PaWriCo Bookish Bootcamp July 18-24 Check-In

Hey all, Sam here.

Somehow we’re nearing the end of this writing habit challenge. I think overall it has been a productive challenge for me, but I still absolutely admit that I could have done better towards my goals. My final update will be next week (while I’m at Gen Con, so that’s extra fun). I’m hoping between this Bookish Bootcamp and the Writers Symposium at Gen Con that I’ll really be able to get back into the writing groove.

Anyway, I don’t have a lot of time before I have to leave for work, so let’s go ahead and get into the meat of the post.

Oh, I guess I should refresh folks on my goals for this challenge. They are Write: work on my D&D novel three times in a week OR write 2000 words per week, Learn: read 1-2 writing craft books during the challenge, and Explore: get out of the house for something fun once per week (such as take a walk, go to a park, etc).

Okay, now let’s get into it.

July 18

Today was the start of my work week, so there honestly wasn’t much time for a lot of anything else. I did do a little reading for pleasure during/after work, but it wasn’t nearly as much as I would have liked.

July 19

I didn’t get to read a whole bunch today, but I did get some reading time in, so I should be able to finish my second writing craft book by the end of this challenge. This still feels like a really appropriate book to have in my collection, especially considering the last few years of chaos in the world.

July 20

Today was an easier day of work, so I was able to jot down some ideas and snippets to be added into my novel later, so that is a day of writing progress. But most of the day was spent reading for pleasure.

July 21

Final day of the work week, and it was pretty busy with a whole bunch of little tasks that needed to be done, so while I was able to daydream about my book, daydreaming doesn’t count as progress towards my writing goal. Hopefully I’ll be able to do some writing over my days off work.

July 22

We are in Corn Sweat season right now in the Midwest, which means it is very humid and hot….meaning we don’t actually want to get out and do stuff, but we still kind of have to. We did some errands like grocery shopping and then relaxed at home…which yes, did include looking over some of the Worldbuilding details of my D&D novel, and jotting down ideas for areas that are still being developed. I am taking a couple of worldbuilding panels at the Gen Con Writers Symposium, and I’m excited to see how that helps develop my creative process more.

Today we went to our local movie theater and saw the new “Superman” movie, and honestly I think this is the best DC movie in a good number of years. I enjoy going to see movies or bingeing movies/TV shows at home. It’s a nice way to study plot progression, character development, relationships, action, tension, drama, etc.

July 23

We have had to switch our D&D days from Tuesday to Wednesday due to a shifting work schedule…but unfortunately we still had to cancel D&D this week. One of our players had to go to the hospital (don’t worry; she’s fine…she just has a host of things that cause her to flare up and have less productive days). So the rest of the group got together and played some board games.

Well, okay, we played a game of Tanto Cuore, and then we decided to use our set of random character dice to build randomized D&D characters and have a random boss fight….the random monster that got generated was a Beholder (and unfortunately our random rolls gave us all spellcasters-a warlock, a bard, and a sorcerer). It was fun and silly, and we’ll probably keep the characters around to play random boss fights again at some point.

July 24

Knowing that I needed to have one more day of working on my writing, I did make myself sit down, read over some of my scenes again, and take notes on things to expand on, as well as things to clarify and adjust. So there we go, three days of working on my D&D novel this week.

Today was Explore Day (technically part two of this week’s Explore, but this was the only one I documented on my Instagram). David and I went to our local movie theater and saw the new “Fantastic Four: First Steps” movie. Obviously I’m not going to talk specifics or anything, but we really enjoyed it.

Week 5 Overview

Write: I’ll be honest. The writing goal has been the hardest one to get through each week. I’m just barely scraping by on it, and I’ve only actually written a few thousand words of novel progress instead of just plotting, Worldbuilding, and character development.

Learn: I now have to finish my writing craft book in the next week to succeed with this goal. It’s not a long book, so I should be able to do it, but I’m hoping for a slower workweek so I can read more at work and then do a bunch more writing at home.

Explore: It was a pretty eventful week of getting out of the house and doing things, but the Explore challenge for this bootcamp is already a success. Next week we head to Gen Con, and if that doesn’t count as fulfilling my Explore goal, I don’t know what will. I’ll try to post Gen Con updates on my Instagram, so find me there to see all the geeky fun.

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