PaWriCo Bookish Bootcamp June 20-26 Check-In

Hey all, Sam here.

All right, well we have finished the first week of the PaWriCo Bookish Bootcamp, and I figured it would be a nice time to check-in and give a breakdown of how my week went for this whole challenge. Some days are a little more active than others, but I tried to make sure that I tried to accomplish something each day, even if that something wasn’t technically something that I counted as progress towards the goals I set for the challenge.

And if you missed out on what my goals are, or just what this event is at all, you can check out my previous blog post about it or go straight to to the Pathfinders Writing Collective Instagram for more information.

All right, let’s get into the overview of my week.

June 20

This was the start of my work week, so I knew I wouldn’t be likely to get a LOT of words down, so I read through some of what I had already written for the story I’m trying to focus on for this challenge. I figured reading through everything would help me start to think about if there’s any changes to make, and think about what else needs to be written to get the story to “The End.”

June 21

I did get a little reading time at work, and I was in the middle of reading this writing craft book, Dear Writer, You’re Doing it Wrong by Becca Syme, so that’s what I was able to accomplish. I had other books by this author on my goal list for this bootcamp, but I wanted to get this book finished before jumping into one of the others.

Plus, my Learn goal is to read 2-3 books over the course of the 6 week challenge, so I don’t need to rush my way through my reading journey.

June 22

I spent a little of my free time at work jotting down things that I know I need to work on for the story, like plotting out the last arc of the in-game story and doing a rough plot of the out-of-game story. Plus I realized that I still had a few places on the world map that need to be named, and I can technically jot down some details about pertinent locations in the world so that I can make the in-game side feel even more immersive.

So this counts as one day of actually working on my story. My writing goal is to either work on the story three times each week OR to write 2000 words. Achieving either of those tasks means a success for that goal.

June 23

It was David’s birthday, and the only thing on the agenda (aside from work) was to dig out my previous story notebooks and make sure they were all easily accessible for our upcoming “weekend.” Yes, my work week runs Friday thru Monday and my weekend is Tuesday thru Thursday. It’s an odd schedule. But I found all of my assorted notebooks and can get everything condensed to just one notebook going forward.

June 24

This may not sound like actual progress, but today was D&D day, which inevitably gets me in the right creative space to think about characters and story and adventure and encounters/hazards/plot. I always find this to be a great help to me in my creative journey.

But for actual writing progress, I delved into the in-game story characters and looked over the character sheets, making any notes or changes that I could see needed to be worked on or fleshed out a bit. Though the out-of-game story focuses mainly on two of the characters, the rest of the players still have a good presence in the story, and there’s always a chance that the rest of the players will get their own stories later, so I need to make sure that I understand who they are.

Who the characters are helps to shape how they build their TTRPG characters, which can affect the whole story.

June 25

It was “Touch Grass Day”! One of my goals for this bookish bootcamp was to get out of my house for a non-work reason at least once a week. Basically at least once a week I wanted to go do something, like a walk to the park or a walk to the river, or something like that. I posted photos of my outing on my Instagram, so you can go see that if you’re interested.

David and I went to a local park, one that we hadn’t yet visited, and tried out their frisbee/disc golf course. Because it was a super hot day, we only managed to complete half the course, but it was a nice time.

After we returned home, I started to work on compiling my many notebooks of details into one notebook for my D&D romance book going forward but the heat and activity of the day had me feeling drained.

So…I read instead. And I definitely plan to sit down for more compiling and plotting, as well as some actual writing tomorrow.

June 26

Today was a day of a lot more compiling, jotting down character details, and trying to work on plotting/storyboarding the rest of my D&D romance. Obviously, there’s not really anything specifics-wise that I can share in this post, because I’m keeping a lot of the details to myself until I’m a whole lot farther into the drafting of my book, but I’m liking how the story is coming together conceptually.

I know I’ve talked about this story off and on a bit on the blog before, and probably the most information I shared was in my Trying Out The 5 Sentence Method post. And if you don’t want to check out that post, I’ll just say that my book is a split storyline tale following two people who meet while playing D&D and begin a relationship while also following the in-game fantasy adventure that the party goes on.

I’ve never really tried writing a contemporary romance story, so that part of all of this has me really nervous, but it is inspired by the true story of how my partner and I met, so that gives me hope that I can portray it well enough.

Week One Conclusion

Write: Most of my writing was just jotting down notes and character details, and working on compiling everything into one place, but also trying to plot out some of the gaps still remaining in the story. But it does look like I worked on my book three times this week, so I have succeeded with week one of this goal.

Learn: I read what I had left in one craft book and started reading another, so I’m going to say the progress counts as a success for this week

Explore: Went to a park and played disc golf. This habit goal for the week was a success.

Overall, it looks like this week was a complete success. Hopefully I can keep on track with week two.

All right, so that is all from me for today. Thank you for stopping by, and I’ll be back soon with more geeky content.