Ethnarch Rebellion
When I think of great conflict articles on WA, those from Dhelian and Darkseid always come to mind. Once again, Dark gives us an amazing piece with enthralling and terrifying quotes that drove me to dive into a well-rounded account. This is one person I always look at for inspiration when I write my own conflicts and this article is just another great example.ABC War
Conflict articles often have a lot of content but few ever truly break down the powers on either side to the extent that Bart Weergang did here. I love this attention to detail and the amount of information because it truly shows the discrepancies between the various factions. I tend to have rough estimates for numbers in conflict articles but this makes me think that in some instances, it may be more fun and informative for the reader to have more concrete numbers.Revised 2023 Goals
Back in January, I made this goal because I didn't want to get too far ahead of myself with the possibility of reaching 1 million words as I wasn't sure what the year would bring. As of right now, we're one NaNo away from hitting this goal so we'll just continue forward and see what the rest of the year and WorldEmber bring us. Polish & Organize
While I may not have written much of anything in August, I did sort out my huge spreadsheet of Isekai once again and made a ton of new categories to make finding and sorting articles easier. This will be a never-ending process but I do feel like we're getting somewhere with this. Organization Sub-Goal: Updates & Rewrites
I am fully convinced I will be working on this goal until the actual end of time. There's still a lot of cleanup to do with very old articles and ones that still have hints of D&D left in them, but the process is at least moving forward. Organization Sub-Goal: Squash Stubs
This goal may be the one that is doing the best. To date, we have made fewer stubs this year than we've written and I focused solely on fleshing out stubs during Summer Camp. This trend should continue throughout the year and into WorldEmber.
I may have been a bit too overly ambitious in January when I set this as a goal. For nearly 6 months now, we have been dealing with the process of buying a house, moving, and getting settled in a new city. At this point, I don't have high hopes for a new map this year. TTRPG System
The work continues, although slower than we had hoped. We've turned to worldbuilding some of the areas and things that actually inform our rules, including skills that deal with politics and such, so the actual development has slowed in favor of getting what we need to make the system that we want.
As much as I really wanted this to happen, Adventure April landed right in the middle of my husband and I attempting to buy a house. Stress and little time to actually write make this an impossibility, even with all of my planning earlier in the year. I hope to take what I did plan out and try again next year when life should be a bit more stable, but we'll see.
Honoured to be on your list! I had the idea for the conlfict and I could NOT let it go, so I just had to write it xDD