Ben Crowder

Yesterday morning I was browsing through my copy of Tales Before Tolkien, and I happened to notice the Recommended Reading section at the back, which I’d never seen before.

Goosebumps.

You see, that section lists early fantasy writers and their works (William Morris, E. Nesbit, Lord Dunsany, Walter de la Mare, John Buchan, etc.), and almost all of the books and stories mentioned are pre-1923. Out of copyright. Fair game. Mmm. :)

So, I’ve decided that Riverglen Press will have one line focusing on early fantasy — a trend I’ve already started with Phantastes and the upcoming A Voyage to Arcturus. I’m very, very excited about this.

The other two main areas I see Riverglen Press publishing in, by the way, are classics (like A Christmas Carol and Jekyll & Hyde) and language-related books (both grammars, like the Old Icelandic Primer, and actual texts, like Beowulf).

I plan to work on at least one book in each of the three main categories at any given time. Right now I’m finishing up A Voyage to Arcturus in the fantasy line, and I’ve let Pride & Prejudice slip to the back burner in the classics line but I could easily bring it back. As for the language line, I’m feeling like either a Latin text (Augustine?), Grimm in German, or Afanasyev’s collection of Russian tales. (I do plan to publish lots of fairy tales in all sorts of languages, by the way. Lang, Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Perrault, the Arabian Nights, etc.)

Now if only I had more time… :)

Kevin Kelly’s written a beautiful post on what artists can do to avoid the long tail:

One solution is to find 1,000 True Fans. While some artists have discovered this path without calling it that, I think it is worth trying to formalize. The gist of 1,000 True Fans can be stated simply: A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author — in other words, anyone producing works of art — needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living. A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.

For the longest time I’ve had a challenge convincing myself that I can actually follow my dreams and be an artist (meaning primarily writer and typographer/designer). It seems almost unfair that I could do something I love every day for the rest of my life and get paid for it. Isn’t work supposed to be boring? Doing something that delights me feels like it skirts around the rules of life.

But I really can’t not do it. The life of the artist is tugging on my mind and heart and won’t let go. And I’m tickled to think that I can actually pull it off. Now to find a thousand true fans… ;)

I’ve been reading Madeleine L’Engle Herself: Reflections on a Writing Life, and it’s chock-full of nuggets that inspire me to take up my pen and write, write, write. (The other part I love is that she’s unabashed about her Christianity and its influence on her writing.)

Here’s one bit I loved:

If you are an artist, regardless of your religion, everything you do is your witness. You cannot hide what you are. Emerson said, “What you are speaks so loudly over your head that I cannot hear what you say.”

And another:

The writer cannot write just when he feels like it or he won’t have anything to write with. Like the violin, he has to be constantly tuned and practiced on. This can sometimes be very hard on husband or family, but it’s absolutely essential. My family has with the utmost forbearance and patience put up with innumerable saucepans, the bottoms of which are permanently speckled from burned vegetables. Last year it was peas, and this year I seem to have switched to string beans. I not only burn dinner when I dash to the typewriter to set down just one more sentence, I’m also given to excitement and enthusiasm far beyond the dignity of my position of somebody who’s past the half-century mark.

Yesterday I wrote more of The Widow and the Wizard story (and learned to my surprise who the witch really was — not at all what I’d been thinking all along), and right now I’m revising my play Safe and Sound (auditions are today and tomorrow).

As I mentioned on Top of the Mountains a few minutes ago, I’m going to try to simplify my life. I’ve got too much going on, and it’s crazy. I’ve been addicted to busyness.

And it’s hurting me as a writer and as an artist.

You see, I spend so much time on these minor projects that I rarely have time (or energy) to hone my craft. They’re good projects, and I do learn from them, but I could learn more from my own work.

So, from now on I’m going to stop making so many commitments. I want most of my projects to be self-assigned, because I can rearrange those priorities as needed — if I need extra time to write, I’ll have it; if I need time to read, I’ll have it. Right now I’m lucky if I have time for much of anything beyond my obligations. Sure, sometimes I just ignore those obligations and do my thing — because I’ll go insane if I don’t — but then I have to go into crisis mode to make up for lost time. It’s madness.

Anyway, I’ve scaled back on my commitments (and I’m going to see if there’s anything else I can pull out of), and it’s already reaping some dividends. This is a good move, I think.

Changing topics slightly, I went to a couple sessions of the AML conference this afternoon and came out with a strong desire to write short stories. I’m not sure why. :) But the “why” doesn’t really matter; what matters is actually writing. I used to write daily, back in August, but it’s been pretty hit-and-miss since then. Not good.

I’ll be assistant directing James Goldberg’s play Prodigal Son in our New Play Project Lost and Found festival next month. It’s my first time directing anything — which is why I’m assistant director :) — and in all honesty I have only the slightest idea what I’ll be doing, or how to do it well, but I’m very much looking forward to it. Theatre really speaks to me. For most of my life I’ve only been an observer (in the audience, though my sisters have acted in dozens of plays and I’ve gone to some of their rehearsals), but in the last six months that’s started changing. Playwriting, (assistant) directing…who knows, maybe I’ll even start acting one of these days. But for now I’m content to write. :) (And if the directing goes well, that, too.)

In thinking over where I am as a writer and where I want to go, I feel like the trees are fine, but the forest needs tending.

You see, I’m fairly satisfied with my ability to spin out words and link them into sentences. I can hold my own on the small scale. When we zoom out, though, that’s where things start to fall apart.

I should mention that I’m primarily thinking of my fiction and plays; the structure of my nonfiction works doesn’t bother me. With stories, though, the narrative arc continues to elude me more than I’d like. Or at least I don’t feel as confident there.

