2023 New Year's Resolutions: Finishing What I Started

It's time again. WorldEmber is coming...and I'm going to be ready.

Homework 1: Focus and Pledge

Focus

At the beginning of the year, I set myself an ambitious goal:

After some experimenting with the idea of an in-world chronicler and narrator, I've decided to go fully in that direction and start rewriting existing articles to reflect that perspective.

— Me, back in January

For a while in the spring I was doing just that, beginning by picking out articles that had too much omniscience, going rather slowly but plugging along nonetheless. Then I found myself staring at some in-depth articles I had written about the modern Ocean's prehistoric ancestors. Totally incompatible. Can't keep them, don't want to delete them--now what? Start another world is what, and that's how I got distracted for half the year.
But I'm back now, and I hereby pledge to use WorldEmber to make good on my resolutions to the best of my ability.
This, then, is my area of focus: I will introduce my narrator and set her to work. Since rewriting articles won't count toward WorldEmber, she'll create an introduction to the world and I will finally have a primer. Also, I will dive into the five article categories that I identified as being underrepresented in my world: natural laws, spells and abilities, language, technology, and documents. If I add just one of each type, I'll consider my resolutions fulfilled.

Pledge

As far as a wordcount goal, I'm not setting anything higher than what WorldEmber has already set for me. However, I'm planning to be stricter with myself than the website is, and keep my own count of Real Words Only, subtracting all BBCode.
I may also submit more articles to the special categories, now that I have figured out how that works. Also push myself to send notifications more often, because holding off until an article is done is ridiculous when I never consider any of my articles "done".
And finally, because I only seem to respond to deadline pressure, I need to figure out a way to set myself intermediate objectives so that I'm not sitting up past midnight in the last week of December grinding out a thousand words a day.

Homework 2: Mini-Meta, Categories, and Inspiration

Mini-Meta

For two thousand years the Cluster Islands have been the whole world to the people who live there. Then, three hundred years ago, they rediscovered the continent they originally came from and the civilizations still living there. A hundred years later they discovered a large island inhabited by the first non-human sapient species they'd ever met. But far from the last, and as the exploration continues, there are more firsts and surprises.
That's the scope, the entire rapidly-expanding world. The goal is to describe its essentials. It's an impossible task for one person alone, but that's not going to stop her from trying.

Categories

I tried to reorganize my categories last WorldEmber, and what I ended up with is somewhat better than before but still awfully messy. Switching to a chronicler perspective has given me possible insight as to why. From the beginning, my approach to building my world has been from the perspective of an author. I wrote the articles most relevant to the part of the story I already had, and tried to sort them relative to when they happened. When that didn't work out I tried to sort them by type, but didn't grasp how the parent/child article system is supposed to work. My new narrator is looking at those categories, facepalming and shaking her head. It'll be better when she's done with it.

Inspiration

After Summer Camp, I promised to read something from everyone who entered. Thanks to the multitudinous distractions of Real Life, I'm only halfway to that goal. I'm going to renew the attempt as my hunt for inspiration.
I also...(deep breath)...I need to be social more than not at all. I'm a completely passive participant in streams and Discord. I'm there, but I don't post because I'm paralyzingly shy in groups. (Kind assurances that I am welcome to speak up are appreciated but ineffective. I know I am welcome. Anxiety doesn't care.) Not sure where I will start, but I'll try.

Homework 3: Welcome your readers!

(fidgets uncomfortably)

My world homepage isn't fancy, and that won't change. It's one of the basic themes, with only a cover image (the same as on this prep article) to distinguish it. It's clean and simple and I like it that way. The content, however, needs a lot of work. The elevator pitch may be OK, but I haven't touched the timelines in years, and there's just one measly map of arguably the least significant area of my world. (There's also not a primer yet, but as I mentioned above somewhere, that's one of my goals for WorldEmber.)
So...yeah. I need a world map, I need a comprehensive timeline, I need categories that make sense, and I simply will not have the time to do any of it before WorldEmber starts. However, I can promise to make all of that part of my 2024 New Year's resolutions. (Which means I will probably get to it next November.)

Homework 4: Last minute prep!

So much to do this week! I'm cleaning up my desk at home (before-and-after shots to come), but until the winter break kicks in I'll probably be doing a lot of my writing at work just because of my schedule. There's only so much I can do with my work desk, alas.
For community...well, so far I have been dragging my feet about speaking up in the challenge Discord channel. But as soon as I'm done with this update I promise I will post it there. And as if that weren't scary enough, I'm going to publish all the articles I plan to work on at the beginning of WorldEmber (or as soon as I think of them). For the entire month they will be visible to anyone and everyone, starting as stubs full of nothing. I'll also be tracking my progress publicly, right here:

title	type	wordcount	real words	status
Welcome to the Ocean	Generic	884	789	submitted
Floating	Ability	603	533	submitted
Deeps' Draw	Condition	1290	1200	rough
Standards of Time	Document	1275	1111	submitted
The New Eddy	Landmark	661	552	rough
Languages of the Ocean	Language	889	706	rough
Air Waves	Law	243	215	rough
Tides	Law	508	445	rough
View from a Vastlander	Prose	2389	2218	start
Moving-Image Media	Technology	342	335	start
Island Energy	Technology	863	812	rough
Air-wave Communication	Technology	554	528	rough
Exact-Image Reproduction	Technology	741	659	rough

And for motivation, I've created a couple of milestone badges I get to award myself when I write enough to earn them:

Image ID is 5103254.

Image ID is 5143157.

Anyone who wants to may use these badges to celebrate an appropriate milestone. Hopefully these will fill all this blank space in my WorldEmber calendar!

	Friday	Saturday	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday
Week 1	377	330	329	544	483	337	313
Week 2	300	340	435	308	371	435	332; 5151 total
Week 3	401	306	356	309	312	329	342
Week 4	364	335	381	331	412	326	309
Week 5	236 (but I already made it!)

There it is, my plan. I've done everything I can.

WorldEmber, bring it on. I am ready for you.