Mochi's WorldEmber 2024 Prep!

WORLDEMBER IS COMIIIIING! My goodness, I'm SO excited this year. I've been thinking non-stop about WorldEmber since Summer Camp finished, and I've been itching to prep for months and months.

Even now though, I still don't have a solid plan! I have learnt from previous years, seeing how a lack of prep leads me to become lost with what to write, and too much prep forces me in a tiny claustrophobic burnout box, which I barely escaped last year.

Week 1

Set a word goal and your area of focus

This year I am aiming for 25,000 words or more. I've hit it two years in a row, and my ultimate goal is to surpass my word count from the year prior. I'm looking to write a range of articles, from countless little stubs to grand articles, written with style and precision.

I was really happy with my body of work from last WorldEmber. Some of my articles showcased my writing skills, while I covered a lot of ground fleshing out the Cheem System's many planets.

Choose your area of focus

This is the exact same as the first part of the Week 1 prep, so I'm only answering it here. My plan for WorldEmber is to start off by fleshing out just a single planet. I've not picked this planet yet, so I thought I'd let the people reading this help decide! Below I'll provide a one-sentence summary of fifteen planets, and I'll seriously consider starting off my WorldEmber journey with whichever planet people seem to like the most.

Let me know which of these planets sounds the most interesting to you by commenting on this article! And if you have another planet you like the sound of that is not on the list, let me know!

Voting is now closed!

Jynx
Infinite bizarre phenomenons, battled by outlandish terrains and equally freaky organisms.

Julios
Flamboyant peoples and places, with diverse and intertwining cultures.

Temperil
An eternal thunderstorm rages around this planet, its people barely clinging to life.

Norrab
A cultural war between the native peoples and alien foreigners rage on this planet.

Cvorvatis
Once a paradise, now an abandoned, disease-ridden wasteland with its people desperate for revenge.

Silvernis
Archipelagos are scattered across shimmering silver oceans, with unpredictable tides thanks to an abundance of moons.

Elexen
An industrial powerhouse, the iron heart of the Galanti Cluster.

Hell
An unusual combination of terrifying beasts, burning biomes, and popular tourist destinations.

Karkhala
The native planet of the oanie, galactic colonisers responsible for hundreds of billions of deaths.

Osao
Lovable slimes coexisting with countless other species, on a tropical planet full of colourful places.

Xibronoe
Lively ecosystems are concealed by thick storms encompassing the entire planet.

Venviri
A toxic wasteland inhabited by peculiar lifeforms, highly advanced to suit the surroundings.

Maloruno
The two hemispheres are controlled by opposing forces, a global battle lasting millions of years.

Saiorea
A trash planet; heavily guarded, but the occasional trash traders slip by, illegally trading items.

Eclypsa
A tidally locked planet who's two sides are Dusk and Dawn.

I absolutely guarantee I will eventually get bored of just writing about a single planet. I have an entire month, and nothing could make me last that long writing about the same planet. So I'm not going to hold myself to this plan, and if I feel the urge to write about something else, so be it! I'm really on a magic-writing kick at the moment, so maybe I'll be in the mood for a magical WorldEmber!

Create or update your meta

You know what, I fight this every time, but I might as well give it a go. I'm not the biggest fan of the meta but I do want to update it, and actually have it reflect the Yonderverse in its current state.

I won't update my meta right now, but it is on my plans for this month!

Week 2

Review your homepage

Remaking my homepage has been on my ever-growing to-do list for months now - really, ever since WAWA finished. I desperately want to rewrite it into more of a wiki-style, as that's the kind of world I think I want to go for, especially in the long run.

So, expect homepage edits this month!

Create or review your world primer

I'm ahead of the game! I completely remade my world primer last month. Creating a single article to essentially summarise a world as large as the Yonderverse is incredibly difficult, especially since I've never had a clear goal for this world.

My primer has gone through several iterations, but I think I'm happy with what I've got! At least, for now. But I won't be editing this before WorldEmber this year xD

Set up your community tools

I love setting up little community tools for my world. I want this to be an interactive place, with fun scavenger hunts to do, customise notifications you get from the Yonderverse, all fun things like that!

Just a few days ago I created a Manage Notifications page, where people can join a subscriber group to get a weekly notification of an old (but freshly updated) article. I got a lot of people joining that, so thank you so much!! It means so much to me that people want more Yonderverse.

And speaking of scavenger hunts, I have not one but two fun games for people in my world! You can follow a pencil through a bunch of articles, tracking down his next hiding spot by solving a riddle. You can also discover cool hand-drawn stickers hidden in random articles around my world, and find them all in your own personal journal. Check them both out below!

No idea if it counts as a community tool, but a shameless plug never hurt anyone. I have a Ko-Fi account where people can support me and my writing! I have monthly subscriptions people can hop on to, and they support me so much. You get access to secret content in my world, discounts on commissions, monthly writing updates/recaps, access to early concept art, and more. You can also do one-time donations there too!

CSS wizardry

Noooow we're talking! I don't know if I quiiite qualify as a CSS wizard, but I'm certainly a wizard's apprentice at the very least. I hadn't even heard of CSS before I joined World Anvil, and the beginning months of my learning how to write CSS was a struggle, definitely. But I definitely think I've got a knack for it now.

That being said, there are a lot of things I want to change with my world's CSS. I haven't done a major CSS overhaul in the Yonderverse for ages, and I think the time is coming soon. Maybe early 2025? I can certainly put it off until after WorldEmber, that's for sure.

Week 4

Find a Community

It's safe to say I feel at home within World Anvil's community. I've made many close friends through the site, many of whom I talk to daily and they mean the absolute world to me. I'll be relying on them massively throughout WorldEmber, as they've gotten me through the event in previous years and supported me in every way I need.

My Accountability Buddy this year is TJ Trewin. We both share a love for WorldEmber and have talked about our goals together, and want to support each other in this event! We'll be writing alongside each other and encouraging us to push ourselves further with our goals.

Plan your writing schedule

Hoooooooooooooo boy. Ever since I started working full time I've been super drained and written half as much as I used to. Honestly, I wish I was more grateful when I had so much more time to write, and I wish I had used my time more valuably. Planning a writing schedule will be somewhat easy because I don't have a lot of free time and my day-to-day life is timetabled, so I can slot in some time for jotting down words.

It's all good and well to create a writing schedule, but the real challenge will be finding the energy. I'll have the motivation - it is WorldEmber after all, the best competition of the year! But finding the energy to write will be the real challenge.

Most of my writing will happen on weekends. I work a half-day on Saturday and have Sundays off, and I'd like to book a week off work during December too. If I include Christmas and its surrounding days, that will give me a decent amount of days to churn out articles. I'll try and wiggle in some writing time after work during the week, but that will not be a guarantee.

Get some fresh air!

I go to work before sunrise and get home after the sun sets, so I'd rather not have a walk while it's pitch black outside! I'll get some fresh air and touch some grass on the weekends. Besides, I get fresh air at my animal sanctuary job (as opposed to my factory job), and I get to play with monkeys so that's a nice experience twice a week.