This article follows a new format. It’s not so much an article as a journal entry about my journey as a world builder.
I’ve been world building for a very long time now. The earliest incarnations of my world began to take form in the early 2000s, and my journey began with DM/GMing in the mid 90s. And yet, despite all that time, and effort, I have very little to show for it. Certainly I have a very well developed world, filled with stories and characters inside my head, but I’ve yet to publish anything, and I’ve shared very little of my work with anyone. I have novels planned and partially written, but nothing ready to send to alpha readers, let alone an editor or publisher.
It’s frustrating to think I’ve devoted so much of my time and creativity to something that barely exists at all. All it would take is a few corrupted or deleted files, a little fire, and most of my work would be lost forever! I could begin again from what I remember, but then if I was to die, that wouldn’t be possible. Even if my files survived, but I didn’t: What would remain but extensive histories and a few skeletons of novels. No Christopher Tolkien make anything particularly publishable from the wreckage.
That, my friends, is a deeply depressing thought. I call my world ‘Ikigai’ because to me, it is my life work. My magnum opus. And yet, what have I to show for it, apart from a wiki (that only I can access), novel outlines, the odd short story or chapter, and this blog…
It would be easy to give in to despair and allow it to cripple my progress. But it is not in my nature to give up so easily on something I know will bring joy to others. I write and create for myself, and so, for me the value of the ‘product’ has already been derived from the process of creating it. But I also want to be able to share, and ultimately derive a living from it. I have no doubt that once it is published, it will find it’s audience.
So on that note, I’m going to go and do some work on a short story I’ve been working on for well over and year and still haven’t finished. Maybe I’ll come back in a bit and upload a sample.