There were a lot of video streams to choose from this last week, sadly all but one of them were on Saturday. The kingdom of Northern Lights put on an online ithra on Saturday. It featured seven, one hour streams throughout the day. I only managed to catch two of them.
I watched Playing Bard by Gen and Tournaments and Footwork by Guin. I intended on watching Armoring by Heron, but something came up and I had to walk away from the computer for a bit. Sadly, with how they organized the Ithra, it’s a bit hard to find the videos. They created an event and hosted the videos in the event and then shared it to the Northern Lights Facebook Page. That means they are in the posts section rather than grouped by a video tab.
The only other stream was put on by Guin in the Northern Lights Facebook Page on Tuesday (4/28/2020). The topic was the Flame Awards Path in Amtgard. It featured four guests, Devry, Christine, Galeria and Runesilver. Guin was the moderator and asked them questions. The goal was to have people who were journing along the path, rather than those who have finished their journey.
Next weekend isn’t looking very good for streams. As of the writing of this blog no group in the Pacific Northwest has announced any streams. I would keep an eye out for the three most active groups though incase they end up streaming Inland Ocean, Greenwood Keep and Dusk Hollow.
Outside of the weekend there are a few streams. If Dalos, of One Grind Nation, keeps to his usual schedule he’ll be doing a class this evening (4/29/2020) and then a conversation stream/Q&A on Friday. Watch for announcements of his streams on the One Grind Nation Facebook Page.
Also this evening (4/29/2020) Kalten plans on doing a stream on the Northern Lights Facebook Group page. He will be building a boffer sword while on stream and talking general Amtgard stuff. If you’re interested in joining him he said he’ll be starting at 6:30 PST.
As for my own streaming adventure I’ll be doing another Beers with Baelnorn on May 7th. This will be the second stream in the series. The main topic will be quest basics. It will be heavily influenced by the article, World Building: Quest Basics. I’d suggest reading the article to familiars yourself with the topic so you will more easily be able to ask questions. However you do not need to read the article to be able to follow along. I will also briefly be talking about different approaches to world building too, which ties into creating quests. It was the first article in my World Building series, World Building: Initial Approach. As always, I’m open to talking about other topics while on stream.
Hopefully the stream will get more engagement than my last stream. 7 watchers and 2 conversationalists are not bad for a first time but I hope it grows. Some people told me they had an issue seeing my posts about going live, which is possible given Facebook algorithms.
If you’re interested in watching the stream it will start at 7pm PST on May 7th on Twitch. You can find the channel HERE. I’ve also created a Facebook event if, you’d like to join that, you can do that HERE. I’ll be posting there when I go live, as well as in some Amtgard Facebook groups. I hope to see you there.
I also wanted to take a minute to talk about some of my writing this past week. I’ve been working on and off on a second novel for the past four years. While I started it in 2016, there is a large gap of time in which I set it aside. I really began to work on it in ernest in the last year or so.
The work is actually set in a world I started working on over a decade ago. This is by far the story that has the most work put into it. The working title is Philip Clowes, which is one of the main characters. It’s an Urban Fantasy story. If this work sounds familiar you might have seen it on my Patreon. About four months ago I started posting the story, one section at a time.
Since the quarantine I’ve found it really hard to be creative, thus hard to write fiction. I haven’t touched the story in at least two months, but that all changed this week, in part, due to Heldris. I was complaining about how bored I was in a private Slack channel and they responded with the word “write”. I wasn’t immediately inspired to write, but after a 3 hour nap, I did get up and start editing the Philip Clowes story. Mostly because of Heldris’ one word answer.
Through the process of editing I fell in love with the story all over again. I enjoyed reading it so much. I added some paragraphs as I went along and fixed some sentences but by the time I was at the end of what I’ve written, I found I wasn’t done. I just had to start writing. I ended up writing another 1.6k words and completing a new scene.
I probably would have written more but I had to stop due to previous obligations. I edited/wrote for 3-4 hours, it was exciting. I most certainly plan on using that energy and writing more over the next several months. If you’re interested in reading this story you can find part one on my Patreon HERE, there are four parts post in total so far. I’d enjoy hearing feedback and if you happen to like the content maybe you’ll consider becoming a Patron.
Based off of the amount of streams expected next week, which is few, I’m not sure how my blog will pan out. I will most certainly be writing it but I might be covering some of my other non-LARP centric projects, much like I did in this one. Time will just have to tell.
If you like my content consider becoming a Patron on Patreon. You can see my Tier 2 and 3 supporters on my Patreon Supporters page as well as find out how to become a Patron yourself.
1 comments
Good advice. Write. I have another friend who is a successful author (has several published books and one even made into a movie). Anyway, she got where she is by writing every day. Even if she was completely uninspired, she’d still write. She’d set a clock and start with something like, “My god I’m so bored. This is dull. I don’t want to write at this moment. Why? Because my mind is on vacation, a vacation I’d love to take. In a far away land I’d walk, with mountains rising high to the north and a dusty valley to the south. I walk east…” It’s a stream of consciousness that sometimes produces nothing and sometimes produces the next novel, or it produces the next scene or landscape of the current novel. It seems like “write” was successful for you this time. I’m glad to hear it. More for me to read!