Seventh Sanctum Update 12/4/2013

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Hello everyone!  So let’s see how we’re doing at Seventh Sanctum!

  • I’ve got some rough plans for the next few months, we’ll see how they work out after a little polishing and planning.  I’m not planning anything as big as the rewrite for the next year because that took a lot out of me.
  • As you saw, Way With Worlds is back!  I plan to revisit the entire column line to rewrite, expand, or in a few cases just leave some old ones alone.  Think of it as Way With Worlds updated – as I have a lot to add from my experiences!
  • Didn’t see a lot of enthusiasm for a blog, but let me note that it will be basically running as part of the site but not take over the site – I don’t want to turn the site into a blog, so much as have one that belongs to the site if you get my drift.  The purpose is the tools first and foremost – but it’d be nice to have content and people commenting on it and interacting.  I’m still assuming adding a blog in Q1 or so – and a little feedback would help (even if it’s “really, don’t”).
  • Do have a few more formatting tweaks I may try, so stay tuned!

– 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 Job Guru: Skill Spread

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What lets you do your job and carry out your career? Well you could say your position, connections, etc. But I’m talking actual productivity, and what lets you actually do things is skills.

When it comes to skills, that’s a huge part of our career. We measure them with tests. We get certifications to show we have them. We get rated on the job or by clients. We seek them out or develop them. In short, a big part of your career is the ability to do something.

So more skills is good for you because it’s good for your career. Ehancing skills is good for you because skills are good.  And so on.

Now we geeks in many ways are people with multiple careers. Sure we have what pays the bills, we also have our hobbies, and many of us have something in between. Your average highly active geek-type is probably doing two or three jobs at any time, and in many cases only one of them actually pays the bills.  Sadly for some that’s “barely” pays the bills, so enhancing what we can do is even more important.

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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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