Way With Worlds: Having A Vision

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Viewpoint Trees Sky

[Way With Worlds appears at Seventh Sanctum, MuseHack, and Ongoing Worlds]

A lot of what I write about worldbuilding is at least partially technical. It’s about breaking things into areas of analysis, questions, outlines, and more so you can make your world. Good worldbuilding is about thought and techniques and keeping track of things – well, half of it is.

The other half of worldbuilding is those wild ideas, those crazy thoughts, those “what ifs.” In many cases you’re either doing good with those moments of creativity, or organizing what thoughts you do have.  Of course, not all of these moments come at the right time – sometimes you want to get organized and your brain won’t shut up, sometimes you want an idea and feel like a book-keeper.

Then where there’s those times that your worldbuilding comes together, when you grasp the big picture, when you get both the “wow” and the numbers behind it. That moment when you have A Vision and it all comes together.

Those moments you “get” your world, and those are the moments that are beautiful and powerful.

You probably know what I’m talking about and wish you could get into that state more.

The fact that I’m writing about this means I’m betting a good chunk of my readers can’t.

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Steve’s Update 3/9/2014

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Another busy week and recovering from the illness.  Be careful folks, wash your hands, and if you get sick do not freaking go into work – or anywhere else.

  • So the next book is still in editing, and I found some uncaught formatting standardization errors.  I think I got them all but it took hours of work.  So the next print is make or break, if there’s anything bad it could throw me off by a week or so.  Fortunately, the issues really are bits and tweaks – the content is fine (after looking over the book constantly for two days I found maybe 3 issues of content, and that was odd phrasings or a weird capitalization).
  • As noted the next book is a ways off, and I haven’t decided what it is.  But I definitely want to wrap up and bundle the Way With Worlds posts so I can give people a nice “handbook” of my work.  I ASSUME it’ll be after I’m done, but if it appears that my mojo is really going and I’ll be doing this more than a year, well . . . maybe two books . . .
  • We’ve got more content coming at MuseHack so be sure to sign in!  I haven’t had many interviews laterly, so Mondays may be intermittent, but we’ve got one new writer on communities, and I’ve auditioned another that’s going to bring a really unique view on math, education, and statistics to geekery!
  • The illness kicked me right off my Seventh Sanctum plans since the next generator moved down the hierarchy there.  I have some humorous/more fun ones to try that I may do since they’re easier.

And that’s it here.  Let me know how you’re doing!

– 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/.

 

Geek As Citizen: A Statement Of Hope

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Sunrise

So, as I’ve been writing on Geek Citizenry, I’ve been focusing on areas we can be good citizens, and areas that we as geeks (both in general and as that ephemeral mass of geek culture) can improve in as citizens. It’s been awhile, and I’d like to make a statement.

I have hope, great hope really, that we Geeks, we technophiles and makers and cosplayers, can be really great citizens of our cities and countries and indeed the world. Many of us are already pretty good at it, and it seems that we’re trying to improve who we are. I catch that improvement in geek charities, in discussions of our culture and its problems, in reflections on the importance of technology.

I guess I believe in us on a gut level.

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