Leave me alone, Ma, I’m world building!

I will not lie. Crazy times in my head right now, doing some world building, plotting some short stories, and in general trying to get all of the pieces together and in the right order for this epic story I see unfolding in my head.

By the by, for those interested in a great article on world building, you should check out this article on The Descendants, where Landon shreds a Jay Lake novel (ouch) and, and, makes a reference to R.O.U.S.’s.

So what does that mean, for me to be world building? Well, there’s a lot of thinking involved. No, really! It may look like I’m sitting on the couch, leveling up in Fable 2 (who, me?), but in the back of my head, I’m stringing together highlights and historical points in my future history of Humanity and her children in the Universe. That entire process gets me about 10% of where I need to be, though.

What I’ve found to be particularly handy is to write short stories. Sure, I intend to clean these up and send them out, but their real, nefarious purpose is to help me flesh out the Universe I have been daydreaming about with applied words. (I think “applied words” should be a topic in and of itself now that I’ve typed it – turning concepts into tangible realities via words.) This forces me to account for the timing of events more accurately, as well as helping my subconscious populate the Universe with the little things that have been laying hidden.

I feel a little guilty that I’m not working on the larger stories right now – I’ve barely even outlined parts of them at this point. But, given that I have written two short stories with a third in development/research right now, that’s certainly more words than I’ve put out in a while.

I hope you’re all having fun today – I’m off to play some more of last night’s Munchkin game with the girls, then do some weekend work for the office. With luck, at some point I might be able to sneak in some time with the secrets of Io and Jupiter in my next short.

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