Follow along with my WorldEmber progress!

I promised you a look over my shoulder this month as I bring a vague and disjointed collection of ideas together into a cohesive piece of world-building. These resources will help you keep track of my progress through this month-long marathon challenge:

• Haly’s Official WE Progress Report — each participant gets a page that automatically collects their author information and all WE-eligible articles across all worlds into a single, shareable package.
• Haly’s WorldEmber on Argentii Index — an on-the-fly journal page and handy sidebar displaying only new Argentii WE-eligible articles.

Maintaining Momentum: Make Time to Make

Like many of us, I spend a bit of time every day on social media. I scroll through Notes on Substack and touch base with my Worldbuilding and WorldAnvil feeds on Bluesky. And over the last week or so one thing has become crystal clear — at least, from my perspective.

We Are ALL Going Through It Right Now!

Everywhere I look, I see people being struck with these large, unusual challenges. Now, of course, we all have struggles. We struggle every day, to different degrees, with different things. But lately it seems like everyone I know is just under additional pressure.

One friend has a boiler out and no hot water in their home. Another is going through a huge and very messy break-up. There have been three car accidents in my circles, and eight unexpected, complicated health issues.

And those are just the ones that have been shared on socials! I won’t talk about private matters in public, but suffice to say that all of my friends at work are also on the awful end of Things That Don’t Often Happen.

You Are Not Alone

When it comes to Things That Don’t Often Happen, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and anxious. Because they don’t often happen, we are ill-practiced at dealing with them, and so they eat up a great deal of time and energy.

Time an energy we need for creating all of the awesome things we create.

And because they tend to be singular things that happen only to us or to our family (such as a house fire, an illness, or divorce), we can feel very isolated and alone in our struggles. However, that’s only true if we make it true.

Each and every one of us is a part of a community of others. Usually many different communities of others. Most of us have family, and many of us have school or work. We might belong to clubs or teams. Some of us have writing groups, book clubs, or even PTA. At the very least, if you’re reading this, then you’re a part of MY community, and that counts, too!

Write it Out

In the last ten days, I have written almost as much about my feelings and my problems as I have about world-building.

Over the weekend, I had to remove someone from the community for threatening to buy a bunch of paid subscriptions so they could file complaints and cost me the fees that Stripe charges for complaints lodged against you, regardless of whether they’re found to be true or not. (If you’re on Substack, you’re probably familiar with this problem.)

So, I disconnected my newsletter from Stripe, re-opened the archive as free to the public, and have suspended my second publication and podcast plans, for now.

And because it doesn’t rain trouble, but it pours… My older son got fired from his job as an account manager at the security company where my husband, younger son, and father all work, as he’s trying to find an apartment and get married.

All of this has led to over 11,000 words of angry, keyboard-smashing, half-human drivel. Just pages and pages and pages within a Gdoc of me ranting. And not just ranting, but ranting IN CHARACTER with myself and two different MCs from two different world-building projects!!!

And do you know what? It fucking helped.

Do What’s Healthy for You

Creating art is never the wrong answer. Even if all you’re doing is dreaming up a happy place or humming a tune to yourself. When Things That Don’t Often Happen come along, it can feel impossible to find the time for creativity. However, these moments are when maintaining our creative purpose is most essential! That essential nature means that it’s not enough to find time.

We have to make time.

Maintaining your momentum isn’t about moving as fast or as far as you can. It’s about making sure that you keep moving forward, even if it’s only a slow, tiny bit.

It’s essential to carve out those tiny moments and deliberately nurture your creative spirit. If you can’t create something new, then edit something that needs revision or polish. Twenty minutes at the beginning or end of your day can get several paragraphs written…or at least a sentence or two.

Even if all you can do is write a haiku while you have a poo.

We make time for the things that are important to us, so make the time to be creative. Even just a little bit. And do it every day. It’s the only thing I can promise will improve your life, guaranteed.

Wrapping the Day

A frequent touchstone in this community is the idea that there’s room for the entire universe in every fictional world. Don’t be afraid to fill that space!

As I write this, I am sitting at 14,724 new words of world-building toward my 50,000-word goal.