Writing

Why I Wrote It – A Bridge To The Quiet Planet

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

A Bridge To The Quiet Planet was my return to fiction. It exists because someone said writing genre fiction is worth doing, and I said, “I should do that.”

That’s it.

The author in question was Magen Cubed, best known for her Southern Gothic Series. Her story is about a monster-hunting modern himbo cowboy and his neurotic vampire boyfriend. Their misadventures include wild romantic hookups, monster politics, and a chihuahua. Honestly, Netflix should option this even if they may need some “fade to black” when things get steamy.

She wrote her thing, and her Twitter statements on the way genre fiction is open made me think about my writing. I hadn’t done fiction in years, and I suddenly had the urge to return.

I have written about worldbuilding for ages – it’s been a specialty of mine since my teen days. I’m fascinated by good setting construction, and it was a vital part of my previous fiction work. Even a decade-or-so break from writing fiction wasn’t a break from worldbuilding – I was the guy to bounce ideas off of, read beta editions, and so on.

But oh, her Tweets about why you should write fiction reminded me of how I missed bringing a world to write.

Then it began. Ideas began to come to me . . .

. . . I loved anime and video games, and specifically the techno-fantasy worlds where science and sorcery existed . . .

. . . but those worlds often never extrapolated on what this meant. Sir Terry Pratchett and Dave Barry came to mind, ideas to explore this world of gods and computers more closely . . .

. . . a pair of heroines began to evolve, one a kind of Hermionie (Marigold), and Mei Hatsume of MHA (Scintilla) . . .

. . . they lived in a world scarred by a massive war, as many fantasy novels have so many ruins they are post-apocalyptic . . .

. . . and the world valued stability, and that meant I threw in the schemes renegade god to screw things up . . .

And there we had my return to fiction. A Bridge To The Quiet Planet was a road trip where a bunch of modern fantasy tropes traveled to a planet-side graveyard for gods. I won’t spoil.

Thus I had a novel, my first in ages.

Overall I’m pleased with it. It’s a road trip story, mainly to have fun traveling through the setting and the implications of what one reader called “a typical fantasy world in the space age.” Though I would do parts of it differently, there are also elements I’m very proud of.

There’s also a sequel in the works – A School of Many Futures. I play with several tropes there (The Big Book Of Plot Secrets, Magical School Adventures) and go for a more complex mystery ala “Knives Out.” It’s harder to write than the first because I’m pushing myself to make a more complex, richer story.

The novel awakened my fiction-writing urges, so I decided to write at least three books in any setting. The truth is, I know I’ll be writing fiction for awhile – maybe the rest of my life.

All because of the right Tweet at the right time.

Steven Savage

The Purple Pain of the Author

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

Serdar picked up my post on David Marquet’s different forms of work and explored his own experiences in understanding the work of writing. We both understand writing involves radically different kinds of work – grammar, putting out words, worldbuilding, etc. In his own analysis this stood out to me:

I’ve long been averse to what should be the more “fun” side of the job — the worldbuilding, the coming-up-with-stuff part of it. Some of that I can trace directly to the time-manglement [sic] issues outlined here. But the rest of it is an outgrowth of those things, a second-order effect. Because I’ve not been very conscious of how to handle the just-coming-up-with-stuff phase vs. the get-the-words-down phase, I get averse to going too deeply into the former at times, to avoid becoming … well, unproductive! I feel like that way lies drowning, where I end up writing an encyclopedia about my setting instead of writing the actual book.

Some of us may know that worry – that our wild imaginations may make things, but won’t advance the work we want to do. Others of us may have different worries in a similar vein – that the wild part of writing can take over and we may make but won’t write.

Martquet’s Book Leadership is Language, which inspired my original post, addresses this problem. He describes two forms of work – Redwork (the grind, the clock, and “Get It Done”) and Bluework (creative, imaginative, off the clock). Healthy work of any kind has time for Redwork and time for Bluework. He repeatedly warns of the danger of slipping from Bluework to Redwork – because they different and their mindsets conflict. You can’t create and dream watching the clock and ticking checkboxes.

