New Years 2026

2025 Recap

This was an eventful year for me personally so I didn't accomplish as much in my world building and writing as I had planned or wanted. But I did a few things, and here are the highlights.

• Wrote a program that creates map images of my star systems where the planets locations reflect their orbital positions on specific calendar dates.
• Experimented with and determined how to handle using my world sites for a novel series where time progresses and significant events occur.
• Wrote a program to generate the history, business success/wealth, and lineage of the House of Livy (with special focus on the nonaLivy branch) — as reference for my current WIP novel series.
• Started reorganizing my main world site (Ruartei) and expanding/revising the articles.
• Decided to focus on the articles I need for my novel series. (This is the main resolution for the coming year.)

2026 Resolutions

So I started out with one set of resolutions and halfway through January realized that I needed to change them.

I haven't been feeling well for the several months and found that this challenge (as well as a couple of unofficial ones I wanted to join) was simply too much for me.

The good news is — as of early February, I've started to feel better, have more energy, and therefore more motivation. I've got a tentative set of goals for the year, but I'm not going to list them here — since I want to a month or two to see if my new energy level will stick around, and to settle into what goals I really want to accomplish.

I will, however, list some of my current thoughts.

I started weaving (something I've wanted to do for nearly my entire life) and found that I really enjoy it. And I think having something physical and not just digital is good for me (although, of course, I bought a weaving program).

I've been stalled on starting the second draft of my novel. There are a number of reasons why. But I think I will try using the manuscript system on World Anvil. And possibly even publish the second draft chapter by chapter. I'm going to start that soon and see how it goes.

On the worldbuilding front, I think that — for me — the challenges actually slow me down from making significant progress. Except for WorldEmber. I'm going to pull back from challenges, and I'll see about Summer Camp. But I'm going to just work on various articles as I feel like it— and publish them when I feel they are ready. There are a number of things I want to do — like create an interstellar map for Ruartei.

One thing I decided near the end of last year is to separate my main world as the base information and put the specific information about each novel in a different world. This is to handle changes and time, but also give me more focus. I got this idea from eccbooks.

And lastly, I'm toying with the idea to post some of my personal worldbuilding notes and my weaving hobby progress here on this world site.

Articles Read

I read a few articles (many, many good ones, quite inspiring), but simply didn't have the energy to make a list.

Links

Challenge Instructions

WorldEmber 2025 Stats

My worldbuilding article - about half done with one, but it's not ready to be published yet.