The Journey of a Writer.

On 20 July 2020, I joined World Anvil, a world-building creation website. Armed with 403 words that needed to be put up on-site, for my World, Future’s Seen, a near-future dystopia. It wasn’t until I found the Anvilite Streamer Corps (ASC) of Twitch streamers, who wrote as part of their streams and saw their manuscripts grow. 

On my 29th birthday, and trying to find a writer, before going out to celebrate what I could of my birthday, I found one streamer, WriterGreg.

From his streams and others of the ASC, my 403 Words easily grew to 50,000. Now in December 2021, to well over 2 novels worth of Future’s Seen Lore. On 22 August 2020, I redeemed with twitch channel points, a stream takeover to ask about my world, on Greg’s Stream. I asked what questions I should answer about the outside world. As the world at the time was about the fictional city of Birdencaster, and wanted to expand the world further to outside the city and extend the cloud wall. What I got instead was a string of good article points, which soon became articles.

Game of Tomes 2020

In November, I was introduced to a new and interesting writing game called Game of Tomes. Which in November runs like a war, with six fictional houses and the undead horde. As of November ticks by, the house with the fewest words on days that are multiples of five. A house falls and one-third of its members get drafted to the Undead Horde. Until it’s one house and the undead to see who wins the war. I was in a house called Lapin. On the 25th November 2020, I finally asked which streamer was leading my house, and found that it is SableAradia, of A Few Good Elves and Once Upon A Time In The Wyrd West fame. 

From the 30th November onwards I watch SableAradia daily. On her Wednesday and Sunday streams, her viewers can ask her to showcase an article or fiction, which essentially means that Sable will read out the literature and give comments and corrections. Among her, Greg and others it is clear that my profession articles had struck an accord with people, with others lauding that I have working-class heroes and that I give the little details. 

In January and February 2021, I begin to write the novelisation of The Game of Tomes, as I and others have got rather too into the universe. I find I am not that half bad at writing fiction, so continue to write in the universe. Later given editor’s rights for the world. Which I was very much touched by. Along with a meme detailing that I had added quite a bit of lore with my stories (although that was in November 2021). 

In April 2021, I finally meet Kahuna the Elder and got my articles voice acted, as well as getting some much-needed help about my storytelling and grammar, although I wasn’t the only one.

Summercamp

In July, World Anvil held its first main event of the year, Summer Camp. In which across the month 31 writing prompts of world-building are set. When I was watching Esong’s stream one of her guests asked for me, a little bit concerned, as if I might have done something to annoy or wrong someone, I perked up the courage to say I was there.

What surprised me wasn’t that I hadn’t done what I thought, but that the streamer’s guest asked me a profession question. It had been over a year of asking questions on sentence structure or the best way to use a feature on World Anvil to the ASC, it’s a member among their ranks asking me of all people, over a year later about one of my specialist subjects and something I gained from being on the site. This shook me on how far my influence had spread among my writer circle. 

August 2021

In August I decided that I would write a story for my own world Future’s Seen. About the aspect of why the people in my world didn’t know who the person on the heads side of the coin was. Asking for help from, Kahuna’s chat I got the names of the two main characters. 

I soon worked out that I couldn’t finish the book, not that didn’t want to, or that I was burnt out but rather, I couldn’t find a way of getting my character to get on a train and complete his quest. It was at this point I put the project on pause and thought about why. It was then I thought about my Game of Tomes fiction, and why I didn’t find that hard and the words flowed. Whereas in my Future’s Seen fiction it hadn’t hit me I was the main character, in my Game of Tomes fiction, I could easily write those stories as it was like I was documenting my life whereas I couldn’t with the Future’s Seen fiction. 

So I thought I could do better with the fiction. It was at this point I asked another author of the Reaper Saga, what I should do, being informed I was better at world-building, that made me think of Dungeons and Dragons. I rewrote the story again but as a questline for a dungeon master. While I succeeded in completing the story I soon found it hard to continue and make the players want to carry on playing. It required an article on beetroot as an item of contraband. As an item in the campaign to give a little bit of insight into what an NPC was carrying. I soon found myself less eager to finish that campaign, partly because of tiredness but partly not knowing what those inventive players might want to do with the NPC. 

So learned that perhaps Dungeons and Dragons campaign writing was not for me.

Game of Tomes 2021

It wasn’t until the second run of Game of Tomes started, and I didn’t know it at the time, but I would find my target for my arrow to hit. Much later on in Season 2, I created a fanfiction version of Three Kings, the Christmas carol, to match that Lapin and its supporting minor houses were together happily. Unbeknownst to me, I had started a Christmas filking stream. 

World Ember 2021

In December 2021, World Ember, the second and last event of World Anvil occurs. The event is 10 thousand words of world-building, I eventually do a profession article, on a Sealing Wax Maker and have this article put forward for judging. I manage to get it to the top slot of the shortlist for the professions category. 

On boxing day, there is the Christmas Filking stream and during it, I am mentioned because of my profession article. After the streamer’s version of, Three Kings is sung, I am blamed for starting the filking stream, of which I quickly reply “it’s not blame, it’s praise” and it dawns on me I could be writing an encyclopedia of professions throughout history. 

So …. Sable, if I am to be praised for starting the stream, you should be praised, for the existence of this book.

Links to streamers and Game of Tomes

Game of Tomes, World Anvil - https://www.worldanvil.com/w/game-of-tomes

Future's Seen, World Anvil - https://www.worldanvil.com/w/future-s-seen-jameswoodwright

SableAradia's Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv/sablearadia

Kahuna The Elder's Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv/kahunatheelder

WriterGreg's Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv/writergreg