Back from the Holiday – Kind of

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Hello everyone! You haven’t seen me around for awhile this holiday season. So what’s up with me?

My girlfriend and I got sick with a cold, which I suspect was RSV as it lasted over two weeks for us and involved sinus drainage. We tested for COVID repeatedly, and the symptoms were also very different. This pretty much turned the holiday season into sitting around being miserable and occasionally do something when we were sure we weren’t infectious.

It was not fun. I lost two weeks, so now my “plan for 2023” efforts are this month, not over the holidays.

I think there’s a weird lesson in this. My girlfriend clearly got this from someone we know or work with – and the people we know are very careful. What I suspect is that since everyone is careful with COVID, they may not be thinking about other stuff. If you feel draggy but didn’t test positive for COVID, you might write off other diseases – and we’ve got that RSV/Flu/COVID “Tripledemic.”

So, please if you at all feel unwell, avoid big gatherings even if you test negative for COVID or whatever you suspect you have. We’re having a pretty ugly disease season and we’ll probably have others.

So my holiday update was nothing much except watching Drawfee, reading, gaming, resting, and being annoyed.

But I’m back at it. As I noted some weeks ago I plan to slow down my projects in 2023 so I can catch up from the wildness of the second half of 2022. But as I rest who knows what inspiration will strike . . .

Steven Savage

Virality Banality

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Over the years, the term “going viral” started to get on my nerves.  As I’m a writer, this nails-on-chalkboard-in-my-soul experience is common as “going viral” is oft a goal of writers.  We want tales of our books to “go viral” so they reach our audience – oh, and so we make money.  Despite the “positive” take on it, I kept finding it annoying.

I figured it out recently – and I’m glad to say three years of Covid-19 chaos was only a minor part of it for this hypochondriac.  However, it does involve viruses-as-metaphor – so let’s talk viruses.

A virus isn’t even a living thing; it’s a replication machine that uses living creatures to reproduce.  It has no reactions, no feelings, it’s not even a single-celled bacteria.  A virus is pointless – which is probably why they’re so scary – at least a bacterium is alive like you.

The idea of “going viral” as an author or artist gets to me as the idea is “you hijacked a bunch of people’s attention and got them to spread what you posted.”  The quality of your book or art doesn’t matter – at best, it’s an afterthought of whatever meme or clever marketing phrase you used.  Dross and brilliance, specialty work and mass appeal creations, the content doesn’t matter.

There’s a creepy implication to “going viral” that your work could be like a virus, and that’s laudable.  You can make your work perfectly calibrated to sell, create a perfect campaign, and get a bunch of attention – but there’s nothing there but a bunch of optimized math.  I’m unsettled by the idea of “virality” replacing creativity.

When you take a look at our media and social media landscape, you can see it’s gone in that direction.

What do I do with this knowledge of my opinions?  Mostly it tells me what I’m comfortable doing as an author to promote my works.  Partially it may tell me why some of my fellow creatives are unsettled by “going viral.”

But it also means I’m casting a far more jaundiced eye on marketing and social media, and I’m sure I’ll have more opinions to follow.

Steven Savage

Steve’s Update 12/11/2022

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(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s Tumblr, and Pillowfort.  Find out more at my newsletter, and all my social media at my linktr.ee)

Hey let’s catch up with my projects! Things are still pretty nuts here but it seems to be slowing down and I am taking time off.

So right now the goal is to catch up:

  • The next Worldbook (Disaster Response) is off to the editor today!  Expect to see it end of December/early January.
  • The Agile writing guide still behind as my pre-readers got busy.  Still gonna try to get it out end of Q1/early Qw 2023.
  • Seventh Sanctum relaunch just whenever I get to it and get uninterrupted time which has been REALLY hard.
  • The new Worldbook covers (more on that to follow)

I expect to get most of this in the next few weeks to few months, then spend most of my time experimenting and messing around while doing a few projects. I need a year to shake things up try things out like other writing styles, digital art, and more!

Steven Savage