I met Steven Savage at Convolution 2013. He is enthusiastic in his love of fandom and doing what you love as well as integrating technology into life. He’s here to help you make your hobby and your passion work for you.
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I just wrote “Fan To Pro“, subtitled “Leveling Up Your Career Through Your Hobbies.” What do I want to Tell You?
This book is a rewrite of my very first book. I want to tell you not why I wrote it so much as I why I rewrote it.
Many years ago a friend and I noted that a lot of geeks, otaku, hobbyists, and so on had so much career potential due to their hobbies but didn’t know how to use it. We kicked around ways to help them, and eventually started doing a blog at www.fantopro.com (now www.musehack.com). I started speaking at conventions on the subject, doing what I could to help.
Eventually I realized I should write a book (which, ironically, is something discussed much earlier). Since it was an age of self-publishing, I decided to do it myself, compiled all my advice, and wrote the first “Fan To Pro” book. It was an interesting write, I learned a lot, and I got some great reviews – and most importantly people telling me how it actually changed their careers for the better.
I wrote other career books over time, touching on Cosplay, Fanart, resumes, and the job search. Each time I wrote, I learned more. Each time I wrote, I did a little more research. Each time I wrote I saw my own work a bit differently.
In fact, as I blogged I was constantly learning, reviewing, re-thinking, and integrating new information into my whole “Geek Job Guru” routine. Everything you write changes you, and at times we can forget that.
So I looked back at my old book (and, frankly, the rather weird art deco cover) and said “I really ought to rewrite this.” After all I had a lot more to share, a lot more to tell people, and the world had changed since the first book. Then again, I had changed as well.
I wasn’t the same author that I was those years ago. So it was time for a rewrite, which took a good 8 months, involved adding a lot more information, expanded it by 100 pages, and involved an entire rearrangement of the contents. It was, to be brutally honest, not as easy as I’d expected.
After finishing it, I realized just how much I’d changed, discovered, grown, and even forgotten.
So what do I want to Tell You? That rewrites are worth it, and sometimes they’re even inevitable (especially if you do advice books and similar). We all change, and there are times our books need to change with us.
This isn’t true for all books. Some books are a statement of a time or place, some are meant to be so personal or intimate that we don’t alter them. But this isn’t every book. Sometimes books are dialogue in slow-motion.
I’d also say that rewrites are important as, since we grow as authors, our works can grow with us. Even works we think are flawed or are ashamed of we can return, revise, reconstruct, and breathe new life into. Sometimes a work is finished – sometimes it can be re-finished.
Now I can’t say I’m going to rewrite everything I’ve done. But in the future, I’ll be more open to it . . .
