Timasomo Post #3: Reflection for Week Two of Four
Timasomo FAQ
What is Timasomo?
Timasomo is "Tildes' Make Something Month," a creative community challenge that takes place in the month of November. It was inspired by NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month.
What are the rules?
Timasomo is self-driven and its goals are self-selected. On November 1st, participants will commit to a creative project (or projects) that they plan to complete within the month of November. There is no restriction on the methods/products of creativity: writing, painting, code, food, photos, crafts, songs -- if it's creative expression for you, it works for Timasomo!
Though most will be participating individually, collaborations are welcome too!
What is the schedule?
Timasomo begins November 1st and ends November 30th. All creative output towards your goal(s) should be confined to this time. This week prior to the start of November is for planning, and there will be a few days at the beginning of December given to "finishing touches" before we have our final thread, which will be a showcase of all the completed works. The showcase date is TBD and will be decided by the participants toward the end of the month, once we have a better idea of what we'll need to do wrap up our projects.
Can I participate?
Yes! Timasomo is open to anyone on Tildes! If you would like to join, post your goal here. The greater Tildes community is also encouraged to participate in discussion threads even if you are not actively working towards a creative goal. This is meant to be an inclusive community event -- all are welcome! If you are interested in participating but do not have a Tildes login, please e-mail the invite request address here for an invite to the community.
Thread #3: Reflection for Week Two of Four
Halfway through!
Give a Progress Update
How's it been going? Tell us where you're currently at!
Breakdowns and Breakthroughs?
With any creative process, there'll always be unexpected flashes of brilliance or unexpected fizzles for what seemed like good ideas. Have you encountered anything that didn't go like you wanted it to, or something that up and surprised you out of nowhere?
What's Coming Up This Week?
With seven days down already, what do the next seven look like for you? Let us know where you're headed.
Discussion Topic of the Week: Inspiration
Where do you draw your inspiration from? What other creative works have inspired you? What creative works do you hope your creation emulates, channels, or stands alongside of? I know it can come across as lofty to compare your own work to those of "established" art, but compare away! No need to be modest!
As before: best of luck to ALL participants! Let's go MAKE SOMETHING.
Meta
Suggestions
If anyone has anything they want me to add to this post or suggestions for the next one, let me know either here or by PM!
A bit of a downer update from me.
The beginning of the month saw me waylaid by an illness the likes of which I've not known in my lifetime. I was out of commission for an entire week, and the week following that was spent making up for lost time in real life by tackling everything I had to push to the side when I was bedridden, which left little time or energy for my optional creative endeavors.
Unfortunately, the illness never fully went away and decided a few days ago to go another round. It's not as bad as the first time, but it's still there and sapping my energy, and as a result I didn't spend any time on my project this weekend at all. As such, I can't say that I've really devoted sufficient effort to my project to get it off the ground. I have a very basic beginning, which is a product of the few hours I've been able to devote to it so far this month, but it is still very far off from anything resembling complete. I certainly want to do more, but in all honesty I'm limited in how much I can give to it. At this point Timasomo for me is looking like something I'll either slap together in the last minute under the crunch of a deadline or something I'll simply fail to follow through on. It'll be pretty embarrassing to not succeed at the very event I'm spearheading, but I have to acknowledge that it's very much a possibility at this point, largely dependent on my health.
I'm hoping my situation turns around for the better. We'll see how things pan out.
It's okay if you don't get to everything! What matters is that you're putting it out there and striving. If you don't believe me, maybe the words of Theodore Roosevelt would be better:
How are you planning on doing a guest book?
So, it's an outsourced comment section?
REFLECTIONS
Only one day of work (so far) in the latter half of this project, but I made a lot of little changes that I'm really proud of.
PROGRESS
So the only time this week that I've worked on it so far was last night (November 14th, 2019), but I had a solid, productive 5 hours:
Current State
BREAK DOWN OR THROUGH
Last nights session was very heavy into the sprite work but it went smooth. No real issues were noted during the process.
WHAT'S NEXT
I want to get to work on more tiles, begin implementing enemy spawn functions for the map, designating when the character will get automatically pulled into combat mode, and start looking at text boxes for conversations.
