Worldember 2022

Warm your anvils, ready your hammers, the forge will be on fire this next month and we shall prepare. But more importantly, pay attention to yourself, an injured forger of worlds, whether mentally or physically, is endangered towards burn out and / or worse quality of worlds. So make sure to put your health before hand!

— Catoblepon

WorldEmber is coming! (insert TJ's gif, you know which one I mean ;) ) But before entering it, we shall ready ourselves and our tools for it! And that's what I'm gonna talk about in this article: how I'm going to prepare, and my homework for the prep.

My personal prep!

While I'll also do WorldAnvil prep, I'd like to talk about my own prep, cuz I can and I love to see how people do their prep (leave in the comments how you prep!).

There are three main steps on my prep. It's quite simple, but I like to think it helps me a lot! It's also what I do with SummerCamp :D

• Spreadsheet! Surely you didn't expect this one! Before each "big" challenge on WA, I like to do a spreadsheet for the challenge and the community (as you might have seen in discord or other articles in this world). It just helps me get the spirit of WE, get ready for it. And most importantly, people love them and think its useful, and that's a total win for me. (This year spreadsheet is done! I will share it in this article and in discord once the third or forth week of homework is released!)


• Articles list! I like to take a look at the list of articles from all my worlds, carefully listed in my spreadsheet "Track your worldbuilding". From the list, I pick a bunch of articles that I have yet to write and sound interesting and fun. These will be my "objectives" for the challenge. I also like to share the list of articles with friends to see what questions pop up in their heads by only reading the titles!


• Get into the headspace. I've kinda added this "step" like... today. But I think I'll help me and so far looks good! (Will let know how it went when WE starts) Lemme be honest, between challenges and challenges I barely write anything, or at least, not as much as I'd like to. So! This month I would like to write a couple of articles at least, just to have my mind more centered into worldbuilding than not.

White spiral notebook on black wooden table by Kelly Sikkema

Homework, week 1

I have a bunch of settings I could work on WorldEmber, but I've had no doubt in choosing which one to work. Daeliha.

Daeliha's the oldest of my worlds, started appearing on my head around 2015 and its the world I started with in WA when I joined in 2018. Since I've started WA, Daeliha has been deleted (mostly, I kept the exported world into pdf) and rebuild twice so far, and I hope this is the last time. All these deletes and rebuilds is because I see myself growing up as worldbuilder and thinking of editing the world world it's exhausting, more than starting from "zero".

This year I've been slowly editing Daeliha, as well as creating a couple of new articles, but I think it's about time Daeliha starts to be expanded once again, and this is why I'm going to work with it this WorldEmber. Of course, this doesn't mean other worlds won't get any articles, they probably will if I get ideas.

During this WorldEmber, I am going to work (probably) in its bases, specifically its people and its magical system. I also got planned to write about a couple of characters and, of course, some conditions.

I've chosen to work on its bases because while writing my latest article (Ithakill hybrids, see link in the right) I've realize that, while I've had this world for many years, I barely have any of its bases defined. I wanna change that because I think it's going to help me greatly into editing the world.

I'd like to leave clear that, while I have all these plans with Daeliha, I won't force myself to stick fully to them. Yes, I will try do as much of it as possible, but I don't wanna force myself into writing stuff I don't feel like and end up in burn out. That's why I have planned other articles from other worlds that I would love to write about.

Homework, week 2

Scope: I'm going to work with the bases on Daeliha, leaving me space to maybe do some species or conditions in Daeliha too. (I may also have a couple of articles planned for Iphars too, as a back up plan of the back up plan).

Themes: Daeliha isn't fully defined and I don't think I'll be for a bit, cuz I am not sure what way I want to take Daeliha yet. What I know is that it isn't a friendly world, it has many monsters (both of creature and Ithakill appearance), and Ithakill are divided because some wars that happened.

Mood: I don't have a very defined mood for Daeliha too. Anything that I quite like and fits the "dark" vibes going on on Daeliha might end up as inspiration. I do want to list some WA worlds that inspire me and I love:

Spreadsheet

Yes! It is time! The lovely Kros managed to convinve me today to start sharing the spreadsheet so feel free to grab a column and join us in the WorldEmber spreadsheet! (I can't recommend enough TJ spreadsheet if you want a personal spreadsheet that shows you your daily stats, how much you should write to catch up, and a pretty graph! Like NaNoWriMo)

Spreadsheet in here!

Homework, week 3

White fountain pen on white open book by Kira auf der Heide

Organizing! What I've been dreading to do for *checks time* too long! Categories didn't take too long to be readied, only a couple have to be deleted/added and most articles already where on their correspondent category or parent article (I hope none hid for me tho). I would show the TOC but this is another world, and on top of that, the first level of categories are the same, I've changed the second level of categories and I doubt anyone remembers how it was before because I surely cannot.

Tags, on the other side... I always see people doing cool thing with them, Nnie has been doing a bunch of cool things with them lately! I just can't see how to implement it into my way of worldbuilding. I will try think a bit more my rusty brain with a form to use tags that I like enough to not ignore it ASAP, but for now, no tag system in Daeliha.

Homework, week 4

After making things organized (or attempting to), it is time to make things pretty! Which I enjoy a bunch more than organizing, ngl.

For the CSS part, I think Daeliha's CSS is good enough as it is, don't think it needs some urgent editing I'm unaware of. But, I am doing an interactive component (I keep calling it that tho its just a bunch of spoilers and containers) for one of the articles I'm planning on writing. This component, as of right now, it's unfinished altho pretty advanced, so I will not show it yet and it'll be a surprise.

For images? I have a bunch half done, a bunch of generic images from typical places like Unsplash and Hero Forge, I'll add them down here (in the tab component Stormbril did cuz I am loving to use it). Can't promise I will be adding images as WE aproaches.

Maps

Characters

Others

Unfinished map, so you get the version from which I got inspired for this map!

Click a tab!

Fancy a small challenge for WE?

I am not impulsive and thus didn't create a funky lil condition challenge for WE.

Okay, now, being honest, I actually did that. It is basically a challenge where all people write a condition with same symptoms to see how much a condition can differ from others that have same condition!

Articles done

New world!

The end!

WE is finished! (Yes I know there are technically some hours left as I write this but I won't be able to write) And I got to the 10k words! Without burning out! And I've managed to keep up with my notifs! This is awesome!

During this months, I've end up writing 15 articles, with 4 of them being in a freshly forget world (I mean new). I am happy with their "quality" and the info in them :D That's hella cool! I also done multiples arts (specially for the new world Shattered) which I wasn't expecting but I end up loving so. And the silly Unofficial collaboration for conditions I've done has been done very well!

How did your WE go? Did you finish it? How do you feel about it? Do you have an article you are particularly proud if? Feel free to answer any of these questions on the comments! :D