Re-Squirt-ch Day – The Climb #970

Tuesday 19th October 2021

Today was a research day for The Worthy. A large reason for this is that today in World of Warcraft it was Super Squirt day.

Super Squirt day is the clash of two separate events that massively boosts the XP gained from Pet Battles in World of Warcraft. It’s one of the best ways to level battle pets and you can get them to max level in 2 goes.

Whilst I’ve not been playing much Warcraft lately, I’ve wanted to level my battle pets so I clear my entire day for Super Squirt day.

But it’s boring. I am basically doing the same thing again and again and again, swapping out pets as they hit level 25. To keep me company, I put on a couple of films.

It just so happened that all these films are influences for The Worthy, the next novel I want to draft. I realise that I’ve got a lot of influences now, and I’m starting to bring them together.

My world is inspired by Iceland and all the volcano livecams I’ve been watching. Then there are the movie influences: Silence of the Lambs, Joker, Spider-Man – all of which I watched today. There’s also the idea I’ve had for a while for a villian, for which I’m borrowing, in part, from Loki.

I think I have a rough idea of the story and its shape. I need to map it all out now. I want to do a more detailed outline, but to do that, I’ll start with the corkboard in Scrivener. I’ll take it from there to Notion or Microsoft Office (I’m still undecided) and flesh it out.

I’m feeling good about it. It feels like there’s a lot of stuff to work with and I should be able to build the plot. Of course, something will always come out of the woodwork–some angle I’d not thought of, some missed character development. But I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Because I was doing Super Squirt day, I got no writing done. That was a conscious decision. Super Squirt days only comes along a couple of times a year so I want to make the most of it.

I’ve also helped myself for next time. I took a couple of hours this evening to go do some Tamer quests to unlock the hat toy that’ll give me a 10% XP boost. That’ll mean I can level pets in 2 rounds rather than 3… and when I still have hundreds to do, cutting a third off my time is going to have a big impact.

What I find crazy is how this is account wide. It’s one thing to unlock something for a character. But to unlock it account wide seems such a mammoth achievement. I’ll never have to do it again, unless I need to start a new account for whatever reason, and the magnitude of this hasn’t been lost on me.

However, I’ve still not leveled up all my battle pets. I’ve had the important ones done for some time now, and again because this is account wide, it’s a one-time thing. I should now be able to take on most tamers, whereas a year ago, I’d struggle to find 3 level 25s

Warcraft and the videos made for a chill day. Some might accuse it of being lazy but in the back of my mind, I’m putting all the pieces of the puzzle that is the next novel together. We’ll see tomorrow or later this week as to how much chilling out and watching videos has helped me, but for now, I really think I have the beginnings of something.