Writing

Geek As Citizen: History, Posterity, and Our Terrible Past Creations

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Previously I had focused on the value of publishing and republishing our past works (mostly focusing on the written word), and on helping others publish their works. I consider this an excellent example of geek citizenship as we organize information that others may find of use, review past work, and assist and empower others. If you’ve done any kind of writing over the years you know it’s power to reach people – to organize it’s access and help others do the same just lets more people benefit from someone’s creations.

However in my past work I was referring to things that would actually benefit people directly. Things we would be proud of and share gladly. Things that in short, we consider good works, even if they may be a bit rough around the edges.

The problem comes when dealing with things we’ve created that aren’t that good – or downright terrible.

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Way With Worlds: Why Worldbuild?

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ConstructionScene

 

Years ago at the end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st I began writing a column on worldbuilding and fiction – Way With Worlds. This was the age when people were suddenly able to get their works on the internet, via websites and journals and email. There was a slow simmer of amateur writers, should-be-pros, would-be-pros, fanficcers, and more. A column on worldbuilding seemed in order.

I’ve always had ambitions to write fiction, had worked on shared-universe newsletters, played RPGs, and more. Worlds were part of what I liked to do, and a good setting, a good living world/universe made things come alive. So I expressed my theories in hope of helping people, to use my knowledge gained over the years, and of course because I’m not overly good at shutting up.

The columns sat online for years when I decided not to continue them, and every now and then someone will read one or mention them to me. Over the years I do less fictional work directly, yet am still involved in worldbuilding when I help friends with games, edit books, and when I run the inspiration site Seventh Sanctum. Of course, I still have plenty of opinions.

Now even more people are writing, and making videos, and self-publishing. So I decided to revisit the columns and rewrite them, expand them, and use what I learned in over a decade.

And the first question is still as burningly relevant as ever? Why Worldbuild?

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Introducing Informotron Press!

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When I first started writing I didn’t know how much the writing bug would bite me – so I had several websites for my books.  Over time I consolidated them because, well, it was hard to maintain, a bit useless, and didn’t let me really leverage what I was doing.  So, finally, all my books are consolidated under my new imprint:

Informotron Press.

It’s all written in Bootstrap (which is what I rewrote Seventh Sanctum in), and in fact the Sanctum rewrite made this go much faster.  Frankly, the whole Bootstrap thing is working for me – and the relatively standard, scaling layouts really do work.  Bootstrap isn’t just a tool, it’s got good practices built into it.

So now, when you send your friends and family to my books (hey, Christmas is coming . . . ), they can find out about all the other books available.  Best of all, when I post my various resources I can make sure more people get them!

So go check it out, let me know what you think – and remember more books are coming . . .

– Steven Savage

Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach.  He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at https://www.stevensavage.com/.