We recently connected with Adam Kennedy and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Adam, thanks for joining us today. What’s been one of the most interesting investments you’ve made – and did you win or lose? (Note, these responses are only intended as entertainment and shouldn’t be construed as investment advice)

The best investment I ever made in my writing was my inkless typwriter. As an adult with ADHD (diagnosed in early childhood), it is critical that I be able to “lose myself to focus” when it comes to creative work. This is exceedingly difficult in the Algorithm Age, when every other screen I own is battling to extract as much attention from me as possible.

Not my little plastic clamshell typewriter, though. It has only one function: word processing. Its only online capacity is sending (but not receiving) files to email or the cloud. And whenever its keys click-clack with joyful precision as I begin to write, it’s like the noise of the rest of the world completely fades away and I can hone my attention to a razor’s edge.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am an award-winning game writer, novelist, and poet. I have over a dozen fictional works in publication, and over thirty games on which I was a major creative contributor. Games I have worked on have sold over ten million copies (combined), and won awards such as Best Narrative, Best Action RPG, and many Best-of-Show awards at various conventions.

I write fiction under the pen name Adam Vine. My first novel, ‘Lurk’ sold well for an indie horror book. I mostly attribute that to the fact I had an incredible editor, my friend and long time collaborator, Dean Liapis, as well as many dedicated early readers who gave me invaluable feedback.

My fiction could mostly be classified as horror, although I prefer the term “nightmare realism.” I enjoy exploring themes related to the dark side of human psychology and its tangents to folklore and the occult.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The biggest lesson I have had to unlearn is my own self-perception and expectations of the other. Earlier in my career, I felt a lot of disappointment when projects didn’t go my way, or fell apart due to creative differences. This mistake was also something I repeated frequently in my personal life. Learning to let go of those expectations and view every separation or loss as an opportunity to learn is something that is easy to say but very difficult to do; I am still working on it, but doing much better now than I used to.

The last game I released, for example, was a financial failure. It was planned to be a live game with many years’ worth of intended updates, but the publisher pulled the plug and ended all support only three months after launch.

On top of that, it was also the biggest intellectual property I had ever worked on – a science fiction franchise I have loved ever since my dad first sat down with me on the couch and put it on when I was five years old. The release fizzled out to crickets and condemnation after two long years of a tiny remote team working long hours.

But as hard as that was, I chose not to let the way things turned out bring me down, and to remove as much emotion from the situation as possible so I could objectively view where my part in the project went well and what went wrong (not much I can do about others’ contributions).

Only a few months later, the game won a Best Narrative Award. The entire narrative department was myself and two other people.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

The road to being a professional writer is not a clear, straightforward career path, and at times, it has been impossible for me to make ends meet on writing work alone, even when I had multiple paying contracts. Other jobs I’ve held since I started being paid for my writing work include bartending, waiting in a Michelin-recognized restaurant, construction, working at a state park, babysitting the front desk at a hotel, biographer, and doing day labor on a cannabis farm…

…not to mention all the non-writing-related hats I’ve worn making games!

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.adamvine.me
• Instagram: @dankburritos
• Other: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Adam-Vine/author/B01B6QP8IU

Image Credits

Adam Kennedy