Advice

Just Who Is Writing This?

by

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

So I continue to edit A Bridge To The Quiet Planet, where internet using gods, ancient orders of monster hunters, and trains on spirit-possessed tracks collide.  After the collision they exchange insurance information and complain behind each other’s back.

I found the editing felt  strange, odd.  There were parts I hated or even dreaded – which is entirely unfair to my incredible editor.  Thanks to her work this book is literally twice as better as I had created at the start.

Now you know me, I have to analyze something when I don’t understand it and figure it out.  Oh, and share it with you, my fellow creatives.

Why did I have this dread of editing?

I began analyzing these feelings and realized my basic worry was to find the book was an unsalvagable mess, that it would be impossible or too much effort to fix it.  Now my editor is all about pushing people forward – if the book had been a mess she’d still have left me enough comments to demessify it.

That’s when it struck me – my worry was that I couldn’t write it and couldn’t edit it.  In short – I had Impostor Syndrome.

I began to realize this strikes a lot of writers I see.  We’re there, writing away and are still convinced we’re not writers.  We think:

  • “My work is flawed so it’s not any good” – all work is flawed, so you keep at it and get better.
  • “No one cares about my work” – Someone will always care.  If you do, someone else will.
  • “I don’t have a specialty” – Well, fine, good, you’re broad.
  • “I’m only good at one thing” – That’s fine you, you’re a specialist.

Why is this?  I find two reasons.

First, writing is not an exact science unless your subject is very exact and like a science.  Because of this there’s no exact way to know you’re doing it right and certainly no way to know you’re doing it perfectly.  This makes it easy to imagine all the things you could do differently and never think of “right enough” – or developing your own standards.

Secondly, writers are imaginative.  We can come up with all sorts of ways to decide how bad we are.  We turn imagination on ourselves.

But a writer is someone who writes and improves.  If you do this, you’re a writer.  You’re only not a writer if you quit or stagnate.

Realizing this, I felt better. I’m going to do what I always do – forge ahead and write and get better.

 

-Steven Savage

All My Good Bad Influences

by

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

As I edit away on A Bridge To The Quiet Planet, my tale of a techno-magical world and an interplanetary road trip involving holy books, I am busy finding out how I mishandled my good influences.

This is not due to my own genius, this is due to my amazing editor, who I am willing to introduce to anyone who wants to pay her money to edit.  She is fantastic at pointing out flaws in my work, leaving comments, and using search-replace to highlight all my common errors.  Some pages of my book look like a vengeful highlighter achieved sentience and attacked common word combinations it had a grudge against.

Between her feedback and her markup, I began to realize that my major influences were also ones influencing my flaws.  Allow me to explain:

First, there’s a chance if you’re inspired by an author or a creator, you won’t do it quite right.

Second, you may make the same mistakes your inspiration makes – and likely being less polished than they, you’ll make them worse.

Third, your inspirations together may not sit quite right.  You need to find a way to fuse them into a whole.

So what happened with me?  Well my editor noticed passive voice (lots of was), strange asides, weird wordplay, and moments I was abstract from the characters.  Nothing unusual, but then I looked at my inspirations and realized where I’d stumbled.

My core influences are Sir Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, and Dave Barry.  If you read my fiction, the inspiration is obvious – I love playing with words, exploring settings, and deconstructing ideas.  Take these trends too far and you end up with infodumps and trying to be too witty.

I was also influenced by anime, with the fantastical elements, fusions of genres, and passion for characterization.  Again, you can take these things too far – it took watching My Hero Academia to realize that I too liked to do giant flashbacks that could be handled better when not animated.

Finally, I love oddball character stuff of all kinds – indeed one sub-theme of A Bridge To The Quiet planet is that it’s basically several parties of unusual personalities having an adventure and colliding with each other.  Its a tale of magic and super-science and demons, but is basically about the people in this world.  You can get distracted by the oddities and details and loose touch with the fact these are people.

So I did too much infodumping, wrong details, wrong approach, and got a bit too full of  myself.  But there’s one more thing I forgot.

I was following several styles – I was not combining them into one.  I was doing a story of intimate character portraits and giant weird worlds, of human eccentricity and complex societies.  There was a feeling of discord, of the two not blending – or of one dominating the other.

In short I took some of my inspirations too far or in the wrong direction – and forgot to find a style that fit to realize all my inspirations.

As you edit your work, look to your inspirations.  Then find out how you might be doing them wrong – or doing them right and not harmonizing them.

-Steven Savage

Sometimes The Best Ambition Is Less Ambition

by

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Lately, a lot of my friends have been going through “job issues.”  Losing them, not happy with them, being pressured to trade up, and so on.  Listening to them I realized that there’s something important to say:

It’s OK to not have ambitions for a “better” job.

Yes, that’s right it’s me, Mister Geek Job Guru telling you maybe you’d be happier staying where you are, or getting a lower paying job or whatever.  Radical? Unexpected? Extremely un-Steve like?  No, it’s about things more important than getting a “better” job.

The benefits are worth it.  One friend of mine had some health issues, and their job has great benefits, so they’re not planning to move on or up at least for the time being.  This is fine.  If a job gives you benefits like great health, training, etc. it’s perfectly OK not to change.  A job that has good benefits may be worth staying at even if it’s not as high paying or lacks prestige or whatever.

It’s lower stress.  Look moving up is all fine and good, but maybe a job is going to have less chance of killing you.  Fine, worth staying with as opposed to getting a job that will put you in a grave quicker.

It lets you do other things.  Your job or future job may give you more time to socialize, build that art career, take care of kids, whatever.  Perhaps it’s less work or a shorter commute – that’s great.  No need to change.

It’s cheaper to do.  A job you’re at may cost less to commute at, require you to spend less on things like businesswear, and so on.  That’s fine.  Sometimes the money you save beats any pay raise you may have.

It works into your life plans.  You don’t have to go get the biggest title or highest paycheck if the job fits your life goals.  Maybe the job will let you retire quicker but isn’t as prestigious.  Perhaps your current position means you get to stay in a place you like.  That’s fine.

You’re tired of career stuff.  Maybe your current job is a placeholder intentionally, and that’s also fine.  Maybe you got laid off, or are changing careers or just moved.  Good, enjoy your placeholder, maybe set a time to re-review your priorities, and chill out.

It’s a placeholder.  Maybe you’re moving or going back to school or something and the job is there so you can earn money.  Great, don’t worry.

There are many reasons not to look for the better job, the best job, the highest-up job or whatever.  That’s totally fine because your career goals have to serve your life goals.

If you aren’t sure about this, let me remind you that you have permission from me, the guy who writes all sorts of career books to not think about the biggest paycheck or coolest title and just do whatever.

-Steven Savage