INSPIRATION
Where do you draw your inspiration from?
A mix of nostalgia for this game that I'm reimagining (I seriously will need to sit down and replay this game after this month is over) and want to create. I love creating, whether it's drawing, pixel art, writing, and now game development.
What other creative works have inspired you?
The Sword of Hope 2 (obviously), Metroid, Castlevania, Zelda 2; Sword of Truth series (novels)
What creative works do you hope your creation emulates, channels, or stands alongside of?
I'd love for my game to be an equivalent to a MetroidVania style game, but as it's an early amateur project which is based on an existing IP, it won't because it will never be complete. Not as it will be at the end of the month, anyway.
REMINDER: Find your balance.
LINKS
Website
Twitter
Instagram
Discord
Give a Progress Update / What's Coming Up This Week?
I did very good this week on my sweater! I've been trying to do housecleaning in a more structured way, so just half an hour a day of frantically cleaning one part of my house, trying to get as much done as I can in 30 minutes rather than puttering at it kind of aimlessly off and on all night. This has left more time free for working on stuff with intention instead of just trying to squeak in a few minutes here and there between cooking and cleaning and stuff on weeknights. I'm at row 37 of 42 on the body of my sweater, so I should finish the body tonight, and then on to sleeves!
Breakdowns and Breakthroughs?
Okay, so this is dumb as hell, but - maybe I don't like the look of a crocheted sweater. I'm not sure why I chose to do crochet for a sweater rather than just learning to knit. Maybe because I already knew how to crochet, but making a garment is pretty different than what I had been up to so far anyways, so my learning curve has been pretty steep regardless. I'll finish the sweater and see how I like it, but the crochet feels bulky to me, even in a light worsted weight, and I'm worried it's going to look very "homemade" which, while I want to make all of my clothes, I don't want them to LOOK like I made all of my clothes. No breakthroughs this week, except that I think I'm getting quite a bit faster.
Inspiration
I've been audiobooking this book, the Thorn Birds, it's very famous but I haven't read it before - and it's set in the Australian outback in the early 1900s onward, and I have been finding the example of Meggie in the book, whose ambitions are very simple and who finds pleasure in just keeping a home and doing the work for it, kind of inspiring. I mean, I have a job that I like and such, but in my heart I think I'd love to have a homestead away from civilization, and just live a super simple life - making the things I need, etc.
Haven't had much written down for Frontiers: most of my week was dedicated to reworking Intergrid's codebase.
The good part is: I don't feel terribly guilty about it. The goal of such an event is to focus on a goal, to promote productivity in one specific area – not to finish The Thing before the finish line. If I manage it, all good; if not, not like there's a million-dollar contract expiring.
That said, I'm not completely empty-handed.
I've been developing the idea of items of power: what artifacts are in most other settings. In Frontiers, there are three types of items of power:
Old World Artifacts: unique items developed during the Ascension, these are usually made from advanced metamaterials that ensure both their extreme durability and low chance of reverse-engineering. Artifacts are rare, highly-valuable, and capable of astonishing feats.
It's the full-body haephestene-clad exoskeleton that lets you withstand damage that would kill anyone else dozens of times over. It's the boots that let one walk on the walls as if it's a stroll in the park. It's the hyperglass bow that produces arrows out of thin air – arrows that explode into hundreds of pieces on contact, dealing incredible damage in a concentrated area.
Eldritch Vexes: regular items that have been enhanced, in one way or another, by one's contact entity (patron, deity, R&D department). These enhancement typically reflect the entity's nature, often chanelling their power through the item.
Vexes get their name from the peculiar effects these items have on reality, as if disturbing it. The effects are often sensory and usually alien to what humans are accustomed to: it's the dull-pink glow that doesn't highlight anything around it, or the sharp monotone noise when handling it, or the sudden feeling of emotional weight when nearby.
Vexes are among the few kinds of items capable of damaging or permanently destroying advanced metamaterials.
New World Derivatives: ordinary items partially enhanced with Old Tech through trial and error. These aren't nearly as powerful as artifacts, being jury-rigged with spare Old Tech parts through careful experimentation or sheer luck. Depending on the production process, derivatives may be unwieldy or heavy – but even so, they are a notch above the base item's unmodified brethren.
