(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)
It’s my weekly Scrum style standup for the audience. Which is you.
This week saw a lot of stuff with fanime, so let’s get to what’s up?
So what have I done the last week?
- Way With Worlds Minibook #5: As usual, writing.
- Social: Fanime has gone great, seeing people, having fun. And yes, I budgeted time for it – to make sure I relaxed.
- Speaking: Spoke at Fanime, it went great! Think the self-publishing panel needs to be broken up into several panels there’s so much to cover.
- Cosplay: I was Doctor Oobleck, and it was a lot of fun!
- Her Eternal Moonlight: The sale is on of course! Which you probably saw in my announcements!
- “A Bridge To The Quiet Planet:” Still a bit behind on this I’m afraid, mostly because I have to keep “extracting” myself from ideas I locked myself into during that failed first plotting. Imagine it like building the foundation of a house and finding you still had some stones you laid while redesigning it.
What am I going to do this week:
- Plan New Sprint for June: That gets done Wednesday or so. Targets for June are releasing the first Minibook, speaking at Hydra-Con, finishing the “Bridge To The Quiet Planet” plot outline and writing the first chapter (again, hopefully).
- Way With Worlds Minibook #5: Well, uh . . . writing. So as you guessed I’m doing a few bits each week or so.
- “A Bridge To The Quiet Planet:” I’m going to at least get the character designs fully fleshed out and get the plot outline further along – at least to a few paragraphs if not a few pages.
- Writing: I’m going to keep doing my Agile blog posts, but I think I’m going to start posting on my findings in writing – that experience of doing a major fiction project again is pretty informative.
- Newsletter: A new newsletter comes out this Wednesday! I also have to get all the new signups for my newsletter into the database!
Challenges and blockers:
- Mostly challenges to do fiction writing again, I don’t quite have a sense of how long things take restored. But hey live and learn. This will improve in time – and I get to post my lessons.
- There may be some challenges with training at work and some changes taking up time, so fair warning things might get delayed.
– Steve
(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)
And it’s time for another Scrum style standup! What am I up to?
Well bluntly this week also was nuts, with assorted work events, a friend having health concerns (resolved) and of course occasional allergies. It’s not been the greatest week – but Agile method are about adapting. So where are we?
So what have I done the last week?
- Way With Worlds Minibook #1: Back from the editor, looks good, she kicked butt. I’ll probably go into it sometime in the near future – but I’m not scheduled to until next month.
- Way With Worlds Minibook #5: Still writing, and on schedule here. Not much more to say.
- Seventh Sanctum Spotlight: This keeps just being interrupted, and I’ve not had that great a response. I’m going to try and get back to it, but may just delay until next month.
- Marketing: I’m trying Amazon Marketing Services ads and have a bunch set up. I think they might be working but it’s hard to tell. I have no direct sales but had a spike in sales anyway. I also am placing flyers around town in various locations, but am not 100% sure what’s working and what isn’t.
- Seventh Sanctum General: Figured what to do with the Tumblr and planned that out. And yes, you’ll have to wait!
- Professional: Yet another professional meetup which was great.
- “A Bridge To The Quiet Planet:” You’ll probably see an entire post about this, but I ended up having to stop plotting it – it wasn’t coming together well. Short form was it was a mix of being rusty, of mis-applying techniques, and not breaking down the work. I restarted plotting it and it’s coming along great once I applied a bit more planning to the whole affair. You’ll probably see a post on it – but short form is that I won’t work on Chapter #1 until next month.
What am I going to do this week:
- Way With Worlds Minibook #5: Write more of course.
- Professional: One professional event this week.
- Social: My girlfriend’s birthday and a book club this week.
- “A Bridge To The Quiet Planet:” I’ll be finishing up some plot outlining and going over character story arcs.
- Newsletter: Get my newsletter out this week.
- General: I’ll may do some fanime preparation
Challenges and blockers:
- Continuing allergies and various interruptions have me a bit concerned. I might strip down some plans.
This week taught me a lot about adapting. I cancelled writing a chapter to have time to actually develop the book outline. I was willing to cancel a marketing idea because, simply, I needed the proper “mood” to do it. I also caught a few missing things and got on top of them fast. It’s likely I overplanned this month a bit, but hey live and learn!
