Novelember
I haven't been spending time in my little galaxy of Kantostara since summer camp of 2023. I had big plans for polishing the articles I had just written and creating some new artwork, but then at the end of August 2023, my life began to shatter into a million pieces. Much like one of my characters, ironically enough, I watched in horror as my world exploded and everything came to a screetching halt. Flash forward a year later, and I'm building a new life in another country, and I've decided to challenge myself with Novelember. I've never attempted to write 50,000 words in a month before, and I honestly don't know if I can, so my rebel goal is to write as much of the story as I possibly can. What story, you ask? An epic tale of never-ending love that is a part of
Salelu Butwale Ti Orenga's backstory that, up until recently, I didn't even know existed.
Worldember
Worldember is my favorite challenge. It's how I began my journey with World Anvil, and I'm really looking forward to doing it again. Most of my world building will probably be focused around Lu's planet of
Bane'ile since writing her story will bring up questions about the history and culture of her people. I don't want to take the time to dive into those questions now, so I'll save them for Worldember. However, I don't want to limit myself to just the Bane'ile. Right now, I just want to follow my heart and build whichever parts of Kantostara might call out to me.
Week 2 Assignments:
My homepage basically consisted of an elevator pitch that I wasn't happy with and a table of contents, so it definitely needed work. I wrote a new elevator pitch. Then I read the tips to make a better homepage and looked at the examples of homepages given there. That was very inspiring, but since I'm doing Novelember right now, I didn't want to take a lot of time away from that to write something new for my homepage. Then I remembered #42 and realized that it would work very nicely on my homepage at least for the time being. It was my magnum opus from Summer Camp of 2023, the 33rd and last article that I wrote and the one I was most proud of. I copied the text of that article and added it to my homepage along with a follow button. I still need to tweak the design of the follow button and the alignment of my table of contents, but since I'm not a css wizard, it takes me forever to figure that stuff out, so it will have to wait until January. While my homepage might not be perfect yet, it's much better than it was.
Week 3 Assignments:
As I mentioned before, I'm also doing Novelember, so I will be relying mostly on moodboards and playlists that I already have because I don't want to spend a lot of time with that right now at the expense of my writing. The moodboards for the worlds within Kantostara are made up of images I collected from the internet, so I can't share here because of copyright issues. I prefer to listen to an ambient noise recording of a rain storm with a crackling fireplace instead of music while I'm writing. However, I will sometimes listen to a playlist before sitting down to write just to get into the mood for a particular world. For
Bane'ile, since music plays an important role there, I like reggaetone because I think that the music of the Bane'ile would have a similar sound and feel. The other worlds seem to be better represented by nature sounds.
Navaravu is all about water like oceans and rivers, but oddly enough, not anything with rain storms. Rain makes me think of
Kataan and its continuous monsoons. It's the rainy season now where I'm currently living, and the torrentional downpours outside my window are exactly how I thought Kataan would sound. For
Jaleeria, with its treetop villages, I like birdsong from a North American forest and the sound of leaves in the wind. Most of my inspiration comes from what I see, hear and experience in life rather than what I watch or read. A little snippet of something during the course of my day will trigger a hmmm, what if.......and I'm off to the races with a new idea for Kantostara.
Week 4 Assignments:
As far as community goes, I like to share my work with a few friends irl and I also enjoy the WE group on Discord. My daily schedule varies a lot, so choosing a set time to write doesn't really work for me. I prefer to take it on a day by day basis fitting in writing time whenever possible on a given day. While I'm doing other tasks, I'm thinking about my writing, working out ideas and jotting down notes so that when I do sit down at the keyboard, I'm ready to be productive.
In Conclusion.....
It's November 30th, Earth time, and I'm closing down the keyboard on Novelember. My official word count is 9,970 and it's more of a brain dump first draft than a novel, but nevertheless, I have achieved my rebel goal. I have a clear understanding of this bittersweet love story that has a happy ending, that is, as long as you're willing to modify the standard definition of "everything is going to be all right." I have also come to understand how a woman from a culture with no written form of their language sits down to write her memoir. The short answer is that she doesn't. Instead, she sings ballads that recount the love of her life and how that love continues to reverberate through time and space. I have also realized how very little I know about the culture of the Bane'ile and the life that Lu and Jin shared there before it all blew up in a fiery collision of stars. That, of course, brings me to Worldember. Time to grab my hammer and go build the home world of the Bane'ile!
50,000 is a high goal, hope you can achieve that goal and have a great worldember1
Sit down, my friend, and let me tell you of Aran'sha . A world where the sands shift and the stars sing, where the wind carries secrets and the twin moons keep silent vigil over it all.