My Lycian World

How worldbuilding happens. It’s not always this thing where you delay starting your fiction in order to fill notebook after notebook with worldbuilding details, most of which won’t be used in the novel unless you LIKE boring your readers. In the pulp era writers often did their worldbuilding on the fly. In fact, if they forgot their details between one story and the next, there could be a lot of contradictions. But I think the reason readers weren’t as bothered by this is that pulp fiction was dynamic, on the move, and full of action.
In our era we are encouraged by bad writing advisors to spend a lot of time in contemplation, rewriting, reimagining our vision— great ways to avoid ever finishing. To get anything done, you need a fast-moving pulp writer in your head who has to finish that story now or he won’t eat next week.
This is how my story-country of Lycia came into being. In my home country, there was this election. Now, just before this election, I had to give up my television and internet service due to poverty. On election night, trying to get election results, I used up the whole internet quantity for the month trying to get information on the election results.
What I finally learned made me wonder— what would happen if a country that was used to being a democratic republic overnight became a one-party state like Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany? What would happen to a family who was not a member of the One Party?
Those speculations led to a story I called LYCIAN DESTINY. I decided to set the story in an imaginary country, Lycia, made up of 57 provinces, with names like Galatia, Thracia, and Carmania. Each province corresponds to a US state or region (except for bits I added to Lycia that aren’t part of the US, like Cuba) and I have kept city and town names. But using the term ‘Lycia’ for the nation helped me keep from turning it into a dull political tract.
LYCIAN DESTINY hit a dead end, but I used the same setting for BANNED BOOKS, BANNED GIRL, only that took place a little later in the history. I posted a version of that to Wattpad. A third story I called A LYCIAN PATRIOT, which is about a young man who must flee the safe, civilized part of Lycia controlled by the dystopian system, which by then is called The Harmony, and live in the Wildlands.
And then, my old Mac died and seems to have taken much of my work with it. I am currently writing this on a wonky, broken old computer I call Ace, which urgently needs to be replaced— but can’t be, because I am on SSI disability and urgently need money to buy luxuries like food and the plumbing services I need to fix some pipes that need to be replaced before winter. (I am thinking of holding an online fundraiser to buy a new computer, please discourage me.)
My writing seems to have come to a standstill. Seems silly to recreate my stories from memory on to a computer that will probably take all my stuff with it when it dies. I thought it was dead already a couple years ago.
But when I do finish something, like this blog post, I intend to post it as soon as I can. I can’t afford to wait and stockpile writing, either fictional or blog posts. Not with my one computer this unreliable. (I am trying to back up to a thumb drive, since this computer won’t let me back up to Dropbox most of the time.)
I have some big-picture things about my Lycian world— a short list of province names, the name of an overthrown and kidnapped president, some historical events and persons— and some small things, like people getting paid in food, rent and household supply credits, a Blue Market to buy and sell illicitly, party pins people had to wear to display that they were party members, which also indicated the person’s party status and social utility.
I think, after the loss of most of the writing and worldbuilding info, I want to start by recreating the first story of the three. I don’t currently know if it will be possible to publish it, even in ebook form, with the computer situation. I really don’t want to put it up on Wattpad, I don’t like the Wattpad alternatives, so I may go with some sort of blog fiction, either on WordPress, Blogger or Substack. I figure I will have to recruit readers whether I publish on Wattpad or elsewhere, so I might as well have more control over the story and avoid the woke mafia in places like Wattpad.

~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~
*MeWe: https://mewe.com/i/nissaannakindt
Gab: https://gab.com/nissalovescats
My Books.
Banned Books, Banned Girl. https://www.wattpad.com/story/269878745
Get More Blog Traffic: https://www.amazon.com/dp/BO86H4FQ4M