TLCassis Summer Camp 2024 Prep Homework

My Summer Camp Competition Home Page!

See all the articles I've written so far, including my favorite so far this camp... A Food Myth in Arrhynsia - Virgins are Tasty
Tlcassis Summer Camp 2024 Competition Page

So... Summer Camp is Almost Here Again!

And I'm really looking forward to it this year! I have been absent from participating in the community for several months - I've been dealing with a very challenging situation as my parents reach frail old age. We have taken up the burden of moving them across country over 2000 miles and settling them nearby in our neighborhood where we can ensure that they recieve the support and honor their lives of love and service and sacrifice for others deserves. It is a joy to have them near us, but it is hard to see such strong, vibrant and loving people fail in health so quickly.
This year I hope to judge a category of articles again. If I get to do so, I will publish a guide to my judging criteria in the folder with submitted articles on the first Saturday after the live stream when the category is announced. The criteria will change from previous years, but will also have many common elements.

My Homework

Week One Theme: Change
We live in a world that changes so incredibly quickly, that there is no way for people to keep up with it. When you stop and think that less than 100 years ago common, ordinary people were cooking on wood stoves (my father for example used to chop the wood for his mom before he went to school), it is obvious that the rate of change in our world today is outside the ability of our biological and spiritual coping mechanisms to deal with. The people of Arrhynsia are not terribly different from humanity, so change is something they will have to deal with too - and change at different paces.
This theme of change in my world will probably be characterized by my thoughts on change which boil down to "Make Change Thoughtfully". That will probably be stories of people navigating change both successfully and poorly.
We'll see how that manifests in Arrhynsia when the prompts materialize!

My Goals for Summer Camp

You probably know by now that I'm a bit AR, so I went and did the assignment... and wrote a random prompt of 300 words. The prompt I picked was:

Describe a location with no valuable resources, but everybody wants to live here. What is so special about this place?

Here it is for your reading enjoyment!

And after finding out that it takes 3 hours per article to write a prompt, I decided that I would need to moderate my expectations. So I'm only signing up for Silver. Of course, last year I signed up for Bronze and accomplished Diamond...
If you have interest, Hanhula ran the "World Anvil's Worst" unofficial competition which DID catch my fancy, though I'm afraid there was no prize for me...:-) Here's that entry - a silly set of villains, but no terrible CSS. I think it's a fun read!

Organization

Yeah. Right. Not sure if this is going to happen or not. But I can try...

Meta Update

So Janice and Dimitri said they update their metas every 6 months or so... Right. Not going to do it at that frequency, but it has been a hot minute since I reviewed my meta for Arrhynsia, so I did an update and here's a link to my refreshed meta. It's a whole lot more interesting than it used to be - mainly because Arrhynsia is a lot more fun as a world than it used to be. Also, I just have a better idea of my world and what world building is about than I used to.
Arrhynsia Meta

Week 2: Refuge

OK, this was just too funny when the week two topic was announced... because that was exactly the topic of my random prompt "try it" article Lēna Māja above. Guess I'm just in tune with the Founders this year...

Accountability Partner

I actually have 3 possible accountability partners for Summer Camp - one a WA builder who I really really admire, one my mom (the original accountability partner right?), and one a young writer who I have been mentoring and helped her develop a daily writing habit. I'll ask all three, and I'm sure at least one will. I mean, what's my mom going to say, no?
Anyway, if you are looking for someone to encourage you to meet your SC goals, you can DM me. I'd love to support you!

Styling...

Last year I started doing something that I really love and I'm going to try to do it again this year. When I was a little girl my mom had a library of black leather bound books called the "Comptons Encyclopedia". It was, actually, an encyclopedia, but I spent hours and hours reading it for pleasure. In fact, as an elementary school child I read the entire 1 meter wide bookshelf of 20ish volumes from cover to cover. Why? Because many of the articles had embedded stories in them. I loved this, and I started doing this last year to my world - writing a short story in each new article I wrote. Here's an example Thoven Chorter. In addition, I started cross linking my articles using article blocks as I did here in The Cataclysm - Death of a Continent. I'm going to do that this Summer Camp too I think, so there will be threads of articles each of which is not just liked to the other through wiki-like content, but which tells a continuing story woven through the articles. I've liked it so far, we'll see how it goes over with my readers.
And in the spirit of organizing, I am reworking my world's landing page. I won't be re-doing CSS to restyle the world - I am not remotely a CSS wizard - but it's time for an update, and I want people to get a good dose of what I'm working on while I progress in Summer Camp
UPDATE: I made my first cut at re-arranging and re-vamping my world's landing page. Painful. I know what I want, but trying to get it to happen - not as successful as I would have hoped. It's almost right, and I'll be twiddling with it for the next week or so to figure it out.