Welcome to the 16th (5+5+5+1) writing club update. Looking at the intro to the 16th chapter of Procedural Generation in Game Design: Generative Art Toys by Kate Compton, we find the somewhat quaint observation:
Everyone loves being creative. And everyone likes discovering that they’re more creative than they thought they were. For many years, people have enjoyed crafts like pottery wheels, Spirographs, Mad Libs, spin art, paper marbling, and tie-dye. These artistic toys helped everyday people make interesting artworks (even if those people lacked creative talent or inspiration) by producing surprising and emergent results from simple choices.
Now that we have digital systems, we can make art toys with even more surprising and emergent behaviour. […]
This book (edited by Tanya Short, and Tarn Adams) was first published in 2017, long before the term “generative art” would take on a very different insinuation. I’ve certainly got some strong opinions on the subject of both interpretations, but this is a writing club update not my personal soapbox.
Having now fulfilled my self-imposed rule of introducing a quote related to the number of WC updates since we started, I now turn to an observation about my local climate/weather, before introducing our writers, and finally extending a friendly invitation to any lurkers in our midsts. :)
Up here in the Northern hemisphere, at the heel of October, it’s starting to get chilly. The ideal weather for reading and writing probably varies as much as the individual writer, but for me this feels like book weather.
Speaking of individuals, here is the call for our regular writers to share their updates!
I think I’ll move this list to the main Writing Club sticky post next update, since the @s don’t seem trigger notifications consistently across applications. Let me know what you think, if you have an opinion on this.
As is forever the case, passers-by are very welcome to come on in and lurk, comment, or post their own updates.
I have not been doing anything other than thinking about it and longing for some free time and excess energy to start diving deep into the research phase. Since my last update there has been no progress. I initially stated that this is a passion project that I will only want to work on when I want, and that could lie dormant for some time if I don’t really feel like working on it. That is not the case now - I WANT to work on it, I’m just dead tired after work to get anything done.
I have another idea for a Solarpunk-based fiction that I half-started a long time ago, and I am wondering if I should pick that up for now instead, as I could then get straight to writing without as much research (although I would definitely want to do a lot of research for the world-building which is not complete).
😭 that sucks and I know what you mean. Sometimes I just do my work on the weekends if I’m too burnt out during the week.
For the solarpunk fiction project, is there any part of it that you can just start writing without prep work? Just because it sounds like you miss writing. Obviously research is important to solarpunk, and a huge part of the creative project so don’t feel bad!!