It has been one month since the official release of my book, and I gotta tell ya . . . I’m beat. No sooner did I announce the release on April 1st than fatigue and apathy—the telltale signs of burnout—hit me harder than a Jägerbomb after last call. Everything I’d been working toward for the past four years sank under the murky waters of exhaustion, and all notions of actively promoting my book seemed as insurmountable as scaling Everest in Crocs. Posting on IG? Ugh. Scheduling signings? Whyyyyyyy. Hosting a launch. Kill me! I won’t lie, the past month has been rough. Between the mental fog, physical fatigue, and non-existent energy levels, I’ve barely written anything, and haven’t had the concentration to even read. Even something as light as yoga has been too much for my sapped energy reserves. I’ve been able to go to work, and that’s about it. I suppose it’s natural . . . I’ve been go-go-go on this thing for a solid year, so crashing at the finish line was probably inevitable. If there’s one thing therapy’s taught me over the years, it’s that the human body is a machine, and when your mental dashboard is erupting with warning lights, you should probably address them before you break down completely. I won’t say that I've broken down, but I have heeded those warning lights and slowed way the hell down. This isn’t anything catastrophic—in fact, I’m pleased to report that I’ve reached something of a turning point. Yesterday I hosted my friends and family launch party at the Ponoka Golf Club, and you know . . . it put a bit of fuel back in my tank. Being in the company of my most ardent supporters, sharing hot food and cold drinks and hearty laughter, well, it cleared some of that mental fog. I daresay I awoke this morning feeling peppier than I have in weeks. There’s still a ways to go before I’m back to one hundred percent, however—I’m not taking on any new writing projects, and I’m being careful not to overload myself with promotions commitments over the coming months. I’m taking some much needed time to rest and recuperate after a very long, very arduous journey. Who knows—I might even take a vacation. Rest assured, there will be more stories to come. In fact, I’m planning on distributing an old classic from my Pulp Kings days in my June newsletter . . .
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In my last post, I recounted my aversion to worldbuilding and the impact this had on the early development of the Known Universe, an act of creation that more or less happened by accident. My first short story, Space Toast, was written for Pulp Kings Magazine without any consideration for worldbuilding, as was the next story, and the next. After years of toiling over maps and histories for epic fantasies that never materialized, I found solace in the simplicity of writing short-form stories without any consideration for consistency or internal connectivity. If I wanted to have a girl participate in a speed dating venue on an alien world where one of her dates was a talking chimp with a cybernetic brain, that’s what I wrote (Adventures in Warp Dating, 2019). When Pulp Kings contracted me to write a four-part serial in 2020, I dove in with the same lack of consideration for all things worldbuilding, prioritizing character development, plot structure, and jokes. My rationale was that the universe is big and weird, so having the reader meet bizarre aliens and explore strange new worlds in tandem with the characters kind of worked. Unfortunately, failing to do any worldbuilding whatsoever created a big problem later on. Once I expanded the original serial in late 2022, I realized I had no idea how anything in this universe worked. This wasn’t a series of silly Douglas Adams-esque short stories anymore where anything could conceivably happen if it led to a punchline—I’d established that there’s a mega-corporation that encompasses potentially thousands of galaxies, but never bothered to explain how intergalactic travel was even possible. Besides establishing things like a Chief Executive Overlord and Supreme Head Office Command, I had no clue how GaliCor’s command hierarchy functioned. As for communication systems, currency, technological limitations, languages, culture, religion . . . fuhgettaboutit. Being vague is all well and good when you’re writing a 5000-word short story that aims for laughs above all else, but that lack of detail doesn’t really fly in a novel (for supposedly being fantasy’s answer to Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is remarkably consistent and well ordered). Realizing my novel had some pretty big deficiencies, I had to work overtime to patch all the holes in the universe, an undertaking that lasted throughout the editing process. Fortunately, this was still a sci-fi comedy, so I wasn’t really bound by any constraints closely resembling those of reality. This isn’t The Expanse, for crying out loud, so I just had to come up with something that sounded kind of funny that also sort of made sense. Intergalactic travel? Let’s say a dude invented a drive that could traverse the “quantum fabric” connecting every galaxy in the universe. Perfect—now my story makes sense! Truth be told, implementing worldbuilding retroactively wasn’t all that hard. Most of the fixes took the form of footnotes, and everything that needed fleshing out got fleshed out in a way that seemed natural. The hardest part was