First and foremost, the title may be deceiving; the project itself isn’t done (that’s far, far, far off). What is done is a mammoth undertaking to do with Project #2. And, let me tell you, just what a task it has been.
A little while ago (or rather a long while ago) I wrote a post about worldbuilding and the tool I had found that would help me develop each country in this massive world I am creating. It was a list of over 700 questions that I had to answer well over a dozen times to make sure each country was and is its own thing, that there were distinctions between each culture and its peoples. It was something I knew would take a long time and, as you can see, it has.
At long last, over two and a half years later, I have completed this endeavour. It is wild to write something like ‘over two and a half years’ have gone on since I started this task, to think I have been devoted to this particular thing for that length of time is pretty incredible. I know I’ve been working on this series for actually over ten years now, but to see those sorts of things written down, it’s both something I commend myself over and something that makes me wonder about the time these things take; if it’s taken me this long to get this task done, how long before anything of it is actually published?
I know you shouldn’t always think like that; often projects take as long as they need, rushing things doesn’t always leave stories in their best form. But at the same time, when you’re working on something in the background for so long, it really does make you wonder how long it could truly take before you’re actually able to share it with someone.
Don’t get me wrong, I want this project to be refined and excellent and everything it could ever be. But I’m also daunted by the undertaking at times. In my eyes, it’s going to be a massive fantasy story and I’ve already put so much work in, and there’s still so much to go. I’ve undertaken this mammoth task of making sure each country is as developed at this stage as it can be but the story still isn’t written, the book is still drafts and drafts and drafts away from even being close to shareable. I’ve reached this dual state where I’m ecstatic that this piece of the story is complete, but I have to very seriously acknowledge that that might not actually have been the hard part.
Maybe it’s safe to say writing is always like that; triumph over certain points, intimidated by others. This particular story is one I already feel very precious over and that feeling doesn’t necessarily make it any better. In fact, it makes working on it a lot harder than other projects because, if I want it to be special, how can I ever feel it will be good enough? That’s definitely something I’m going to have to work on because I want and need this story to be seen by others, and if I’m too intimidated by what it could be, I’ll never reach a stage where I think it’s ready to be shared, and that’s simply something I can’t allow.
But that’s enough negativity for now, wouldn’t you say? I want to celebrate the fact that this task that, at some times, felt almost endless, has finally ended. I make it seem like it was a proper slog, like I dreaded every morning I had planned to work on it coming to greet me. I can’t lie, it was, at times, something I had to resign myself to doing, but I knew it would, overall, be something that I needed to do, something I’d be grateful for in the future. Thinking about it in that way made me realise just how important this task was. Some of the important parts of writing aren’t the most joyful, but you will be very grateful you put the work in, and that’s what you have to focus on.
Every time I set up to work on a country, there were sections that I’d absolutely dread, like what curse words they use and how their legal systems worked, and it may well be (or even mostly likely will be) that a lot of these questions I answered won’t actually come up in the books themselves. Are details like ‘how seriously does the culture take the responsibilities of host and guest’ or ‘what effects has migration had on the places being left behind’ going to be things that I find necessary to write into the story or ones that I think readers are going to be interested in? It’s highly unlikely (depending on the kind of story I want to tell, of course), but having those details there, whether I refer to them regularly or not, is beneficial, both because I can refer to them if I need to and because the country feels more developed for knowing these things.
Details will change, there is no doubt in my mind about that. Things always develop as you write and I am certain, as I go, I will see things that could make these countries better or more interesting and then I’ll update the document to reflect that. In some ways, you might think, what was the point in spending so much time writing all these answers if you know some of them will change? The answer to that is that having this basis allows me to understand these countries better, and it’s easier to change something when you’ve already got the groundwork for it; instead of contradicting yourself because you’re adding things as you go, you’ll be updating and improving your world that you already have an excellent understanding of.
I have these answers now that make these cultures more grounded and anything new that comes up for them or any changes I might want to make can be made with a concrete understanding of what I had envisioned in the first place. Even if I end up changing a lot of aspects, there’s no way for me to see this work I’ve put in as a waste because that development of these cultures is so important, having an innate understanding of how these countries work will make updating them so much easier. It’s certainly not something every author has to do when creating a brand new world, but I know it has been beneficial for me because I now understand these cultures better and I know that will reflect in my writing because the world will feel more vibrant and concrete.
Next, well, I suppose next comes writing (and very much rewriting) the story. There are still things that need to be done, things I need to work on to make the story coherent and to strengthen the planning, but I need to get a start (or a restart) on it at some point, and the longer I put it off, the longer it’ll be before I can feel the reward of finishing it. Will that come in another two years? Will it be another ten? I can’t say, but I’m at least much, much closer than I was two and a half years ago, and that’s a glorious thing to acknowledge.
Robyn x
R. A. Howard 