book

Why I Wrote It: The Power of Creative Paths

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

This book was written when I realized I knew more than I did.

Let me rewind, because this involves Project Management, seminars, and Seventh Sanctum.

Anyway, awhile ago I was asked to speak at a seminar for local members of the Project Management Institute. I have a bit of a reputation as being a creative type, so I spoke on the role of creativity in Project Management. This is more important than it seems.

See, Project Management in the broad sense (yes, I’m including Agile) requires creativity. You have to think around problems. You have to imagine solutions. You have to communicate in interesting ways. It was a natural subject for me.

But what I needed was a way to talk about different forms of creativity, giving the people there ideas of how they could understand their strengths. I turned to my Seventh Sanctum work for that, and realized Generators fell into five categories:

  • Expansion (adding things on)
  • Combination (combining things in set patterns)
  • Reduction (removing items)
  • Fusion (fusing concepts)
  • Mapping (metaphorical)

That gave me a great way to describe creativity so people could ask about their strengths. I put a lot of thought into this, then used it as maybe 25% of the presentation, and let it sit.

It was only years later when it hit me that “duh, this would be a great book to organize my theories on creativity.”

I know, yes, it was obvious. In hindsight. To someone who wasn’t me.

So I realized, yes, I should expand on this way of viewing creativity. I often advised people on creative endeavors, and this gave me a framework within which to think and coach.

Which meant then I had to organize my way of coaching to help people. So the framework I had carefully assembled now drove me to organize my thoughts. That’s what a good framework does – it’s a skeleton to put things on. Frameworks may not be complete or perfect, but they let you do a heck of a lot because they help you think of the big and small picture.

The book got a lot more intense than I expected because I had this framework. I organized my advice, found things that made me think, had to give examples, and so on. Writing on creativity, using that structure, required me to be more creative and more aware.

The result is a book I’m proud of, but I’m thinking I should revisit it now and then, rewrite it every few years. That way it keeps up with the times, that way I don’t let things sit, and that way I stay aware of my own thoughts.

Amazing what you can learn when you pay attention and have a framework.

Steven Savage

My Book Roundup 4/2/2020

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I write a lot and have quite a few books.  So now and then I’m going to post a roundup of them for interested parties!

My sites:

Fiction

I’ve been returning to fiction with a techno-fantasy setting of several planets orbiting a star called Avenoth.  Take a typical fantasy world of magic and gods, and let it evolve into the space age and internet age . . .

  • A Bridge To The Quiet Planet – Two future teachers of Techno-Magical safety find trying to earn their credentials hunting odd artifacts backfires when you’re hired to put some back . . . on a planet where gods go to die!

The Way With Worlds Series

This is what I do a lot of – writing on worldbuilding!.  You can find all of my books at www.WayWithWorlds.com! 

The core books of the series will help you get going:

  • Way With Worlds Book 1 – Discusses my philosophy of worldbuilding and world creation essentials.
  • Way With Worlds Book 2 – Looks at common subjects of worldbuilding like conflicts in your setting, skills for being a good worldbuilder, and more!

When you need to focus on specifics of worldbuilding, I have an ever-growing series of deep dive minibooks.  Each provides fifty questions with additional exercises and ideas to help you focus on one subject important to you!

The current subjects are:

Creativity

I’m the kind of person that studies how creativity works, and I’ve distilled my findings and advice into some helpful books!

  • The Power Of Creative Paths – Explores my theories of the Five Types of Creativity, how you can find yours, and how to expand your creative skills to use more Types of Creativity.
  • Agile Creativity – I take the Agile Manifesto, a guide to adaptable project development, and show how it can help creatives improve their work – and stay organized without being overwhelmed.
  • The Art of The Brainstorm Book – A quick guide to using a simple notebook to improve brainstorming, reduce the stress around having new ideas, and prioritize your latest inspirations.
  • Chance’s Muse – I take everything I learned at Seventh Sanctum and my love of random tables and charts and detail how randomness can produce inspiration!

Careers

Being a “Professional Geek” is what I do – I turned my interests into a career and have been doing my best to turn that into advice.  The following books are my ways of helping out!

  • Fan To Pro – My “flagship” book on using hobbies and interests in your career – and not always in ways you’d think!
  • Skill Portability – A quick guide to how to move skills from one job to another, or even from hobbies into your job.  Try out my “DARE” system and asses your abilities!
  • Resume Plus – A guide to jazzing up a resume, sometimes to extreme measures.
  • Epic Resume Go! – Make a resume a creative act so it’s both better and more enjoyable to make!
  • Quest For Employment – Where I distill down my job search experiences and ways to take the search further.
  • Cosplay, Costuming, and Careers – An interview-driven book about ways to leverage cosplay interests to help your career!
  • Fanart, Fanartists, and Careers – My second interview-driven book about ways to leverage fanart to help your career!
  • Convention Career Connection – A system for coming up with good career panels for conventions!

Culture

  • Her Eternal Moonlight – My co-author Bonnie and I analyze the impact Sailor Moon had on women’s lives when it first came to North America.  Based on a series of interviews, there’s a lot to analyze here, and surprisingly consistent themes . . .

Why I Wrote It: Resume Plus

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

Resume Plus was a weird book to write. It takes a bit of explanation.

First, I began deciding to write more. The thing that struck me as a writer is that I could just do the occasional book or I could really dive into it. Diving into it meant I did more, could sell more books, and I dug the challenge.

But the question was what to write. I was still getting into this whole rythm of “writing all the time.”

(By the way, by now I have so many ideas for books that I’m fine. I’m always writing as you noticed.)

One idea came from my blog.

I’d done a series on really awesome resumes that stood out. Some were made of code. Others had neat formatting tricks. Yet others got wacky and outrageous like being printed on a candy bar. I called it 50 Shades of Resume because I figured It’d be funny and . . . well anyway, we can judge that later.

Those analyses were perfect for a book. Plus, let’s face it, you didn’t have to read a ton of blog posts, and got more than the summary I’d written up.

So I returned to my blog posts and began cataloguing the advice I could get out of them. Fortunately, I’d had written summaries and advice on each of the fifty posts, so I had a good starting point.

However, a book is a way different format than a bunch of blog posts. So I had to collate all the advice, extend some, cut out others, and in general fit as a book. I’d taken resumes, written blog posts about them, then turned it into a book.

Some of this meant I had to ask myself “hey just what matters here” and “what did I actually mean here.”

The result though, after much thought, was a pretty good book! It’s one I’m proud of, though I fear some of it hasn’t aged well. I’m happy I also managed to do more with the advice, because despite all the predictions, the resume hasn’t gone away . . .

Steven Savage