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.
For my update, I've still been filling the well of creativity more than I've been drawing from it. That is to say, I've been reading a lot (mostly sci-fi), and catching stray ideas in notebook pages, sticky notes, text files, and plain html pages -- Actually on that note, I have been doing more net-art kind of web weaving for a kind of chaotic diary I have up for one of my mastodon personas. Been spending a lot of time on the visual as well as screen reader experience.
On another note, I worked a shift this week with a prolific poet who is quite famous in my city. He works one day a week at the same art gallery as me. It was great talking in-person with someone so full of stories and creativity (he's in his retirement years) about the creative process, our fav exhibitions, the soups we plan on making this winter, and cheap places to eat out in town. I feel like I got a glimpse into a modest future that would be so happy to inhabit.
My goal remains unchanged: work on that bio/corp/hell/hope/punk bromance fanfic short story. I'd love to get a rough draft going, but still at the stage of collecting inspo and other snippets that I want to include. The universe is also based a video game, so I should probably replay that game. Maybe I'll even get my bro to replay it with me and we can live those glory days anew. 🤩
If you ever want input on that draft or somebody to brainstorm ideas with, you know where to find me!
I'll probably take you up on that! Having had a chance to read some of your dialogue, I know I could definitely benefit from your notes.