Culture

A Writer’s Problems Aren’t Unique

by

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

I often mentor other authors as I’ve been self-publishing for over a decade and writing professionally and non for much longer. Often it seems they have the same problems over and over again. We all know the drill – writer’s block, fear of failure, formatting, etc. When you mentor, it seems you’re stuck in a time warp, and you’re too tired to make Rocky Horror jokes.

Sometimes I find this frustrating, and I know other authors experience this as well. We’d love to see a unique problem, thank you. We’re done with issues of capitalizing titles and line spacing – can we get something new?

This frustration misses an important point.  We see the same problem repeatedly, but for that individual author, the experience is unique. It is their writer’s block, their insecurity, and so on. What has become abstract to us is painfully personal to them.

Realizing this can help us get over “writer problem boredom.” We can understand the personal experiences of writers having the same crisis we’ve seen before. We can understand the visceral issues someone is having, even if we watched fifty other people have the same problem. Our advice can be customized (and sometimes is more about the person getting other life problems solved).

This also means we can tell the people we mentor that they’re not alone. They’re going through what others have gone through before. There are resources to help them because these problems are so common. Help is not only on its way, it’s arrived and set up shop online and in your library.

Finally, when we tell writers their problems are common, it’s a sign to keep going. Their issues have bedeviled others, others who have solved the problems. The key is to keep going.

Maybe, once they’re over their blocks, they can guide other people as well. With our insights, maybe they’ll be less frustrated.

Steven Savage

The Difficulty of Difficult Media

by

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

(Thanks to Serdar, who inspired me with this column.)

I often hear the word “Difficult” used to describe media with praise. The “difficult” film that supposedly makes you a film buff if you understand it. “Difficult” is apparently a good thing, and I see no reason to believe this.

If a book or movie is “difficult” to understand, is that a testimony to its depth? There’s no reason to assume that it’s any good – maybe it’s incoherent or bad. Perhaps the creator didn’t know how to communicate. A difficult movie isn’t necessarily a mental obstacle course that strengthens you, but just a pointless labyrinth.

Yes, some media is “difficult,” and yes, it takes intellectual fortitude to understand it. I evaluate such media on a case-by-case basis because “difficult” even when properly used doesn’t communicate depth. A clever mystery isn’t the same as a symbolism-packed journey.

I think people love to praise “difficult” media because it says I am smart enough to understand this and you’re not. Claiming something is “difficult” for too many is a way to praise themselves. It’s a way to use a single word to claim one’s intellectual superiority that you “got” it.

I’m always wary of simplistic descriptions such as “difficult.” They quickly become shorthand whose meaning is lost or ignore important distinctions. One word can get in the way of the real experience of a piece of media or a person.

Steven Savage

The Net (work) With No Center

by

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

As the pandemic grinds on (and grinds back) my hope for any kind of “normal” fades. We’ll find a new normal, new ways to carry on. Some of the old normal was so fragile it would break anyway. But things will – must – change.

That includes our social relations. I’ve been trying to understand what social ties that I can build in this time. The answer is the ties can’t focus on me, and that answer came from a video game named Slipways.

Slipways is a streamlined strategy game of interstellar colonization. One colonizes worlds and builds trade routes (the FTL slipways) between them. Worlds have needs and goods, and you set up slipways that benefit multiple planets. Complex relations among these planets develop, a vast, complex network of support that hopefully helps all.

(If you don’t keep the benefits in mind, the people throw you out of office. Center on one area of the galaxy and it all falls apart.)

One night, trying to sleep, I realized Slipways is an excellent metaphor for the social structures we should build. We should seek social ties where people benefit each other and use our unique needs and inclinations. Equally as important, the web of social relations we try to forge in these troubled times can’t be centered on one person. Put too much weight on one part of the web, and it snaps.

This realization came as a great relief. I had been trying to juggle social ties and commitments, help others but had missed the whole. I might center on my social needs or the needs of a lonely friend, but that was wrong. I wanted to build a network.

The funny thing is, I build networks anyway – “Social Butterfly Effect,” as one friend put it. I just missed that in my desire to fix things and keep them running as we meander through the second year of the Dumb Apocalypse. I knew more and did more than I expected – once I stopped worrying about myself, what I did, etc.

Amazing what can inspire us. Equally impressive is how we miss the obvious.

So if you want to network, ping me . . .

Steven Savage