Steve’s Update 7/11/2021

by

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

So where are my projects?

Giveaways – Whew, I have quite a few – which includes giveaways for my books and others! Lots of free stuff!

Yeah, I kinda went far.

A School of Many Futures final edit is on to the second prereader feedback. Then it’s on to some content review, style tightening, grammar check, and then publishing! August looks good for the ebook!

Agile Books: My next big project will be on Agile and Writing – from a mindset point of view. There will be some techniques, but mostly ones to help think about writing more effectively.

The Way With Worlds series is on hold yet not. No new books until November – but I plan to start redoing covers and some content in September or so. I’ve got 18 books to update . . .

The Seventh Sanctum rewrite continues to target the “weird” generators. However, I am taking some time to map out my code more so it’s easier to add the final set of features. The good news is the code I wrote supports even the “oddball” generators much better as it’s more adaptable.

Steven Savage

It All Falls Apart In The End

by

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

We’ve all experienced a time when things fall apart. Ancient software gives up the ghost after a harmless update. A roadway collapses despite people knowing it needed work. Larger disasters, such as the pandemic, confound us as things are just falling apart.

Why is it that the infrastructure of our lives goes to hell, even when we know it’s coming? Even when we made some effort to fix them?

I have a theory because of my work in IT, my interest in infrastructure, and my career in planning. Simply, we kick problems down the road until they accumulate, and many happen all at once.

Allow me to explain.

Imagine there’s a problem – a decaying road, an aging piece of software, an outdated government policy. The best idea would be to fix it, and maybe even make it better (aka “ruggedization). That is the best thing to do- but we don’t.

What we do is we partially fix things and kick a lot of the work down the road. We patch that concrete, we tweak the database connector, we throw in a new form and that’s it. The heavy lifting, the replacement, the reorg or whatever can come later.

Of course, when it’s time to do the real work, we kick it down the road a little more. No one wants to vote for that tax increase, no one wants to tell the boss how much that new software will cost. A half-baked attempt is made, and then we wait.

Because we’re not really fixing a problem, breakdowns come faster and faster. Software crashes more and more. Delivery lines snarl and fail yearly instead of every year or two. But we keep delaying a fix.

But it gets worse, because if you’re trying to avoid fixing one problem, you’re probably avoiding others. All those problems you don’t return, and they keep coming faster as well. Eventually, a lot goes wrong at once, and everything goes to hell.

In short, if you keep delaying addressing problems – be it software or infrastructure – the problems keep coming back all the faster until things break.

You’re probably nodding at this. We’ve all worked on that project or dealt that government official or were in that building we suddenly had to leave.  

A lot of what’s wrong in the word is the bill coming due – social meltdown, economic difference, bad infrastructure, the climate. We’re going to need to buckle down and fix things if we want a decent future.

Steven Savage

The Ability To Know The End

by

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

While editing “A School of Many Futures” last night, I realized I could see the end in sight. For a minute, the world froze as I knew the book would be done. It’s strange to have the bolt of inspiration not be “the start” but “oh, good, this’ll be done.”

Sometimes it seemed I wouldn’t complete it – and the Pandemic didn’t help. I had written the book, rewritten it, had it edited, rewrote it during editing, edited it, and took prereader input. It seemed like it’d be forever, even as time ticked down on my well-constructed timeline.

This lightning bolt of understanding led me to another realization – the ability to know something is done is a skill.

I work in the software industry, where many people advocate for a “Definition of Done” for parts of projects. The idea is that you should know what means a program, update, etc. is ready to go. After all, if you don’t know what “done” is, when do you stop?

(I’m sure that sounds familiar to many writers and artists.)

I know people who are just good at done. They can assess end states, itemize needs, and figure out where you need to go. I’m sure you have something you’re good at where you can know done. That skill might not exist in every part of your life.

In the case of my novel, between the Pandemic and challenging myself, I hadn’t asked what “Done” was. In fact, I hadn’t done it for my first novel as well. Clearly, this was a skill I could develop.

I don’t have this problem with my nonfiction work. Perhaps I find such ease because it’s very technical, or that fiction has much more potential. Perhaps my return to fiction is showing gaps in my knowledge. Either way, I’ve found a skill to build.

Perhaps I can start by creating Definitions of Done for my work.

How good are you at figuring out “done?”

Steven Savage