✍️ Writing

I got laid off from my job early in the month, and haven't had much luck finding a new one, so that has been sapping my will and energy for creative writing.

Thankfully, it has not dampened my appetite for reading, so I have been doing plenty of "research" for my story, in the form of reading many many short stories (primarily from World's Best SF #3, and the Analog and S&SF magazines), and various Wikipedia entries on indigenous lifeways. It's actually been nice just planting seeds in my creative garden, without asking it to produce anything.

My goal for this month (not counting my unfortunate requirement to secure a day job) is very humble: I would like to get back on track with sketching out my outline. I think if I can handle that with everything else that is going on, I will be quite proud.

I'm still working on the adventure module for Fully Automated! but I've definitely slowed down a bit. I know someone who does environmental restoration IRL so I want to work with them to add more information on testing sites for contamination, and to maybe try and build out a minigame around it. Then I have to write up one set of characters (build out descriptions and personalities and goals for them) and then go through and start adding all the game mechanics stuff. Right now, the campaign is essentially system-less. You could drop it into anything from GURPS to FATE but you'd have to work out the character stats etc that come into play when the dice start rolling. My goal is to stat out all the characters I've written descriptions for (which in FA includes a bit more history than I've currently got for some of them) and to script the handfull of possible combat encounters.

Outside of the game, I've finished a photobash of a solarpunk cargo ship and been doing research on other possibilities for solarpunk shipping. I've also had some awesome discussions here on slrpnk.net about things folks would like to see in scenes of ships, boats, and coasts, and about what they'd like to see in depictions of cities in wet areas (which many cities are or will be).

Most of my solarpunk projects start with a sort of input-gathering stage these days.

I've also been putting together a list of parts from cars which can be used in other (hopefully more solarpunk) ways. This is part of my ongoing attempts to get more reuse in solarpunk media - just trying to make including it easy for writers and artists.

So that's it, a lot of discussion, one bit of art, and some incremental progress on the campaign.

So this month went by in a blur, my sister stayed with me, and my full time job started up again. I haven't done much work on my book, but I have done a few story outlines/concepts over the month when ideas came to me.

They're probably not stories I'll ever flesh out fully. It's still fun to imagine entirely different story concepts and plots. Plus it feels refreshing to soend some time writing and thinking about other stories after being so invested in one particular project.

This month, I'm hoping to have my new office area set up and do a bit of work on my book. Write a chapter or two and do some editing. Mostly my goal is to keep writing now that I'm back to working full time & getting settled in a new house.