Mad At Last Night Ben

Blog No. 170

            Ever since I wanted to write (even before I did anything about it) there was always a long list of stories I planned to finish. Some of them were going to be comics, or films, or both, then books, stories, novels, or television shows. Sometimes it wavered between several. The point being, I had (and still have) a bunch of stories I want to write. Magically (through the art of hard work and tons of support) I have written some of those stories. Some of them have even turned out well. It’s amazing what a little work and consistency can do. Currently my list of projects (currents and forthcoming) is short. While I want to get to everything eventually, I have to be practical. I have four projects I want to finish this year (if not more, but probably less). Two of those I am currently working on and feel like I should do some kind of an update thing. (If for no other reason than to keep myself accountable).

Another Collection Update

Blog No. 141

Hello fine folks. I’ve been talking about this darn collection with Christian for over a year now and all I’ve had for you were promises and Gorilla Dust. It’s been a long, bumpy, lazy road, with big changes and lots of letdowns, but we are finally in sight of the finish line. I decided to use this week’s post to write a short update.

When we started the collection (back in February of 2014) we had wondrous visions of a collection of short stories to go along with the quickly growing blog. We were racking up stories faster than we could post them and decided to collect the best of them and put out a book. Christian had his own collection coming out (which has done marvellously well: http://christianlaforet.com/the-space-between-houses/) but we had lots of stories in the bag and wanted to do something more with them. As it turned out, the dynamics of Adventure Worlds changed and the number of stories we each needed grew, and so did the amount of time spent working on it.

Overly Critical

Blog No. 140

Some time ago I was on a website (either Reddit or Imger, I can’t remember) and I saw a post about someone giving away digital copies of his book. At the time, I couldn’t decide if it was a good idea or not. There was something about it that didn’t feel right (and I don’t mean the three different fonts on the cover). I’m starting to think, now, that the idea was good (why not give away some digital books for free advertising) but I there was something off-putting about the execution. The post was self deprecating, disparaging, and melancholy. It was a woe-is-me, nobody loves me, cry for attention that left a sour taste in my mouth. I can understand being discouraged. Writing is hard, selling what you’ve written is harder, but trying to guilt me into reading your book (or maybe just spilling your sad sack guts on the internet) is a turn off. But hey, a free book is a free book.

Collection Update

Blog No 125

I’ve done a novel update this year, but I have to admit, I haven’t done any work on it since then. I really want to, but I have so much other work that has to be done now (or a few weeks ago) that I’ve had to put it on hold and focus. The one project that is sucking up the most time is currently The Collection. The fabled collection is a set of short stories that Christian and I have been working on since before this time last year. I know that seems like a long time, but since they are short stories, there seemed to be lots of little things that would get in the way (like the first Zine, Finders, updating the website, Christian putting out his book and many others). They were just short stories, we had tons of time. Now it’s a year later and we are still working on edits.

Editing is Hard

Blog No. 123

One of the major parts of my writing day is looking at other people’s stories and giving them an edit. Often I’ll catch a couple of typos, notice some structural weak spots and grammar mistakes, and make a bunch of suggestions on how I think the story could be improved. The things I notice jump off the page (fresh from the pile of new story elements I learned about) and if the story is well written, I can be done a couple thousand words in half an hour (extrapolate for longer stores, chapters etc). Sometimes there is a lot more to point out and the task becomes an arduous task filled with long winded explanations and edits based on assumptions and what I know about the author, but usually things go smoothly. If I can avoid supplanting the writer’s voice with my own, I find I add something to the story, helping the author and learning something about my own writing in the process.

Behind the Writing: The Fifth Monday – Part Three

Blog No. 98

Sometime, in the early part of the year, Christian had an interesting idea. It’s not strange for that to happen, most writers are writers because of interesting ideas, but this one wasn’t a story. It was technically a story, but it was also more. Since we, at Adventure Worlds, post our stories on Mondays, and some months end up with five Mondays, Christian thought that we should do something special on those odd months. He decided to start a story, but leave it for another one of us to continue, and so on. He even started the thing off with the event happening on a fifth Monday (which is what I call dedication). The reigns were handed over to Alanna, who took it in a totally different direction, then passed it on to me.