Summer Camp 2021 Imaginaerium: Day 10

Hello everyone!

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.

And today, in honor of day 10 and the coming wave of prompts, we have a two for one special!

We'll start with anvilite and sage, DinoBob!

Tell us about yourself!

I started creating worlds for homebrewed D&D campaigns back before D&D had version numbers (or "advanced" designations). I like to think I've gotten better at it over 45 years, and now that it's sort of becoming my full-time job. I discovered World Anvil in a search to help get my latest world ideas organized,

What world are you working on for Summer Camp?

My current project world is the World of Cartyrion (https://www.cartyrion.com). I will be using Summercamp to plant seeds for an as-yet undeveloped region in the world known as the Kingdoms - mostly the lands ruled by the humans since they were brought into the world by their gods. I plan on it being a region filled with intrigue, plotting and subterfuge, with some good old-fashioned adventuring and dungeon-looting thrown in.

What is your past experience with Summer Camp?

I joined World Anvil on June 12th, 2020 - right in the midst of the preparation hype for last year's Summercamp. It would have been difficult to not get caught up in that hype, and so I jumped in without having any idea what to expect. By the time it was done, I had earned the Diamond Badge, I had started streaming on Twitch and had reached Affiliate level, and I haveen't looked back since.

What did I learn from the past Summer Camps?

The most important lesson I got from Summercamp 2020 was to not go into this year expecting to complete anything specific. Instead, let the prompts guide you to create interesting tidbits in your region of interest. If the piece of world you're focusing on is lacking basic structure (like geography, demographics, etc.), let the prompts end up showing you what you'll need to eventually complete the region. It may seem like a backward approach to some - it certainly did to me - but it works!

How do you go about generating ideas for the prompts?

About a quarter of the prompts will "speak to me" as I read them. I'll know exactly what I want to do as soon as I read these. Then about half of those will get completely reworked before the articles get submitted! For the rest, I spend each morning - rain or shine - sitting on my front porch with my cup of coffee and a cigar watching the world go by. I'll internally bounce ideas around for the less obvious prompts. I get 90% of my day's creative thinking done before that cigar is finished. Then it's back to the desk to actually get the words out.

What's your approach to this Summer Camp?

I'm going to go through this camp the way I did last year. Wait for the prompts... See where they tell me they want to go... Get the words written. I will be writing just about every day, and will be trying to average a prompt a day. Sometimes, I'll end up with three or four still in progress at the same time, but that's okay too.

What's your tricks for staying on track?

I'm one of the Anvilite Streamers. Streaming three times a week sort of keeps me accountable to my "audience" to stay on target. I get encouragement from viewers when I need it - and in return I offer as much encouragement as I can. Watching (or at least listening to) other streamers helps too.

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

Sixty-two years on this planet has given me the wisdom to realize that (a) nothing goes completely according to plan, but (b) things have a way of working themselves out. If I have a "nothing done day", there will be a "catch-up" day not far behind. I don't stress it. I'm a firm believer in the two-part adage: "Don't sweat the small stuff... and remember that it's ALL small stuff."

Any parting thoughts?

First of all, I want to thank the World Anvil community for being the absolute, without-question, best online community on the internet - period. And I want to especially thank Janet and Dimitris for creating this community, which is every bit as important to my enjoyment of (and hopefully success at) being an RPG setting and game developer as the World Anvil toolset is.
Second of all, I want to encourage everybody else in the community to just keep on writing. Whether its games, short stories, novels, artwork, whatever. Keep creating! You've got a huge, supportive family behind you and all the tools you'll ever need. All you need to do is supply the ideas to make your worlds a reality.

Many thanks, DinoBob :D

And lets go with a musical intermission between each one, too!

You can look anywhere and find inspiration

— Frank Gehry

Next up, we have Christopher Clark!

Tell us about yourself

Though the name on the spine of my books reads E. Christopher Clark, you can call me Chris. I've known I wanted to be a writer since the second or third grade, when I wrote down (and misspelled) "auther" as what I wanted to be when I grew up. Since then, I've earned a Bachelor's degree in Narrative Arts and a Master's degree in Creative Writing, as well as publishing 10 books (my suburban fantasy series The Stains of Time among them). But younger me, the one who wanted to be an "auther" when he grew up, is still hungry for more. So here we are.

What world are you working on for Summer Camp?

I’m working on the Clarkwoods Literary Universe, a world I started when I was 13 or 14 and haven’t stopped working on since. In particular, I’m working on the “weirder” part of the world: a kind of purgatory between iterations of the universe that I call Eden.

What is your past experience with Summer Camp?

Summer Camp 2020 was the first time I good and truly got involved with the World Anvil community, even though I’d been using WA for a while by that point. And it was life-changing for me.
Creating new stuff for my world alongside all of my fellow Anvilites was inspiring, and I found some amazing new writers to follow in the process. The prompts were just the right kind of direction for me in what felt like a rather directionless summer thanks to COVID, and seeing what others came up with for each prompt always prompted new ideas for me.

What did you learn from the past Summer Camps?

To pace myself and have faith that the ideas will come, if only I give my mind some time to play and daydream in between each writing session.
Also: I learned to look to others for inspiration when none was coming. Some of the prompts I had a hard time with were prompts others breezed through, and vice-versa. I’m pretty sure that sharing my own responses to the prompts helped folks who were struggling with the ones I found easy.

How do you go about generating ideas for the prompts?

I created a single note on my computer to store all of the prompts in. The day after each set of prompts was released, having given myself some time to percolate ideas, I wrote down brief one-line ideas for each prompt. If I couldn’t come up with an idea, I went for a walk around the yard (or a masked walk along the rail trail that runs behind my house. And if that didn’t work, I went to the World Anvil Discord server to see what others were coming up with.

What’s your approach to this Summer Camp?

I’m taking the same approach as I did last year: I’ll write down ideas after each set of prompts come out, and then I’ll tackle the ones that seem fun first. It shouldn’t be a slog. That’s my thing. If an idea for one isn’t coming right away, I’ll leave it alone for a while and see what my brain comes up with when I’m not pressuring it.
This is why I keep everything in one document. I don’t try to do them in order. If I’ve still got 1 from the first batch hanging around unwritten during Week 3, I’m not sweating it. It may very well be that a later prompt will prompt an idea that ties into the earlier one I was stumped on.

What’s your tricks for staying on track?

This may seem like I’m repeating myself, so forgive me, but my main trick is to have fun! The reason I love this event is that it’s an excuse to let my brain play for a month. And since I spend so much time these days polishing novels that have been years in the making (when I’m not working my 9-5 job that is, or spending time with my wife and kids), I stay on track with Summer Camp by remembering that it’s for fun, and that playing around is the name of the game for events like this.

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

I take a break and go do something else: play a game of Civilization VI, watch dumb YouTube videos for a while, read a book, or watch a movie. When in doubt, I go for a walk. Walking around my yard as a kid and talking to myself—that’s how I got started on my journey as a storyteller, and it’s a technique that still works.

Any final thoughts?

Read other people’s stuff to be get inspired! Don’t break yourself trying to read everything, but when you’re stuck: read what others are doing. It’s hard not to get inspired by the amazing community of creative people participating in challenges like this.

Thank you ECC :D

And some more music!

Ideas are cheap. It’s the execution that is all important.

— George R.R. Martin