We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ben Wolf a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Ben, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?
I wish I could say I developed my work ethic at an early age, but the truth is that I was pretty lazy as a kid. It wasn’t until the summer after my freshman year in college that I learned what hard work really was and how to do it.
That summer, I spent my time working at a friend’s landscaping company. It was fast-paced work, as we had to ge through a certain number of job sites each day, and that meant I’d have to do my part to get everything done in a timely fashion so we could finish on time.
That experience carried over to a time of desperation in my life when I HAD to work in order to stay in college. My parents couldn’t afford to help me as much as they wanted, so it fell to me to “pay my own way.”
My choices were to figure it out or to come home. The latter wasn’t an option—after all, I’d just gotten out of there—so I adapted, worked three jobs, and paid my way through school.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I’m the author of 27 books (soon to be more) across the genres of science fiction, fantasy, horror, children’s, young adult, nonfiction, and more.
My stories all contain an unmistakable element of action and adventure, and unique and compelling characters that experience them. I’ll be launching a graphic novel series and a LitRPG series this year, among other projects.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
1. Craft – whatever it is that you endeavor to do, whether creative or otherwise, master it. I invested an incredible amount of time, study, and practice in honing my storytelling abilities before I dove into self-publishing.
2. Tenacity – this isn’t so much a skill as it is an inherent trait to cultivate and develop. If you want to succeed in your realm of creativity, you have to keep working at it. Punch the brick wall every day; one day it will break. Stick with it.
3. Salesmanship – if you can’t sell, you can’t continue to create. Or, put another way, you can’t create as much if your work isn’t selling. Or, put another way, shamelessly self-promote your work. I literally have copies of my books in my trunk in case I encounter someone who asks that eternal question: “what do you do for work?” Never stop selling yourself and your work. The alternative is that you’ll end up selling your time to someone else so they can make money off of your labor.
What is the number one obstacle or challenge you are currently facing and what are you doing to try to resolve or overcome this challenge?
In 2021, I wrote five and a half books and published eleven. I came thisclose to burning out.
In 2022/2023, I had a less-intense writing schedule, and I only wrote/published eight or nine books (of which six were short children’s books, so they were much more manageable by comparison). But I also did 30+ and 40+ live events, respectively, meaning almost every weekend was busy.
In 2024, my challenge is to balance a lot of shows (probably still 30+) while getting more writing done than in previous years. It’ll be a fun and difficult challenge, but I’m up for it.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.benwolf.com
- Instagram: @1benwolf
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/1benwolf
- Other: Check out some of my audiobooks on www.soundbooththeater.com.
