I first crossed paths with Ben Sobieck while working for
Writer’s Digest. We exchanged emails and then calls about his then upcoming
book The Writer’s Guide to Weapons,
an in-depth handbook for authors about how to realistically utilize and
describe weapons in fiction, so as to avoid coming across like a total knob.
While it was a fun experience, it quickly became clear to me that Ben had a lot
more in the tank than just a writing advice book. He was already writing a lot
of fiction, but things have expanded way beyond that since we first met, and
he’s even started his own business, one designed to help cold writers, which
we’ll get to below. But first, let’s get to know Ben a bit, shall we?
Hobo Camp Review
Ben Sobieck: I always knew I wanted to be a writer. What a
privilege it is to even know that. There are people who wander their entire
lives, unsure of how to fill their short time on Earth, and despite whatever
pithy meme you saw on social media, they are indeed lost. That, to me, is an
absolute tragedy.
Whatever it was that I was doing up to writing this
sentence, it was built around that one deeper understanding of who I am—that I
am a writer. It didn’t matter if I sucked for years at my craft. So long as I
was moving forward, it was the right direction.
My fiction writing used to focus on crime, but it’s since
moved on to horror. The more I read and write, the more I find in horror what
originally attracted me to crime. I love the mixture of action with higher
concepts. You get to play around with heady ideas about existence, meaning,
relationships, etc., but without disappearing up your own ass, because you can
always bring in the goons, guns and/or ghosts. Whatever genre that happens to
fall into, that’s where I am.
BS: My favorites of 2017 are two oldies. The first is “The
Man-Eaters of Tsavo,” by John Henry Patterson, about lions picking off workers
at a railroad project in Kenya .
It inspired the movie, “The Ghost and the Darkness.”
The second is “The Story of Joan of Arc,” by Andrew Lang, an
apologetic piece that faithfully describes the Joan story as certain religious
institutions would prefer.
These two captured my imagination for the same reason. They play
on archetypes present in stories going back (and forward) many, many years.
There’s something enduring about a killer animal story that speaks to a primal
part of humanity. And the unlikely hero archetype is portrayed so perfectly in
Joan of Arc. That must be why she’s still lodged in the zeitgeist.
This begs the question of where archetypes come from, and
that’s what keeps me up at night. They speak to parts of us that are innately
human. Why? If you can figure out where the archetypes came from, you might
discover the moment our species arrived.
In 2018, I plan to once again neglect my reading list with
the care and diligence of a woodpecker on cough medicine. I’ve got a backlog so
deep it’s stupid. Turtles all the way down. I’d like to read more political
memoirs, and I’m not sure why. I don’t particularly have an interest in
political memoirs. Maybe it’s nostalgia talking, I don’t know.
BS: Wattpad is a like a cross between Facebook and Kindle.
You could file it under “social reading.” Writers post work for free, and
readers can read for free. We’re talking full novels, short stories, you name
it.
If you’re suspicious of something like that, you’re in good
company. I was too when I joined back in late 2015. Since then, though, I’ve
worked with movie studios, brand partners, publishers, agents, conferences, the
whole works. It all happened only because of Wattpad. I’m now a member of the
Wattpad Stars program and a Watty Award winner, which basically means I work on
special projects through the site.
What Wattpad does is make it easy to build a platform of
readers. This is the one thing everyone says you need, but no one seems to know
how to give you. With 60 million active users on Wattpad each month, 90% of
whom are readers who dive in for 30 minutes at a time, you’ve got a great
chance at building a corps of people ready to follow you and your writing
anywhere. What can you do with a platform of 1,000 readers? Or 100,000? Or 1
million? You could do anything you wanted.
As writers, we have to get past this idea of a transactional
experience with readers. “Give me a dollar and I’ll tell you a story” isn’t the
only path to monetizing those eyeballs. Twitter and YouTube are free, too, and
there are people with big audiences who pick up sponsorships without ever
charging their followers. Wattpad is like the same thing, but with writing.
There’s a lot more to say about Wattpad, and I’ve got a book
coming next summer from Writer’s Digest all about it. This one is titled, “The
Writer’s Guide to Wattpad,” and I’m serving as editor. If you can’t read that
book and see how different the writing game is becoming from where we sit right
now, I don’t know what to tell you.
