writing

Why I Wrote It: The Power of Creative Paths

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

This book was written when I realized I knew more than I did.

Let me rewind, because this involves Project Management, seminars, and Seventh Sanctum.

Anyway, awhile ago I was asked to speak at a seminar for local members of the Project Management Institute. I have a bit of a reputation as being a creative type, so I spoke on the role of creativity in Project Management. This is more important than it seems.

See, Project Management in the broad sense (yes, I’m including Agile) requires creativity. You have to think around problems. You have to imagine solutions. You have to communicate in interesting ways. It was a natural subject for me.

But what I needed was a way to talk about different forms of creativity, giving the people there ideas of how they could understand their strengths. I turned to my Seventh Sanctum work for that, and realized Generators fell into five categories:

  • Expansion (adding things on)
  • Combination (combining things in set patterns)
  • Reduction (removing items)
  • Fusion (fusing concepts)
  • Mapping (metaphorical)

That gave me a great way to describe creativity so people could ask about their strengths. I put a lot of thought into this, then used it as maybe 25% of the presentation, and let it sit.

It was only years later when it hit me that “duh, this would be a great book to organize my theories on creativity.”

I know, yes, it was obvious. In hindsight. To someone who wasn’t me.

So I realized, yes, I should expand on this way of viewing creativity. I often advised people on creative endeavors, and this gave me a framework within which to think and coach.

Which meant then I had to organize my way of coaching to help people. So the framework I had carefully assembled now drove me to organize my thoughts. That’s what a good framework does – it’s a skeleton to put things on. Frameworks may not be complete or perfect, but they let you do a heck of a lot because they help you think of the big and small picture.

The book got a lot more intense than I expected because I had this framework. I organized my advice, found things that made me think, had to give examples, and so on. Writing on creativity, using that structure, required me to be more creative and more aware.

The result is a book I’m proud of, but I’m thinking I should revisit it now and then, rewrite it every few years. That way it keeps up with the times, that way I don’t let things sit, and that way I stay aware of my own thoughts.

Amazing what you can learn when you pay attention and have a framework.

Steven Savage

The End Of The World As We Don’t Know It

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

My friend Serdar talked about about his disinterest in writing post-apocalyptic fiction at his blog. I wanted to add my own thoughts on this because most apocalyptic stuff and even post-apocalyptic stuff feels boring and inaccurate. As Serdar puts it, its best to take things as Mad Max like mythology, a sort of lesson or metaphor.

As for the rest of the apocalypses . . .

Most fictional post-apocalypse tales are boring, repetitive, and the same stuff. I’ve been watching enough bad-movies that took Mad Max and gave us so many battles in tight leather pants that it’s like 80’s hair bands went to war. There’s so many Zombie movies it’s a running joke that rarely explores the implications of having zombies. Most of our fictional apocalypses have been done so over and over again there’s nothing to learn or take from it – if there ever was much in the first place.

We’ve recycled our apocalypses and our post-apocalypses, so most of them are going through the motions. Most of the apocalypses are zombies, even if they lack zombies.

In addition, real post-apocalypses don’t fictionalize well.

First, some apocalypses are boring. We’re living through a low-level apocalypses now with COVID-19, and it’s not that interesting. Disasters are often not action-packed or dramatic tales, they’re the slow grind, the surviving-enough, the unending grayness of endings. Fiction doesn’t cover that.

Other apocalypses and post-apocalypses ignore or glorify the horror. We’ve had plenty of apocalyptic bombings and and disasters, we’ve had horrors and terrible mass deaths. So much fiction either grinds our face in the blood and turns it into a show, leaving us with that queasy sense of watching apocalypse pornography. Others try to ignore the horror, because it’s so horrible, building fiction around it until it’s drained of meaning.

Good apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction exists, but it takes a person that can write, that explores, that understands the subjects. It is rare, because it is difficult.

This is why my current fiction, the Avenoth series, is what I call post-post apocalypse. I’m not interested in the end of the world (in this case, a devastating war that killed 3/4 of the planet) or the immediate post-apocalypse. Instead it’s about a rebuilt world, so we see the impact of the apocalypse and post-apocalypse, but are far enough in the future to see the meaning of it all. I want a tale of healed scars and a new society with memory, where we understand the past by looking at the present.

Besides, some of these post-post apocalypses have powerful impact. When the world is grinding away or the blood is spilling, it’s hard to see what it means in the whole.

But afterwards? Afterwards is when you can look back on the works of the past, and despair properly.

Steven Savage

My Book Roundup 4/2/2020

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I write a lot and have quite a few books.  So now and then I’m going to post a roundup of them for interested parties!

My sites:

Fiction

I’ve been returning to fiction with a techno-fantasy setting of several planets orbiting a star called Avenoth.  Take a typical fantasy world of magic and gods, and let it evolve into the space age and internet age . . .

  • A Bridge To The Quiet Planet – Two future teachers of Techno-Magical safety find trying to earn their credentials hunting odd artifacts backfires when you’re hired to put some back . . . on a planet where gods go to die!

The Way With Worlds Series

This is what I do a lot of – writing on worldbuilding!.  You can find all of my books at www.WayWithWorlds.com! 

The core books of the series will help you get going:

  • Way With Worlds Book 1 – Discusses my philosophy of worldbuilding and world creation essentials.
  • Way With Worlds Book 2 – Looks at common subjects of worldbuilding like conflicts in your setting, skills for being a good worldbuilder, and more!

When you need to focus on specifics of worldbuilding, I have an ever-growing series of deep dive minibooks.  Each provides fifty questions with additional exercises and ideas to help you focus on one subject important to you!

The current subjects are:

Creativity

I’m the kind of person that studies how creativity works, and I’ve distilled my findings and advice into some helpful books!

  • The Power Of Creative Paths – Explores my theories of the Five Types of Creativity, how you can find yours, and how to expand your creative skills to use more Types of Creativity.
  • Agile Creativity – I take the Agile Manifesto, a guide to adaptable project development, and show how it can help creatives improve their work – and stay organized without being overwhelmed.
  • The Art of The Brainstorm Book – A quick guide to using a simple notebook to improve brainstorming, reduce the stress around having new ideas, and prioritize your latest inspirations.
  • Chance’s Muse – I take everything I learned at Seventh Sanctum and my love of random tables and charts and detail how randomness can produce inspiration!

Careers

Being a “Professional Geek” is what I do – I turned my interests into a career and have been doing my best to turn that into advice.  The following books are my ways of helping out!

  • Fan To Pro – My “flagship” book on using hobbies and interests in your career – and not always in ways you’d think!
  • Skill Portability – A quick guide to how to move skills from one job to another, or even from hobbies into your job.  Try out my “DARE” system and asses your abilities!
  • Resume Plus – A guide to jazzing up a resume, sometimes to extreme measures.
  • Epic Resume Go! – Make a resume a creative act so it’s both better and more enjoyable to make!
  • Quest For Employment – Where I distill down my job search experiences and ways to take the search further.
  • Cosplay, Costuming, and Careers – An interview-driven book about ways to leverage cosplay interests to help your career!
  • Fanart, Fanartists, and Careers – My second interview-driven book about ways to leverage fanart to help your career!
  • Convention Career Connection – A system for coming up with good career panels for conventions!

Culture

  • Her Eternal Moonlight – My co-author Bonnie and I analyze the impact Sailor Moon had on women’s lives when it first came to North America.  Based on a series of interviews, there’s a lot to analyze here, and surprisingly consistent themes . . .