writing

You’re Responsible To Share Creative Power

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

Creativity is a tool for freedom and a tool for a functional society. It enriches and empowers. It provides new ideas and lets us see old ones in new lights. It topples tyrants and leaves potential tyrants in fear. If you’re a creative person, you’re morally obligated to empower others to use their creative abilities to ensure freedom and a functioning society.

To help people be creative means that they can think outside of the cages built around their heads. It means they’re harder to rule and control, and more able to be responsible citizens. Creativity is freedom – but also it’s a chance to take responsibility in new ways.

Helping people to be creative also gives them options that go beyond thinking. It may help them find a new job, freeing them of financial chains. Creativity gives them abilities to find solutions to problems, allowing them to fix things as opposed to following snake-oil charlatans.

Showing people the power of their creativity and how to use it finally means happier people. Creative people don’t just have the chance to be freer, more responsible, more powerful – they can experience joy more. When you can dream and imagine, you can find what you enjoy kand new ways to enjoy – and happy people can be hard to control.

How you help people be more creative, however, is a trickier bit. Each of us has our own creative tools, methods, and inclinations – these may not fit those we want to help. Each person we wish to aid has their sown situations and challenges and desires. To share creative power means asking what you can share and how to share it – it’s a journey, not a destination.

An excellent place to start is to ask how you got inspired, who helped you be more creative, what helped you see what you could do with creativity. This may be only relevant to you (and probably is), but analyzing the experience will help you find lessons to apply to others. If a supportive parent helped you, then you have a place to start – be supportive as they were.

Finally, keep in mind that this call to action is not one of superiority or a chance to lord your creativity over others. We’re all links in the chain; others aided your creativity before, and in turn, you pass it on. Each person you help is not “beneath” you – sharing and supporting is a mutual learning experience, because you will learn from everyone you want to nurture. Be humble in helping because then you’ll learn (possibly about your flaws).

So let us inspire others, share power, encourage creativity. We’ll empower and guide, help people be more, and build a stronger society. It’s a responsibility, but such a glorious one.

Steven Savage

You’re More Of A Writer Than You Know

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

So lately I was reading the FATE Core system. Yes, I read gamebooks, not just to play them, but because of a possible side game project. While reading, I put some other reading on hold as a gamebook is, well, a book.

This had me thinking about how much writing we do that we don’t think of as writing. You, a potential or current writer, may not see how much of a writer you already are.

If you write a report at work, people might not think of it as writing – including you. That thing may be 60 pages of prose, infographics, and careful phrasing, a virtual novella of workflows. Yet, some (including you) may not think of it as writing.

If you create a newsletter for your friends and family every month or every quarter, it’s writing. Sure, it’s got a zip file filled with cat pictures, but it’s writing. In fact, if you do a newsletter for your own writing, that’s writing.

If you’re a Business Analyst, a lot of what you do is writing. Feature sets and Scrum Stories, updates, and wireframes all involve writing.

Think of any of the above works – they involve enormous amounts of skills. One has to craft communications, pick words, create enormous amounts of writing. Creators format and organize and edit these seemingly “not-so-writerly” creations. They’re writing.

And of course, if you’re writing a game manual, then you’re a writer.

Which means there’s a very good chance you’re a writer right now.

Which means even if you think of yourself as a writer and do these things, you’re more of a writer than you know.

Which means a lot of things you do are writing. So if you feel you aren’t enough of a writer, or can’t be a writer, chances are that’s B.S. – you’re a writer. You just want to be more of one about specific works.

SO next time you doubt your writing, ask about all the things you do at work or at home. Chances are you’ve got less to doubt, do more than you think, and are learning more than you realize.

Now, use it to be the writer you want to be.

Steven Savage

The Responsibility of Print

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

I have a thing for books in print.

Sure I have a Kindle. Sure I read ebooks in various forms. But most of the time, I order books in print.

Sure there’s the practical reasons. No technical glitches. No screen problems. I can read it in the bathtub without worrying about dropping several hundred dollars of technology into the bathwater. A book on paper doesn’t crash during an update.

But there are other reasons.

First, a paper book can last. Updates don’t destroy it. A pulled publication doesn’t make it vanish off of your device. Compatibility issues don’t arise. A paper book may be vulnerable to the ravages of time, but less so the ravages of technology.

Secondly, a paper book can be given away. You can gift it and regift it. You can lend it with ease. A paper book can pass through many hands easily, imparting its wisdom and humor and thrills and dread.

Third, a paper book is easy to use as a historical record. Put it on the proper shelf. Gift it to a library or a little free library. Wrap it in proper storage materials and hide it for the centuries to come (which history has many records of).

Paper has many advantages, many benefits. But for me, the solidity and the sense of history matters to me. I want good things to last and be beyond the whims of our current age.

So for me many a paper volume passes through my hands. Then passes on.

Steven Savage