It’s hard to believe this is the first blog post I’ve written since April. I’ve been knee-deep in living several dreams at the same time, besides being bitten hard by spring fever. Throughout half of April and most of May, I spent most of my free time outside. Every week-end I worked outside made my weight drop by two pounds — an added bonus. Plus, my mornings are now spent exercising, not drinking coffee while feverishly working on my computer until the last possible minute before I have to get ready for work — which was how I created most of my Web Site design. It’s hard to have balanced, healthy habits while working full-time and fleshing out a fictional Web Site part-time.

Now that it’s July, I finally feel like being on my computer again. I’ve got so many assignments to catch up with in my online novel writing class. Thankfully, they’re all grouped into one theme: world-building. That’ll make it easier to focus on all of them at the same time. I’ve got no less than twelve world-building assignments to do. Here are a couple of examples:

1. Write a paragraph or two about how you are going to organize your research. Afterwards list at least five things you think you need to study. You can use this as a handy reference to help remember some of the material you need.
2. Place your characters in some location where you imagine they will spend a lot of time in the story. Even without doing extensive work on the worldbuilding and culture, you will likely have some solid feel for certain locations which resonate for your story — and this, in turn, might help you later develop the type of world and culture you want to make this place real.Your characters know this room, or spot in the garden or whatever other location you want. In a few paragraphs give us a feel for it as well.

Once I get caught up on these assigmnents, I plan to write ahead for The Myth of Merula and then to begin releasing content on a weekly schedule. That way, I can stick to a schedule without writing through writer’s block just to keep the content coming.