BS: Permission to be shameless!
The Writer’s Glove, available at www.thewritersglove.com, is a
thin, warm glove that covers the entire hand. It’s designed to be used while
typing at a keyboard. If cold fingers are slowing you down at the keyboard, The
Writer’s Glove is just the trick. The deluxe version comes with
touchscreen-compatible index fingertips and a light grip in the palms for
holding important items (like coffee).
This little creation was the offspring of necessity. I
needed to keep my fingers warm while I typed in an under-heated office, and I
didn’t like how fingerless gloves kept my skin exposed. It’s cold in Minnesota .
I came up with a few prototypes literally in my garage, then got small batches
going to test the market. I couldn’t keep them in stock. In early 2017, I
formed an LLC, registered a trademark, sourced a manufacturer, built a nice
website and started fulfilling orders from my basement. In the first couple
weeks of going live with the manufactured versions, Glamour magazine featured the gloves. It’s been non-stop ever
since. I’ve sent gloves to customers in 33 countries.
I strongly encourage writers to tap into their
entrepreneurial sides in a similar way. There is little difference between what
I just described and bringing a book to market. Developing a source of income
on the side can free up time and opportunities for writing that you would
otherwise spend at an unrelated job.
Artistry and entrepreneurship are not mutually exclusive.
You hear that? NOT mutually exclusive. IT IS OK TO WANT TO MAKE A LITTLE MONEY
FOR YOURSELF, M’KAY? Stop it with this suffering artist bullshit. You get no
award for being a martyr. You don’t even get to show up for the ceremony when
they name you one. You’re dead. Or you’re a transient hermit.
But not a hobo.
BS: Taking chances on new approaches is the only reason I
got as far as I did. Wattpad was one such chance, and the gloves were another.
These were completely off-kilter ideas, but they worked out far better than I
could’ve imagined.
BS: Hunter S. Thompson would be the first, because he’d keep
it interesting. I’m too boring for road trips. I need that counterweight. However,
I grew out of HST after it became clear he was playing a part. Do people know
that? That it was an act? One side of him, yeah, it was crazy. But he could
turn it on and off. The other part, the writer part, that was the meat of the
guy. Much more interesting. The crazy character HST seems to be, to me, is straight
up marketing.
The second would be Mary Shelley. Put the pop culture
versions of Frankenstein’s monster aside and consider her work in the context
of the time. “Frankenstein” came out in 1818. She originally used her husband’s
name as a pseudonym (or her husband’s pseudonym, I forget), but word eventually
got out about her. The story carried on regardless. How radical was that? For
the time, that was way, way out there.
“Frankenstein” also goes back to that archetype thing.
There’s a thread between the Lazarus story in the Bible, “Frankenstein,”
Titanic and “Jurassic Park
The third would be reserved for Plato. I’d like his thoughts
on the Reuben sandwich. He could also speak to the whole archetypes thing, too.
However, unfortunately, only one writer would be allowed to
survive. On the last night of the trip, I’d look around the campfire and say,
“You know what you need to do.” I’d lay a knife on the ground and walk away. In
the morning, the survivor would get their choice of breakfast at Arby’s.
However, Arby’s doesn’t serve breakfast. This conundrum would cause a rip in
space-time, sending the writer back to his or her origin in history.
Damn you, Arby’s.
Benjamin Sobieck is the Watty Award-winning writer of the
“Confessions of a Fake Psychic Detective” series on Wattpad, as well as the
editor of “The Writer’s Guide to Wattpad” (Writer’s Digest Books) and the
author of “The Writer’s Guide to Weapons” (Writer’s Digest Books). Four of his
titles have appeared on Wattpad Hot Lists, all at the same time, including,
“When the Black-Eyed Children Knock.” He works professionally in the publishing
industry. He’s also the creator of The Writer’s Glove, used in 33 countries,
and enjoys Reuben sandwiches. Follow him on Twitter at @benjaminsobieck, on
Wattpad @bensobieck and on his website, crimefictionbook.com
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