Blog No. 67
Adventure Worlds was initially just a place for me and my fellow writers to post our stories as we spent a year trying to embody the things that makes someone a writer. I like to say we were honing our craft. We did have plans for it to eventually become something much bigger, but I’m not so sure we expected it to happen as quickly as it seems to be progressing. In time (and after a lot of our own stories) we wanted the blog to develop into a place (or thing?) for us to find people who like what we write and a way for us to gather support. We’ve been taking a local approach with that recently, but with a blog the whole world is available.
That was just the tip of the iceberg. We all came up with our own fantasies for the blog. We’ve talked about it eventually growing legs and becoming some kind of online magazine (with the zine as a physical counterpart) and maybe generate some side income along with being a place where people want to submit their writing (because it gets noticed, because we are awesome writers or something). We’ve even talked about making it a much larger website where we can sell things and have sections for videos and do video-blogs and have robots and stuff. (But the robots may just be my thing).
Part of those ambitions is happening already. So far we’ve had two submissions (which happen to be two more than I expected at this point). One is already up on the site and the other one was submitted shortly after the first one went up. We wanted submissions as a way of expanding the blog and bringing more diverse stories and readers. It goes back to the original concept of the blog too. Since the blog was (and still is) mostly about the group’s writing, we were a little unprepared for the submissions (though we did send out a call for some). We have been sticking to that Monday post schedule and if all four of us have something for the month that doesn’t leave any room for submissions. For now we are going to take turns taking a break, but I think in the future we’ll have to come up with another strategy for posting. Like the last week of the month will have a double post if we have a submission. Or something – I don’t know.
Based on the submissions we have already gotten it seems we may be developing into a magnet for displaced local writers. We like that but we didn’t necessarily expect it. (We’ll see if the trend continues). There are a few local writing groups, but most of them seem to be very different from ours. Like I mentioned in the blog about other groups, they tend to be older people who write either poetry or straight fiction. There is nothing wring with that (it’s good to know that these groups and writers exist in our city) but it doesn’t exactly fit with our ideas or writing styles. Those groups tend to either not have any interest in the internet as a place to put writing, or they think of it as a place where people who can’t get their stories into literary magazines and journals put their writing. There seems to be a few writers (or groups) that tend to write genera stories (like us) and maybe don’t know where to put their writing (or maybe see us as an actual viable location to get readers).
So far we have 90 followers on Facebook and over 2000 views on our blog. That’s nothing compared to many other blogs and (or) online magazines, but the local angle may be helping us out. I suppose as a local entity that’s pretty good. And if you read my last post you’ll remember that there is a solid art scene in the city (even if it isn’t always appreciated). I’m sure that’s been a help. While the scene sometimes struggles, the people (of all disciplines) tend to stick together and support each other. We’ve been attending different events and groups (again, like I mentioned) and spreading the word as much as we can. Because it’s taken us a little off guard we aren’t completely prepared for those meetings. It’s all well and good to tell people about your blog, but while they may be interested, they don’t always follow through.
I blame our lack of a logo. It’s kind of sad how much that’s holding us back. We finally went ahead and made business cards without it because as we’ve been intenerating with groups and people in our community we’ve found we need them now. (Which is very promising) but I’m a big believer in the power of a logo. It can connect everything we may do and bring everyone back to Adventure Worlds. Our current goal (along with the writing) is to get that logo figured our and start branding everything we can. For now keep an eye out for our logoless cards and keep heading back to Adventure Worlds. Everything is coming from there.
Ben Van Dongen 