– Steve
(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, www.SeventhSanctum.com, and Steve’s Tumblr)
And it’s time for another Scrum style standup! OK it’s weekly, and I prefer them daily but that’s a bit much.
First a note – I had a nasty allergy attack around Thursday which held a few things up. I’m overall on time/ahead of my plans but it was annoying
So what have I done the last week?
- Way With Worlds Minibook #1: Editor had a bit of a delay, so I expect to get things in a few days.
- Way With Worlds Minibook #5: Got actually 10 questions written. I find more and more these are best written in large amounts.
- Way With Worlds Marketing: The bookmarks came. They are awesome. Let me strongly recommend Club Flyers.
- Seventh Sanctum Spotlight: I held off on this when some allergies hit. I’ll probably start them off in a week or so.
- Professional: Two professional meetups, they were awesome. I really enjoy the “Agile Crowd” here in the valley.
- Social: Bad movie event was great. We saw “Mac And Me” which was hideous, but before that watched “Misfits” which was good.
- “A Bridge To The Silent Planet:” A bit harder than I expected. It’s about 1/4 plotted with some outlines out to the end. It’s becoming a bit more of a small novel – neither a doorstop nor a novella. Which I realized is what I want. However it’s a bit hard to shake the rust off so its’ slower than I wanted – and the allergies didn’t help.
What am I going to do this week:
- Way With Worlds Minibook #5: Write more of course.
- Seventh Sanctum Spotlight: May or may not do this.
- Professional: One professional event this week.
- Social: Got a barbecue and otherwise will work on creative projects.
- “A Bridge To The Silent Planet:” I plan to finish the plot outline this week.
- General: Some basic chores and such.
Challenges and blockers:
- The allergies hit hard. I might delay a few things unless these clear up in the next day two. Expect a possible “revised sprint.”
– Steve
Hello one and all, and hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving where appropriate. Lots happened (and you saw I vanished a bit).
Twitter – OK I’ve debated what to do with the Twitter. I do want to post random stuff to it – but that seems to work at Tumblr. But what I AM doing is, beyond posts and such, promoting a generator a day. There’s over 170 so you can discover generators you didn’t know about . . . or that I forgot. I may also add feeds from other cool twitters and sites.
Next Generator – I finished the breakdown of the Reality Show Generator. This was an attempt to do actually do a full analysis before writing a complex generator – and apply what I learned not to do during the Plot Twist generator. The analysis was incredibly useful and I will begin working on the generator next. The issue? It was boring, though it worked really well. Maybe I just need to perfect my techniques.
Way With Worlds – The book(s) are back from one of my pre-readers, and pre-reading ends tomorrow. Time for me to do an editing sweep, line up my editor, and line up my cover artist, as well as put it in front of my writing group. Still aiming to publish both in the summer as well – but not at the same time. It’ll be one then the other a month or two later, as well as some followup.
Well that’s it. How’s everything on your end gang?
Well it’s finished, the Magic Power Generator! I got inspired my the more “yell and use” magic of anime and video games, and this is an idea I’ve kicked around since the Magic Guild Generator and analyzed some of the Fairy Tail universe.
Beyond making appropriately magical-sounding powers, I also got to try out some new ways to organize data so it makes alliterated, artistic-sounding powers – like ‘Negative Nightmare Negation Necromancy’ or ‘Raiser Runecraft.’ It was pretty educational, and I figured out a few techniques to organize and sort data more efficiently and in ways to let me get it more poetic. I’m sure those lessons will be used in the future.
Here’s some regular ones:
- Ifrit Trance
- Gas Negation Invocation
- Forgotten Diamond Benediction
- Legendary Wind Magic
- Telekinesis Liberator Jinx
- Secret Yeti Jailer Magic
- Litch Spiritualism
- Hydra Executioner Magic
- Inescapable Undead Glamour
- Evil Wind Potions
And some ‘artistic’ ones:
- Earthquake Exorcism
- Obliteration Occultism
- Earth Executioner Exorcism
- Nightmare Negator Necromancy
- Hurricane Hermeticism
- Assistance Abjuration
- Ancestral Acid Alteration
- Purple Poltergeist Prayer
- Negative Nereid Necromancy
- Press Prayer
Beyond that writing Way With Worlds as I count down to finishing what I wanted to cover – and debating what else to write here when that’s done. If there’s anything you’d like to see me cover, let me know – I love to write so am always open to hear what directions help people!