realizing I actually wanted to develop the Known Universe more, but was limited in what I could do on account of the book already being written and on its way to the printers. Still, I was and still am interested in exploring more of GaliCor’s various divisions, its hierarchy, its interpersonal politics, the lives of those at various points along the corporate ladder . . . fun worldbuilding stuff I hadn’t dabbled in for years. As such, this year I’ll be releasing several new short stories/novelettes that explore new corners of Corporate Space, delving into things I wasn’t able to include in the book. You can sign up for my newsletter to be first in line! And of course, there are the sequels . . . Worldbuilding. Ah, worldbuilding! The building blocks of a compelling story. Is there an element of the creative process more alluring, more tantalizing, more exciting than worldbuilding? Besides character creation? It’s arguably the most immersive aspect of the process, allowing creators to harness the powers of history, geography, culture, and ecology to craft a rich world for legions of readers to fall in love with. It’s so immersive, in fact, that many would-be writers never make it past the worldbuilding stage of story development. The actual writing of the bestselling novel never comes. This is particularly true for fantasy enthusiasts (though sci-fi writers aren’t immune). An idea graces their imaginations, and out comes the map materials. Lands are charted, cultures are formed, races are designed, and lore is made gospel. I’ve known writers who have created worlds with complex mythologies that rival that of Tolkien, yet have never got around to figuring out what sort of stories their lands are hosting. These people aren’t posers—they’re merely stuck in a creative mire. To be fair, it’s a fun mire to be stuck in. Creating kingdoms and historical records is damn fun—crafting a coherent narrative that won’t bore your readers to tears is challenging. That’s why many novice storytellers never progress further than the worldbuilding stage. I know, because for years I was one of them. Back in my early-mid twenties—before I devoted myself exclusively to sci-fi—I wanted to be a fantasy author. I yearned to craft adventures as epic as Lord of the Rings, worlds as detailed as Westerose, and civilizations as colourful as . . . okay, so I was only really familiar with LOTR and Game of Thrones back then (my pitiful attempts to contribute something original to the fantasy genre could satisfy dozens of blog posts). The point is, I devoted years of time and effort to worldbuilding. Actual writing though? I wrote maybe eight chapters of my ten-book fantasy epic before my energy fizzled. I currently have in storage whole file boxes of notes, maps, binders, histories, folders, and lore for worlds without coherent stories. By the time I finally did come to grasp the elements of Story, I was so burned out on worldbuilding that I vowed to keep the next writing project I undertook simple. So simple, in fact, that it wouldn’t have any worldbuilding at all. When the opportunity arose to have a short story published in Pulp Kings in 2018, I’d finally abandoned fantasy as a fool’s endeavour and embraced sci-fi. Reasoning that if Douglas Adams could make things up as he went along then so could I, I threw together a 5000-word short story about a deep space freighter space pilot who’s just trying to make a delivery so he can go sit on a beach. I’d outlined the plot in rough detail, pinpointed my story beats, and determined that all the required world elements should satisfy the needs of the story (it also helped being on a deadline). The creative process went something like this: Hmm . . . the start of my story calls for pirates. What kind of pirates are they? Lessee, what hasn’t been done before? Ghost pirates? That’s cliché . . . ghostly space pirates? Good enough. Now I should establish who this pilot’s delivering cargo for. I’ve always wanted to do something with an evil corporation, because that isn’t cliché at all . . . what will I call it? Well, this is set in a galaxy and it’s a corporation . . . how about GaliCor? Eh, it works. What does GaliCor do? Manufacture space toasters? Sure. Now I need a race of aliens to show up at the end . . . alien slugs with cloaking technology? Hey, this is really easy! This was the same process I employed for the subsequent Pulp Kings stories (all four of them). Liberated from the shackles of having to come up with anything for my new universe (which wasn’t even called the Known Universe at that point) I enjoyed the ability to be random—it cultivated my creative inventiveness and made writing a stress-free enterprise. This universe was a sandbox, and I could do whatever the hell I wanted from story to story. It helped that for the first time in my life I was getting paid to write, so I didn’t see the need to ever return to time-consuming worldbuilding, not even when I started writing the serial that would become Into the Known Universe. It was a decision that would later come to bite me in the ass… Tune in next week for Part II, where I learn that writing a book requires at least some worldbuilding . . . |
AuthorJames R.D. Hilton is the author of Into the Known Universe: A Cosmic Love Story, Kinda, as well as other stories in the known universe. Archives
September 2024
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