Psychology

Find Your Block

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

As I’ve spoken of before, it’s a good idea to make space for your creative works. Setting aside blocks of time for your work over trying to plan every hour is really beneficial. Having elaborate plans makes most of us feel pressure, having space to work feels like freedom.

However, as I’ve talked to creative types, I’ve found something else: we each have different “ideal” sizes of blocks and how to arrange them.

My idea block of creative time seems to be at least an hour, preferably more. It probably tops out at about two to four hours when I need a break.

On the other hand, I met a person who sets aside entire weekends to write and can churn out over 50,000 words over two days.

Why is this important?

First, finding your ideal creative “block time” means you can work out your schedule so you have time to create. It could be an hour at a time, so you can arrange many different efforts into an evening. It could be you need big blocks of time, so you pick a weekend day to do creative works.

Secondly, finding your ideal creative “block time” removes pressure on yourself. We creatives are constantly hearing how we should create, but finding how we create makes it ours. We may be able to use all that creative advice, but in our way.

Third, simply, you learn a lot about how you work. Finding the ideal timeframe for you to create lets you learn why. Other insights will probably follow.

So ask yourself – what is your ideal block of time to set aside for creative works? You might be surprised where that question goes . . .

Steven Savage

The Creative Rebellion Of Finding Yourself

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

Creativity is a powerful force that shapes worlds and shakes tyrants. Through it we connect ideas to find new possibilities. Through it we connect with others to understand them and share with them.

But more, creativity lets you connect with yourself.

A creative act teaches you about yourself. When you create, you find more about yourself, what inspires you, and how you work. Connections appear that you never expected, from parts of yourself you weren’t aware of. When you look at a creative work, you learn about the creator – more so when the creator is yourself.

A creative act teaches you what you can do. To write a book, compose a song, or finish a video game shows your power – to yourself. That finished work is a testimony to your capabilities, capabilities you might not have known. Who can take your power when you see it embodied?

A creative act teaches you what you can be. To create, to compose, to write, to code, to draw requires you to grow. The person that starts writing a comic is not the same person who finishes it. Every paragraph, chapter, or code module is a path to growth. Your finished song or cosplay is a testimony to becoming.

If someone tries to control you maliciously, creativity reminds you of what you can do.

If someone tries to make you their idea of you, creativity reminds you of who you are and what you can be.

If someone tries to rule you and others, creativity lets you grow – and perhaps “think around” that malicious limiter.

However, there is also an obligation to this power. If you can know yourself and grow yourself, share it with others. Don’t limit yourself or allow them to be limited. To share this “creative rebellion” is to help others, and to have allies in freedom and creativity.

To share this power also protects you from becoming a ruler, a controller, a tyrant. To care that others can grow and be themselves helps protect us all.

Steven Savage

Writing And Metaphor

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

What’s Your Metaphor for writing?

Returning to fiction with my novel, A Bridge To the Quiet Planet and its upcoming sequel, a School of Many Futures, required me to think about writing a lot. Thinking about writing, how to conceive of it, how to pace it, how to develop it helps you, well, write. A metaphor gives you tools to think in and ways to improve.

For nonfiction I think of it in abstract, visual forms. I’m so used to writing it and have for so long that my metaphors are things I see and feel. Perhaps once I had to use more concrete terms, but time makes things unconscious and automatic, and I don’t remember.

But fiction? That was harder because I’d not thought about – and when I was rethinking my writing methods, I realized I was treating fiction as a “physical” thing.

You’ve heard me talk about “Big Rocks” as pieces of fiction and plot. I’ve discussed Agile and stories, but Agile comes from physical manufacturing and store stocking – it often has “physical” ideas built in. I treated stories and chapters as scenes as boxes containing various events.

Did these limit me? Hell yes, because fiction – and indeed a lot of writing – probably isn’t best thought of in physical metaphors. It’s too limiting, too atomistic, too confining.

Now how did I realize this? Because I was analyzing writing (as I always do) and realized how important editing is, and editing requires a product. You make something then improve it.

Writing fiction is like writing computer code.

Computer code is more a living thing, with components and distinct parts, but it works because all its parts come together. It’s about flows of information and functionality. Best of all, as long as you have it working – no matter how awful – you can improve in. In fact, you often have to make bad code to get good code because you don’t know how it’s going to work until you have something.

Seeing this metaphor, this new metaphor, really helped me get over some of my writing challenges. Thinking about the parts of a fictional story as physical started to fade away. I had a way to see things differently.

My metaphor or metaphors may not be yours. Even my more abstract ways of thinking are my ways, not yours. But a challenge to you, my writing friend, is to find what metaphors help you write. What is a good way to compare writing to something else that helps you?

Maybe you have it. Maybe you don’t. Or maybe you just thought of it and have more to explore . . .

Steven Savage