Finally my friend Ewen has created this book of random tables that I’m sure any Sanctumite will want to see. And, yes, he’s encouraging me to do my own . . .
Oh and yes, considering the Plot Twist generator now. Might be fun to do over the summer . . .
Respectfully,
– Steven Savage
http://www.musehack.com/
http://www.informotron.com/
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/
Hello everyone, hope you’re doing well. So here’s what’s going on!
The Magical Power Generator. The basic data is organized and sorted – and this took a little extra time because I am including options to create artistic alliteration (like a magical power called “Baleful Banshee Bewitchment.”). Next is to get the data into one of my data sets and break out the forms it can appear in. No proposed timeline.
The generator is simple, but fun because I’m working on researching words and ways to get things to sound interesting – which makes you ask questions about what words “sound” right together. It’s not always about simple data patterns.
Anyway, you’ll see the results . . .
Way With Worlds. As I’ve been getting feedback and getting new ideas, obviously this has gone beyond “just rewrite.” Still I think it’ll probably end this summer. At that point there’s one more big rewrite which I’m going to do before it’s in book form – I want to incorporate everything I learned while writing it.
Other Writing. Look to see a new column here in May or June. A friend will be running an exceptional column about media here – not providing much detail for now because we’re working plans out. If you’re interested in doing anything here, let me know!
An App? I’ve had a lot of people ask if I plan to or could do a Seventh Sanctum App. That’s been on the list to look at, but not high priority. However, if anyone has an experience converting PHP to Android and iOS let me know your experience.
So how are you doing out there?
Respectfully,
– Steven Savage
http://www.musehack.com/
http://www.informotron.com/
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/
Hey everyone, so what’s been up? A LOT.
Trying to get back to generators (as you can see below the last two weekends were packed). Hoping to get around to dumping some ideas into code so I can get them out of my head (I have notes on three generators now). I need to get my laptop setup with a proper dev setup so I can code at coffee shops. I do my writing outside my apartment and figure why not code the same way? Though fair warning, one or two coming aren’t serious.
Secondly for you career creatives latest job series, “The Dark Side Of ‘Do What You Love’” is complete. It was a chance to explore some more negative approaches to my usual career advice. I thought you folks might like it!
Last week I did Con-Volution. This is a hardcore, old-school SF con with a big focus on skills, writing, socializing, and development. I was on panels on religion and worldbuilding (amazing, has to be done again), general worldbuilding (very diverse), and general careers(with a focus on professional behavior). I’d recommend it to you – give it a check if you can make it, or at least check out their schedule for ideas.
This weekend I did Kraken-Con. Spoke on how to Make Japanese Curry (I’m branching into Geek Cooking and this was successful) and my Fan To Pro panel. Great con and it’s twice a year – only it went from 800 people 6 months ago to about 2K estimated. I’m suspecting it’ll be once a year. This one also had practical panels (seems to be a trend) and was great fun -plus it is so well organized. If you’re in the Bay Area, you need to check it out.
I was also wondering if I should run some Sanctum based events at these conventions – you know, do creative jams, etc. I’m open to any suggestions.
Oh and by the way – this is a great reminder of how I need to pace my congoing ahead of times. Thats basically two weekends of being busy . . .
I do interviews with creative people over at http://www.musehack.com/ and was thinking of reposting them here. Any thoughts on that? Gives people more exposure and lets you meet fellow creatives who might have advice.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
Not much to update today – mostly because I’m taking a break from doing the Writing Prompt Generator. That one was pretty trying in retrospect and I definitely need some time off – though ironically I have three generator ideas in my head now. Maybe I need to put a server on my laptop so I can tinker at the coffee shops I write at.
One thing I did to is connect the Writing Prompt Generator to the Tumblr. That means that once a day you get a random prompt on top of the story and character prompts! I admit I’m having fun experimenting with the Tumblr.
OK, enough for me, time to sign off, queue up some Rifftrax, and relax!
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
OK gang, I’ve finished my updates to the Writing Prompt Generator. Added some new intros, spices up a few basic openings, and added a bit more variance to a common phrase or two.
As for now, I think I definitely need to take a break from it, so I’ll consider it “good enough” for now – to judge by the comments I’ve gotten. However I should return to it in the future.
