Hello From Ben

Do you have a nickname?
You can call me "Ben." Yep.

What do you like to read?
My all-time favorite writers are Virginia Woolf and Stephen King, if that gives you any idea. I love fantasy, science fiction, and horror with good language and great characters, and I love literary fiction with the same. But I also just love a great story.

What kind of stories do you write?
Mostly stories about working class mid-westerners doing unpleasant things to each other, with varying degrees of pretentiousness. Sometimes ghosts, creatures, and advanced technologies come into play.

How would you describe your personality?
Quiet unless drunk. I am a liberal from a conservative family that I love, so I get along with just about everybody. Introverted, but not shy. I have as much fun acting on stage as I do moving sets behind the curtain (though I haven't gotten to do either in years).

Just picture a barefoot redneck who fell into a pile of books and climbed out wearing hipster glasses. Like Urkle in his cool machine, but much less interesting.

What would you do this summer if you hadn't been accepted to Clarion?
The same thing I always do: work, watch movies, read, and write. I'd like to finish the short film I started last summer. It involved a stop-motion watermelon monster.

Who will miss you most while you're in San Diego (cats, kids, partner, boss, coworkers)?
I come from a large family (9 or so of us, excluding spouses/spawn), but I expect they'll be too busy raising their families to miss me too intensely.

Have you participated in an intensive writing workshop before?
Nope. Just a couple creative writing courses at Purdue.

What scares you most about Clarion?
The few classmates I've met on Twitter seem very kind, but very accomplished, with not only multiple credits to their names, but awards as well. I've been hard at this since 2007 without a single published piece, so I just hope I'm to a point where I can produce work that earns my presence at Clarion.

What do you do to relax or for recreation?
Watch movies (I watch a lot of movies, and write screenplays as well), draw (badly), read and write. Shoot short films (when I can). 3D and stop-motion animation. Programming. Kayak down narrow Indiana creeks. I used to do theatre, and miss it.

What 1-2 essential things will you bring to Clarion besides your laptop, watergun, and espresso maker?
I'm one of those assholes who writes everything longhand with a fountain pen, so I'll bring a stack of legal pads and my lapboard (which is a little too fancy a word for a clipboard I wrenched the clip off of).

What is your ideal career?
If we're talking ideal as in almost certainly won't happen, I'd like to be a novelist/screenwriter who directs a movie every few years. Maybe I also own a jetpack? But I'd settle for being a poor novelist with a part-time job. Just as long as novels are involved in there somewhere (and, yeah, screenplays too).

What else do you want us to know about you?
I don't know anybody or anything, but I love writing, and have pretty much all my life. I don't take myself seriously, but I do take the work seriously. And movies. I take movies seriously too.