PaWriCo Bookish Bootcamp July 4-10th Check-In

Hey all, Sam here.

Wow, all right, so we are already halfway through this Bookish Bootcamp that focuses on writing skills and wellness drills. I think I could probably be doing a little better with it, but I’m still meeting my goals, so I’ll consider it to be a decent writing progress anyway.

Well, with another week completed, I guess it’s time to look back on my goals for the Pathfinder Writers Collective Bookish Bootcamp and see how I’m spending my week as I work towards building up better habits for myself.

Let’s get started.

July 4

After working seven days in a row, I did absolutely nothing but lounge on the couch and watch TV. Yes, I could feel bad for not actually accomplishing anything, but I really needed the rest, so I’ll take it.

July 5

Okay, yeah, I had two days of absolutely nothing but binge-watching TV, but my mind really really needed the break.

It doesn’t actually count towards my writing progress goals, but I did daydream about my D&D novel for a little while, so even while resting my mind is still working on my stories in the background.

July 6

Is this technically progress on my writing related goals for this Bookish Bootcamp? Nope, but am I still marking it as something that I accomplished this week? Yep. It has been a rough couple weeks and I just felt so fantastic actually wanting to read and having the time to read, so here we are. I started and finished TWO books today, so yeah. That was awesome.

July 7

Did I do two reading days in a row? Yes, I did. And I managed to start and finish one book and make it almost halfway through a second book. Honestly I really needed this. So, I guess I’ll also say that I have a few book reviews coming to the blog in the next week or two. I’m already working on drafting them,s o hopefully I won’t get lazy and forget.

July 8

We had to skip D&D last week and I absolutely hated it, so it was absolutely wonderful to get to play D&D this week. Oh man, it’s always just such a fun deep character exploration and I love it.

The session ended on the brink of combat, and it’s going to be a pretty intense fight. Our characters are in the Feywild, in this pretty crazy, shifting, hedge maze, and we just encountered what are basically twisted alternate versions of ourselves as if we had walked down a different path in life. It’s going to be a dangerous fight. On top of that, my character is in the Feywild with her (just married) wife, and that wife happens to be Fey, and the enemy party is headed up by the Fey who had killed my character’s wife in my character’s backstory (the wife got brought back by my character’s goddess as a reward). So the emotional stakes are extremely high for my character, and I am so incredibly nervous about the combat next session.

But having awesome sessions like this really gets me thinking about my D&D novel more and more, which is a great thing…although I told myself that I can’t count daydreaming as writing progress for this Bookish Bootcamp. It has to be actually written down progress.

July 9

Today was our get out and explore day, that led to an overnight outing. We went to our closes Olive Garden for lunch, then had a quick Barnes & Noble trip, before checking in for a one-night hotel stay. I have a few photos up on my Instagram, because that is where I’m posting my proof of meeting my Explore goal.

I did do some brainstorming and plotting and writing on my D&D novel, so that counts as progress. I’m really hoping that when I add up the words from today and tomorrow that I reach my goal of 2000 words for the week, because I ran out of time to do three different days/times of writing.

July 10

When we got home from our overnight trip, one of our adorable fur babies just had to curl up on my lap and get cuddles (and I honestly can’t make her leave; she went through a lot before we adopted her)…so I wasn’t able to put my laptop on my lap and write on the couch. I did open up a notebook and write down a whole bunch of words, so hopefully it’s enough to say I succeeded this week.

Week Three Overview

Write: Okay, I’ll be completely honest. I couldn’t type up what I wrote in my notebook this week, so I don’t have an exact word count. But, I had like 5 notebook pages front and back, which should be enough to count as 2000 words or better. I’m just going to go ahead and say that it’s a success.

Explore: We had a road trip, food, book shopping, and a hotel stay including a little bit of very nice and relaxing adult-only pool time, which was really nice. (We did discuss D&D novel stuff while in the pool and hot tub, which I then wrote down when we got back to the room). Another successful week for this goal.

Learn: I’m still technically on track with this goal, because I said I would read 2-3 writing craft books over the 6 weeks of the Bookish Bootcamp, and I have finished one book. I’d honestly love to accomplish 3 books in total, so I’ll need to read one next week to stay on target.

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