This is one that was extremely educational. What stood out was this:
- You need to really vary the openings. Openings, even mildly different, really seem to inspire people.
- Slight turns of phrase have big effects. “always,” “almost always,” and “sometimes” are very different.
- You’ve got to have a kind of opening that makes people want to hear what happens next, wonder what happens next, or tell what happens next. The ending is important as well.
- Little changes in tone, time, opening, description can have vast effects. These generators are “multiplicative.”
- The economy of words, the fact it has to be one sentence, really means you have to pack a lot into a single set of words. I appreciate how hard it is to find good opening lines more now – and I write as well. Analyzing it was humbling.
- This was the hardest generator I’ve done because of the mix of psychology, literature, and variability. I figured it would be easier than it was. On the other hand I learned a lot doing it, especially on how to vary language for inspiration.
- Not all generators have to be “done.” From the start. Normally I like to release them complete, but it’s fine to take feedback. In fact, it’s a lot of fun to be frank and I need to do it more.
Next up I’m taking a break, then have some other generators I want to do that are in various stages of design. Ironically one builds on some inspiration from the start of the year when I asked people for advice . . .
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
So the Writing Prompt Generator got another upgrade! Inspired by the famous Dr. Who line ‘I am definitely a mad man with a box,’ I realized there should be more lines qualifying people and dealing with objects, and put in a lot of new vocabulary and sentence structures, as well as fleshing out some old structures with the new data. The result feels far more inspiring and satisfying than the last version – I think this is coming together.
By my estimates it’s probably around 2/3 done. I’ve also had to realize, sadly “done” is really in the eye of the beholder – I could go on for ages with this thing (and well may). So at some point I’ll have to say “good enough” and stop or take a break.
(Also I want to get back to some other generators and projects, darn it!)
I am also thinking as this is one of the most complicated generators sentence-structure wise, maybe at some point I have to just rewrite it and apply my lessons, as I’m literally learning as I make this.
Here’s some of the latest results!
- People call her Isabelle. – Have her meet Ishmael!
- It was Tuesday, and you know what that means. – It’s that last line that gets you as you don’t know.
- Hyperspace distortions, plague, good and getting old. – I imagine someone marooned on a plague-infested world, trying to make it better as he/she comes to grips with mortality.
- Call me William. – Meet Isabelle.
- He was eternally an odd boy. – There’s an intriguing line, I imagine a strange child in a little neighborhood who doesn’t age . .
- She was resting, and that’s when the murders began. – Subconcious monsters of the id go on a rampage – or is she the guard against them?
- All the robot rebellions were her fault. – I imagine there’s going to be displacement of blame here.
- He never wanted to be a supervillain. – Parental or peer pressure perhaps?
- This is a story that concerns a good girl. – I’m pretty sure she’s going to turn out not to be good by the end.
- Getting old is my friend, ambition is my partner. – Your protagonist uses his sense of impending death to drive himself.
- That man, that thing of pure science, with his red statue and his bottle. – I imagine a guy who’s rather religious about his profession and has a statue of a famous scientist – and a drinking problem.
- That boy, that being of flawed good, with his book. – A religious young man who doesn’t quite get the deeper moral issues.
- That lady, that being of total peace, with her statue and her book. – A woman becomes famous and writes one book – and though she doesn’t ask for it, it comes to her.
- I have a story about Thursday. – It’s the next line that would make it.
- The sun was howling, and that’s when the murders began. – Sounds disturbing, as if some person believes he has to kill people to shut the sun up.
- Violet was my greatest betrayer and my worst enemy. – . . . I can’t say much except Violet is a jerk.
- I have a story about Saturday. – I’m sure you do.
- The immoral woman was bleeding all day, which was really awesome. – Disturbing. Sounds like some kind of religious fanatic torturer with teen lingo, which could lead to many stories.
- He was just a boy with a dangerous weapon. – There’s an opening line that could go many directions, and it has a lot of resonance – I imagine the weapon is some magical or technical artifact that isn’t obviously a weapon . . .
- This is a story about political collapse. – A bit generic, sadly.
Steven Savage is a Geek 2.0 writer, speaker, blogger, and job coach. He blogs on careers at http://www.musehack.com/, publishes books on career and culture at http://www.informotron.com/, and does a site of creative tools at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/. He can be reached at http://www.stevensavage.com/.
