Steven Savage's Blog, page 69

My Agile Life: Multitasking. Sort Of.

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s LinkedIn, and Steve’s Tumblr)

More on my use of “Agile” and Scrum in my life!

Agile methods tend to discourage multitasking as well as having a lot on your plate.  The goal is to avoid distractions (with less multitasking) and avoid having a lot on your mind (by limiting work in progress).  Of course, as we always get interrupted, we tend to multitask a bit.  Sometime things almost have to be done together or require such long delays (li...

Steve’s Update 9/25/2017

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

It’s my weekly Scrum style standup for my audience, so where am I?

So what have I done the last week? “A Bridge To The Quiet Planet”: Chapter 8 is done and edited.  This is a big one as it’s the halfway point in the book and transitions to the next arc.  It’s a bit of a tricky one as our cast is busy scheming and deceiving, while paying off a favor. Way With Worlds Minibook #4: Publicity is prepared and ready to go. Blog: I’v...

A Writer’s View: System Thinking

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

This Tweet got me thinking:

Neat idea for a creative person, right?  Tracking their creative stages?  It’s a good example of a creative person finding a way to work with their inspiration and habits.  It’s a system.

Good creatives, successful creatives, have systems.  You can hear about the Snowflake Method, or the “X Habits of Whatever,” or endless ideas of how to write novels, or best ways to do art.  You doubtlessly have y...

My Agile Life: The Project Doesn’t Matter

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s LinkedIn, and Steve’s Tumblr)

More on my use of “Agile” and Scrum in my life!

So this is going to sound weird, but one thing I realized in Agile practice, and my own use of the Agile technique of Scrum (with a touch of Kanban), is that the Project isn’t the most important thing.

Yes, I know, heresy. Projects are books, right? Projects are art, true? Projects are games, correct? I talk Projects all the time.

No. A book, a piece of art, a...

Steve’s Update – Late – 9/14/2017

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

It’s my weekly Scrum style standup for my audience, so where am I?

First, late.  Sorry team.

So what have I done the last week? “A Bridge To The Quiet Planet”: Chapter 7 is about done, it just needs editing..  It’s a pretty critical one as it moves things on from the 40% mark forward – and sets things up for a massive amount of actions and reveals as the crew heads to the world of Lindhaem. Way With Worlds Minibook #4: All fo...

Civic Diary 9/14/2017

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

Yes, it’s time for my latest Civic Diary.  So where am I in my efforts to be a better citizen?

More or less holding the course still, but with a few changes:

First  of all if you have trouble bugging/talking to/seeing your representatives, do not forget email.  It’s not as good as the phone call, but it’s something you can timeshift and probably do cut-and-paste.  Also some local reps (like city and county) are much harder to...

A Writer’s View: Pitches And Product

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

Lately Serdar was commenting on the use of pitches in our writing.  I tend to love making them, and he calls out my current work, “A Bridge To The Quiet Planet” which I summed up as “A sorceress, an engineer, and a priest on a planet-hopping road trip with the owner of a mysterious collection of holy books.”  As amusing as such pitches/summarites seem, they’re actually powerful tools for writing – not just marketing.

The way I...

My Agile Life: Meetings

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s LinkedIn, and Steve’s Tumblr)

More on my use of “Agile” and Scrum in my life!  This is another one inspired by my personal agile, but a bit more focused on business.

Meetings are why we can’t reduce meetings.

I find my personal practice of Agile – with a one-man team – informing me about my work in the business world. Since I do all roles, since all information flows to and through me, I actually have a decent feel of what productivity i...

A Writer’s View: Audience Interest

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)

One of the things I always worry about my return to writing is “will people want to read my work?”  My friend Serdar has analyzed this in one of his blog posts (with the winning title “If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Novel“).  He focused on novel length in many cases, and asked himself why some large works are worth the time and others are not.

What’s interesting is his next book is 230k words.  “A Bridge To...

My Agile Life: Trust

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com, Steve’s LinkedIn, and Steve’s Tumblr)

More on my use of “Agile” and Scrum in my life! This one actually gets into my writing – and someone else’s writing.  And work.  Let’s get to it.

So last week I wrote about how the Second Agile Principle helped me deal with changes to my book.  Short form, I learned how to better embrace change and my writing is better for it (despite my resistance).

This got my friend Serdar thinking about his next book, Al...