Writing

Writing Plans For Next Year

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

As the Holidays approach and the year ends, I wanted to round up what I’m doing writing-wise for everyone.  So let’s go – in what may be some kind of order.

First, the next Way With Worlds Minibook is up and will be out soon – it’s on Organizations!  That one really just needs formatting, so it’s definitely out in December.

Secondly, somewhere in all of this is the print copy of A Bridge To The Quiet Planet.  This is unpredictable because it’s a mix of formatting, checking, giving up and running a print, and finding out the mistakes you made.  It could be out in as early as start of January or late as February depending on how much I screw it up.

Third, there’s a world guide to the setting of the novel.  I plan to get that out around the same time as the print copy.

Fourth, there’s a new creativity guide, my guide to Brainstorm Books.  That one is in weird shape, as I found the original draft, based on my columns, was lacking.  I’ll be tackling that once I get other stuff out of the way, so expect to see it in January to February.

All of THIS clears my plate for the next round of work.

RANDOMIZED CREATIVITY BOOK: In February I’m going to begin work on my next big book, a guide to randomized creativity and procedural generation.  This will compile all of my theories into one guide to assist people making random generators, games, etc.  I’m going to try to power it out as a draft as fast as I can because I want to experiment with some writing techniques.  Note that even at the best, this thing won’t be out until August or so.

MORE WAY WITH WORLDS MINIBOOKS: I have a ton of these I want to write (try more than 20), so I’m pretty much going to do them for years at this rate.  I need to find a workable pace, but expect to see them intermittently – I’d like to do at least four a year.

So past about  May or June I will have A) caught up, and B) have the randomized creativity book in editing.  Then I’ll consider larger steps – there’s a sequel to A Bridge To The Quiet planet in my mind so I’ll almost inevitably do that, but I want to try to do it faster this time (but still even at best it won’t be out until 2020 while I do minibooks)

So there you go, lots to look forward to!

Steven Savage



A Bridge To The Quiet Planet: A Few Thoughts On The Final Run

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

All right, A Bridge To The Quiet Planet is out.  Done.  So it was a bit later than I expected, and the final run on it gave me food for thought.

WATCH SWITCHING BETWEEN SOFTWARE: I found some annoying artifacts from moving from one piece of software to another – there can be subtle differences.   I had to do some annoying search and replaces.

THINK OVER STYLISTIC CHOICES EARLY AND FOLLOW UP: You may make certain formatting choices – like bolding certain things (business cards or telepathy), certain uses of quotes, etc.  Make sure you’re consistent.  I found ONE case of not following my own formatting, and I nearly missed it.

DO A SERIOUS READ-THROUGH AND CORRECTION EARLY: I wish I did this.  Take, say, an early draft, and edit it as if it’s for print.  This will help you find your mistakes, issues, common problems, and get plenty of distracting tiny errors out of the way – so you can edit.

KEEP A LIST OF ERRORS YOU FIND OR WORRY ABOUT: This helped me a lot.  As I did my final readthroughs, I kept a list of suspicious things or choices I want to review.  This let me do some amazing fine editing easy because then I could globally search.

SEARCH AND REPLACE IS YOUR FRIEND IF YOU DO IT STEP BY STEP: Global search and replace can mess up your document (as we all know).  However going slow, reviewing EACH possible replacement (or doing it by hand for each found) let’s you avoid problems.  Also it acts as a second review!

YOU CAN ONLY DO SO MUCH: At some point you can’t edit forever.  So don’t.  Learn your limits.  In fact . . .

GO EBOOK FIRST: This is a trick I evolved from a friend.  Do an ebook first, and distribute it.  It gives you immediate feedback, then you can update the ebook quickly.  Go print a bit later (like I’m doing it 4-6 weeks later).

KEEP A “LIVE” DOCUMENT: A big advantage of going ebook first is feedback.  So I keep a “Live” document I’m always editing as a core, representative document.  That will become the print book – but if I find errors I modify all 3 documents (ebook, Print, Live) for later.

So lots of lessons to share.  I’m certain I’ll have more to share – I think I need to make a kind of writing checklist sometime!

Steven Savage

History Will Judge, But We Do Anyway

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

My friend Serdar had a very insightful post on how we compare our  creative work to others.  He realize’s it’s a bit of a fools game:

My work can only really be measured against my other work. It can be compared to other work, and I guess you can draw lessons about what it might lack or where it might excel, but those lessons only really help to shape the directions you choose to take for your own present or future work.

We can compare works all we want.  Indeed, we should as it’s educational, but ultimately all we can do is learn by contrast.  If we’re not careful, we’ll stress ourselves out racing against other authors – and those aren’t the people who have to compete against to get better.

The person you’re ultimately racing against – or pacing yourself against – is you.  You are not other writers, and you can never directly know them or their limits or abilities.  What you can do is know yourself so you can improve and grow.

Writing is challenging and complex enough as it is without making yourself miserable with comparisons that will yield little insight.

That doesn’t mean you won’t worry about your work’s success, or its meaning, or how people take it.  That brings something else to mind – history is going to judge you, and is going to no matter what.  You can’t be 100% sure you’ll succeed, or be popular, or even be understood.  You merely do your best.

Now what if you’re really sure you want your work to be noticed?  You want to attract the eye of history?  Fine, good, but . . .

. . . it doesn’t exactly matter if your writing is good in that case.  Let’s be honest, writing “quality” has a subjective element to it.  A story may be poorly written – but also timely and what people need.  A story may be brilliant – and ignored because its ahead of or behind it’s time.

So if you want to be noticed, make history, then write well, using yourself as the yardstick . . .

. . . but develop the self-promotional and marketing skills needed to get the attention you want.

Just remember they’re not the same.  In fact, maybe you should be judging your marketing skills the same way as your writing by just getting better with you as the yardstick . . .

Steven Savage