Blog No. 58
My little car was buried in snow last weekend. I tried to get to work during a snow storm and it all went pear shaped. I got to work on time (thankfully from leaving for work an hour and a half early) but I didn’t manage to get very far on my way home. I ended up stuck on a side street with no hope of getting free. Even if I did manage to get the car going, the streets were bad enough that I would only get stuck again moments later. With a lot of effort I managed to get my car into a parking spot and called my brother for assistance. He came to my rescue with a ride home and several more rides over the next couple days. (I repaid him with pizza so it’s all even). Eventually the roads were paved and I was able to dig my car out and get on my way. I did get a push from a kind stranger and have since passed that on a few times. Though I was in a small pickle, it is now all fine.
“But what does this have to do with anything?” I imagine you would ask yourself. It’s all an elaborate excuse. It may be legitimate, but it’s really nothing more. Over the days where my poor little car was buried far away from me I found it very difficult to concentrate. For three days I was stranded but unable to concentrate and on the fourth I had to run around town getting done the things I couldn’t do without a car. But that’s the bad news. The good news is that other than the four days of horror, the month of December has been a really productive one for the group at Adventure Worlds.
We put together a facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/adventureworldsblog?ref=hl) and are on a solid track as far as consistent story posts and creative content. We have experts taking over our paltry logo attempts and we have an entirely new “design language” in the works. Things are looking up. We even are (mostly) on the same page looking forward to the new year. An advertising push including everything from posters to stickers and that zine thing I was talking about a few weeks ago is on the way and with that kind of momentum who knows what heights we can reach? To break it down, this past year has been about working on our writing, trying to write better and more consistently. The upcoming year is going to be about getting our writing to people and trying to grow our readership. I don’t want to spend too much time looking back for this post (I may give that a shot for next week). This week I’m looking forward.
Personally I am a story ahead and by the end of the year I want to have two complete stories ready to go. I am going to continue to work on short stories (some for Adventure Worlds and some for other hopeful projects) but I am also going to be writing a novel and I feel much more comfortable with a cushion, plus I am excited to get to all those shiny ideas I have in reserve. I have a lot of lofty goals and a terrifying total word count I want to reach between the blogs and the novel, but when I break it down it isn’t as scary. It all depends on me sticking to my daily writing and finding time for typing it all up too.
December has so far been a bit of a push for us. Two of us are cramming in the last parts of our stories (I for one am really ready to move on from the nine parter I’ve been ploughing through most of this year) and we’ve even worked out a posting schedule through January. It’s exciting and we are all trying to use the excitement to keep up what could quickly become a grueling pace. We have achieved a lot this year, though not quite what we hoped for in January. We have even more lofty goal ahead of us and it is very important that we remain excited. We are finishing the year with a strong December and a feeling of triumph (at least I am). Now we are going to raise the bar, forge connections, seek out commonly minded creators and expand our scope. Above all that we’re going to write (hopefully without excuses).
Ben Van Dongen 