It's the hammer that provides additional force upon impact, seemingly disregarding Newton's third law of motion. It's the backpack that somehow acts as a source of electricity to metal objects on contact while affecting nothing else. It is, sometimes, the mug that keeps its contents at the perfect temperature for consumption without requiring an energy source.
There's also the topic of metamaterials themselves, but this comment is getting long as is. Guess you're gonna have to wait for the manual.
Progress Update
Progress was pretty slow this week. Between a number of deadlines and getting into a new video game, I found myself a bit strapped for time. I have gotten a bit into researching my website's first article, and at least come up with ideas for a few future articles.
Coming Up
I want to keep grinding out my first article. I think after I do this first one, which may be a bit longer, I would like to make several shorter ones just to get things going. Then maybe after that I can return to longer things.
Inspiration
My inspiration for this project mostly comes from the Low Tech Magazine Solar Website, which I think I have mentioned before, but I am also drawing from several other low tech, solar powered, or just plain simple.
From there I look to my interests, which include computer science, aerospace engineering, and sustainability. I just have to keep myself from thinking of it as something I have to do rather than as something I get to do, or I won't want to keep going :/.
Progress Update
I've been writing as ideas come to me. As I've outlined from the start, I don't have a specific, measured goal for this. I want to write, and I have been. This means I'm making progress and I'm happy to make progress. It's not been as fast as perhaps it otherwise could be, as I've been reading a lot in the time that I would spend writing, but that's fine. And it's hard to predict how fast it'll be. I'm not trying to be a professional poet, I don't need consistent output, and I wouldn't want consistent output anyway. Output, yes, but not on a schedule.
I have a few things to post that I've written in the past week. Nothing major, but some strong emotions behind them.
Breakdowns and Breakthroughs?
What I'm currently working on is eliciting emotions through words, really getting into the fundamentals of what makes a poem work. I haven't really experimented too much with changes of rhythm, meter, repetition, etc., largely because I've been focusing on the portraying of emotion instead. And I'm happy with that. No real breakthroughs or breakdowns, just exploring emotions through words. Emotions have been difficult for me because of mental health stuff, so this in particular has been quite a challenge.
What's Coming Up This Week?
More of the same. I should have some time to write more this week, especially in the mornings, and will see how that goes. I may experiment with some practice writing that explores expressing different emotions. Visual artists call this kind of thing a study, and I'd like to adopt the term for non-visual arts as well.
Discussion Topic of the Week: Inspiration
Where do you draw your inspiration from?
Life, like all artists. I've got a lot of stuff going on in terms of mental health and am exploring a lot of that recently. My approach is to reflect on challenges or things that I find difficult. Reflections and commentary on society.
What other creative works have inspired you?
One of the poems I wrote (and posted here) takes a lot of inspiration from Walt Whitman as I mentioned in the post.
What creative works do you hope your creation emulates, channels, or stands alongside of?
I want to get to a point where I'm comfortable enough in my art (and have the experiences to reflect on) to write like Bukowski does, like Catullus does. I might like to play with words, but what I really want to get to is the immediacy and the impact of Bukowski and Catullus. I should point out that I'm reading Catullus in translation, which means some of the artistry comes from the translator. I'm starting to read Emily Dickinson, as well, and her diction, meter, and rhythm are fascinating.
Give a Progress Update
Gives the OK symbol It stinks!
But I kinda knew that going in. The goal is secondary to the act of doing, introducing it into my routine is the goal.
Breakdowns and Breakthroughs?
I have an idea of where I'm going short term, and how to graft on more plot to get me out of the rut I got myself into.
What's Coming Up This Week?
More writing after avoiding writing, hopefully I can get to my halfway mark. I'll feel pretty happy if I can get through the part I'm working on.
Discussion Topic of the Week: Inspiration
Usually it's taking something I watched or pondered or observed in the real life and pacing out how a character I'm working with would react to what is going on. (So yeah, plagiarism.) From there, I see if it can comfortably fit into what I'm working on or if it should be banked for later with a different time or setting. My stuff I work on looks like a big katamari ball that I have to shape into what resembles a linear story, and I do a lot of it in my head, because notes are for people who know what they are doing.