At the start of this project I was very excited to be able to jump into a new world and write up the fantasy story I always wanted to write. Luckily, I had the foresight of planning out what I wanted to do each week. Now that I am officially seven weeks into this project, that preparation was well worth it. I am finding that despite all that is changing in my life, from protests to jobs and even other personal projects, I have been able to keep on time with every single deadline. The key to all of this seems to be pacing.

Don’t Go Too Fast… Or Slow

When I first made the Unintentional Calamity Development Timeline LibreOffice Calc document, I thought every single task would only take a week at most. Over the day, as I was building macros and formatting the document, I figured I would give myself more time for more important parts of this project. Building a world map and placing towns was all done in one week. In the beginning right after graduation, I had free time. I was excited. I knew I didn’t need a lot of time to complete these tasks. Beyond that, I gave most major parts of the development timeline two weeks. From developing towns to placing landmarks and now creating creatures, this long span of time has given me many opportunities to slow down and really think about the world from a different perspective.

Give Creativity Some Breathing Room

It is really easy to assume that making ten different fantasy creatures should not take a whole week. In fact, it probably shouldn’t take two weeks. Luckily, I had the foresight to realize that this wasn’t as simple a task as I initially thought. The creation of new creatures popped up other problems that I might need to think about before my deadline ends.

The whole plot of the Unintentional Calamity revolves around the spreading of a plague. This plague ravages everything. Plants, animals, anything alive will decay. The concept is an interesting one that will force the main character in a very uncomfortable position. This was intentional.

What I did not realize is how devastating this plague really is. While it would be easy to focus on the main character’s struggles to fix the world by himself, it isn’t plausible. Ecosystems are going to be altered as most life dies from the plague and anything that lives will be almost extinct or transformed into a new type of living organism. Just as Umana are turned into Scath, so will every creature be turned into some new, transformed being.

Put simply, the scale of this world project just jumped to be twice as big as before. Now, instead of developing ten creatures, I have to keep in mind that ten of those creatures have the potential to be impacted and transformed into ten new types of creatures touched by the plague.

With that two week time period to complete a simple task, I had a moment to sit down and truly immerse myself in this new world. That extra time benefited me a lot.

Scope Creep

One of the threats to any personal project is the lack of a hard deadline. I have not contacted publishers, few of my friends know that this is in development, there has been no wide public announcement outside of this website. Due to the lack of a hard deadline, there is no consequence if this project is delayed. Just like Final Fantasy XV, if I want to, I could probably keep developing this world forever.

The more time that I spend on each part of this project, the more I want to go into detail. When making a new world, there is no limit to how much content can be defined. In other words, the scope of this project is slowly creeping to get larger and larger.

Unfortunately, this project is technically already four years old. I do eventually want to see this book published, which is why I refuse to push the deadline six months out. Some sacrifices will have to be made, but it is well worth killing some ideas for the sake of completing a first draft. As I progress the next couple of months, it will be important to continue to push on and stick to the development timeline I set for myself. I guess we will see if that holds true within the coming weeks.