If you, like Serdar, fear that the time spent worldbuilding or dreaming is going to get out of hand, that’s applying a Redwork mindset (“the need to turn out specific things”) to Bluework creativity. A fear of producing nothing – or producing too much – is just applying the Redwork obsession with productivity to something that doesn’t work that way. A few minutes of consideration and you’ll recall times like that in your own life – I do.

Fortunately Marquette – and myself – are used to addressing this. If Bluework falls into Redwork for you – or you fear you can’t take time to imagine – you formalize it. Every X hours/days/whatever you spend Y minutes/hours/days using your imagination to build worlds, or analyze code, or dream up new book ideas. You formally take time to step outside of formal nose-to-the-grindstone work, and then return with whatever you find at the end. In that time you’re free to let your mind go – even if it goes nowhere in some Zen Koan irony.

This is one of my own obsessions – how we can build systems to support creativity. It’s also why analyses like Serdar’s matter – when we reflect and share on our challenges we learn from them. If you’re a writer, you need to keep analyzing how you work and grow – and finding new perspectives, such as a book on leadership.

That contemplation of our own flaws as creatives? That’s Bluework, by the way. Many of us seem to happily shift into letting our minds go when we wish to look at our own flaws. There’s a lesson in that too, I’m sure.

Steven Savage

Redwork, Bluework, Writework, Youwork

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

There are many parts of writing, but I recently discovered a new way to look at them: Redwork and Bluework.

In his book Leadership is Language, L. David Marquet discusses the role of language, leading, and modern work. The book is worth reading on many levels, but one of his concepts is useful for writers; that there are two kinds of work. They are as follows:

  • Redwork: Redwork is by the clock, solid product, often rote work, getting something done. It despises variability and thrives on efficiency and regularity.
  • Bluework: Bluework is thinking, analyzing, adapting. It is all about variability, analysis, and is outside the clock.

Marquet takes an Agile-like approach in leadership, and much like Agile, he notes there’s a time to think (Blue) and a time to work the clock (Red). You have to take time to go off the clock to think, analyze, and imagine. You have to take time to work, get something done, stick to standards and checklists. Juggling these so they work together is vital to being effective – and avoid making mistakes.

I looked at this division and realized it also applies to writing.

There is a time to dream, imagine, plot out – Bluework. There is a time to write and check grammar and hit your checklists – Redwork. Writing is not all about imagination; it’s about getting creativity to produce a product. Sometimes you dream, sometimes you churn out words.

As I contemplated this, I realized this Red/Blue division is something more writers need, including myself. Writing is not some seamless continuity of creativity but is different kinds of activities coming together. If we do not see these differences, then we miss when we’re ready for Redwork, when we’re ready for Bluework, and when we need to stop one kind and switch to others.

I find this best illustrated from an example in the book; prepare the pause. Similar to an Agile retrospective, the idea is that during Redwork you “bake in” a time to review and evaluate. In Redwork, you don’t want to switch to imagination because it will distract you – but you need to in order to assess results. So you decide you’ll pause and reflect, be it every hour or every week, and so on.

In writing, imagine you set a time to review your work every 5,000 words, and you will set aside time for that. You don’t evaluate productivity by word count during that time, but you have up to two hours to make notes for revision. You stop Redwork and go into Bluework, reading, jotting notes, etc.

Then it’s back to Redwork, and the cycle begins again.

I think many (but not all) good writers do this pause unconsciously, but Marquet’s model gives us a new model to look at it. With new names – Redwork and Bluework – we have a new viewpoint to improve our breaks and evaluations.

I’d go into more detail, but I’ll leave this useful concept here and recommend Marquet’s book. Though it focuses on Leadership, a lone writer is leading themselves, and I’m sure we’d like to be better at guiding our writing. It’s also a reminder that writing is improved by looking at other skills and forms of productivity.

Which of course is a kind of Bluework . . . see what I mean?

Steven Savage