To fix that, I guess I’ll just keep studying writing, focusing more on the skeleton underneath the story. And it wouldn’t be a bad idea to write a story and then rewrite it dozens of times, trying different structural techniques. We’ll see. :)

Two hours after the deadline, I got an e-mail from the New Play Project folks: Safe and Sound got accepted. :)

The funny thing is, I almost sort of knew it would (and that Alchemy wouldn’t) in advance. I’m not sure how, but I wasn’t surprised at all. I suppose part of it is that I’m a lot better at writing humor than I am at writing straight drama, and Safe and Sound has a lot of humor — it’s a comedic drama — whereas Alchemy has almost none. And it makes a difference.

I’m actually glad that Alchemy didn’t get accepted, now that I think about it. I do want to write “serious” stuff, sure, but for me it seems to work out best when I sprinkle on the humor. And I don’t really mind being a humorist; if I’m known for writing “funny plays,” that’s fine by me. :)

I’m interested to see, though, if any of this leaks over into my other writing. It’s looking like I tend towards humor and fantasy. Which is also fine by me. (But I do plan to sharpen my skills in other areas, because I don’t want to pigeonhole myself. And being better at serious drama and realistic fiction and whatnot will make my comedies and my fantasy work better.)

Today I took the afternoon off so I could finish writing these plays. I completely scratched my previous drafts of the play (heretofore known as both Into Eternity and Shadowpaint), rewrote it from the ground up, and dubbed it Alchemy, which fits in a lot better with the changes I’ve made. The idea behind the play — that God can take whatever bad things happen and turn them into good — is one I’m really fond of lately, but whether the play actually gets that across is yet to be seen. It would’ve been nice to have more time to revise. This is what happens when I wait until right before the deadline. :)

Speaking of right before the deadline, I wrote most of the second play, Safe and Sound, in the hour before midnight. (Backstory: I went to the library Saturday afternoon and checked out some Jorge Luis Borges. On my walk home, I decided I wanted to write about something verging on supernatural. While Safe and Sound doesn’t actually have any supernatural happenings, it’s about that.) Granted, I spent a couple hours over the past few days freewriting and thinking about the play, and then earlier this evening I spent an hour writing a quick draft of what was originally the first scene, so it wasn’t completely done in this last hour. But most of it was. It’s been a madcap dash to the finish line, and again, I wish I’d had some time to revise. Oh well. I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

And I’m getting excited for Script Frenzy next month. :)

[Cross-posted from Top of the Mountains.]

Yet another Snowstorm post. :) (But it’s the last one.) We had the encore performance of “Eccentricities” tonight, and it went quite well, even though the place wasn’t completely sold out. At the end they tallied all the audience votes for the four performances, and to my surprise, Snowstorm took third place! (That’s a good surprise, not a bad one. :P) They presented me with a check for $15 which I’m going to frame as my first real writing prize.

It’s not about the money. It’s not even about winning, really. It’s about the joy of theatre, of words and acting and stories, of humanity. Even though I didn’t really participate in the production — I wrote the script, submitted it, and then sat back and let them do their thing — even though I was a clockmaker playwright, I still felt a wonderful sense of community with all the other playwrights and actors and directors and everyone else who helped out. I love theatre.

Which doesn’t mean it’s been a bed of roses. (And by the way, I’m not sure a bed of roses is all that great. I mean, the petals would get squished all over as soon as you got in, and the smell would be a bit overpowering, and doesn’t the pigment in flowers rub off on you, too? ;)) Saturday, for example, I kept seeing all the faults in my script (lines I wish I’d written differently), and I have to admit that it got me down. I almost vowed to stop writing plays entirely — with fiction and poetry, you don’t have to see it acted out in front of everyone, it stays safely on the page. Less embarrassing if it goes wrong. But then by Sunday I was itching at the bit again to finish this new play and submit it. It’s been an emotional rollercoaster, really — nothing like dating, but still a lot of ups and downs.

We have a talkback session after each performance, and usually all of the questions have been directed at other plays, because all but mine had a deeper meaning and thus provided more fodder for discussion. Tonight, though, something bizarrely switched, and almost all of the questions were about Snowstorm. Unexpected but fun. I’m realizing that even though I usually don’t like being up in front of large groups of people, I can do this. I even like it. Phew. :)

So anyway, the submission deadline for the next festival is tomorrow at midnight. (If you’d like to submit something — and you really ought to — you can check out the website.) I’ve got one play which is mostly done (and the title keeps changing so I’ll leave it anonymous :P), and then Saturday around noon I was walking down the hill south of campus and came up with another idea which I’m also going to try to write by tomorrow night. Lots of writing, but it’s worth it. Oh, it’s worth it. :)

Back in May, I decided to start digitizing the Welsh Book of Mormon (Llyfr Mormon), dubbing the endeavor Project Cymru. It was going along pretty well for a while, but then I got bogged down over the summer and kind of forgot about the project. I did (and still do :)) have two volunteers helping me, so we made some headway, but overall the project’s been hibernating pretty tightly.

Not for much longer, though. I’m working on getting a spit-and-barbed-wire version of Unbindery up soon so we can do the OCR clean-up easily, and even get more people to help out. Once that happens, it won’t take long to finish the text. And then I’ll be typesetting it into three different versions: one similar to the original Welsh text, one versified (ala the Doubleday edition of the English Book of Mormon), and a parallel English-Welsh text.

Here’s a page from the versified 1 Nephi:

And here’s a page from the parallel edition:

This’ll be Unbindery’s maiden voyage. Humble beginnings, but she’ll go far. :)