Well I guess Simon will clarify that, i may have read it wrong myself where it says: "Entries can be made anytime between the 1st and 20th of March." It sounded like to me, we can start/make our work/entry on the 1st March, else it could also be read as Entries can be submitted between 1st of March to 20th? Usually a gamejam has a period leading up to a Jam where we can plan out our game but not start on it until the starting date, although gamejams are usually about writing code or making a game with a game engine/creator, and so that part cannot start until the date, but fleshing out the gameplay design and story can be planned out in advance. So of course a gamebook is different in that respect, i think it should of been made clearer. At any rate i hope which either case you can still submit your game.
I have no experience of past gamejams so don't know how they work. I did talk to Simon about it yesterday on the Gamebook Zine Facebook page and he seemed very relaxed about it but I am thinking it might be fair if I submit my adventure early so that I will have had the same time working on it.
When I have a solid idea, I like to start writing as soon as possible and while I often hit first draft stage in a week or so I have always spent months if not years getting adventures to the point where I am happy with them, compared to the time we have.
Not being able to submit my adventure in the competition would not have been the end of the world. I have enjoyed the writing I have done on it so far and I have never won any creative writing competitions in the past. My previous success with solo adventures has always been where there has been no competition at all. They are after all something a lot of people would not even attempt to write.
That sounds fair. I have been brain storming some ideas. I have done some text adventure gamejams before, which in many ways a gamebook will be much easier in comparison (in theory anyway) with most of the focus being on just writing and branching. But i have never completed a gamebook before, i started one a while ago but had other projects going at the same time. But Gamejams are fun and also short enough to actually finish it, along with limitations that forces you to avoid being over ambitious which often can get you into trouble.
I suspect the only difficulty with a gamebook, compared to a text based computer game is worrying over whether certain numbered entries are too close to each other so that there is the risk the reader will accidentally see where one or more of the choices before them might lead. Getting them all an ideal distance away from each other tends to be fiddly but from what I have seen I don't think everyone worries about this.
I tend to try and have them all at least 5 entries away from each other so if paragraph 25 has two choices at the end of it, one of those choices might be at 30 and the other might be at 19. Typically I usually end up having to number a new entry something like 35a to squeeze it in between 35 and 36 then use the search function to renumber everything so 35a becomes 36 and 36 becomes 37 etc.
My only familiarity with the text base adventure is from this site where you can input your gamebook adventures and have the turning to different entries and the dice rolling all automated.
I hope you will be able to at some point finish the previous gamebook you started. I guess it depends on how much it is a priority for you with the other projects you have on the go.
I think the problems I tend to run into with my early drafts, which can take me a long time to fix, is having weak beginnings and endings and the adventure ending up anticlimactic. Hopefully I can avoid all of them.
I am also never sure how difficult to make them. I tend to aim for something which will kill me a third of the time during playtesting but of course I have the advantage over anyone else playing it, as I know exactly where to go.