Ringing in the New Year: What I Have Planned
Hey guys,
So it’s been awhile since I’ve written a blog. Too long in fact. I’ve had blog ideas and different subjects floating around in my head for the longest, kind of like when someone texts you and you think of a response maybe even a couple different responses and then you forget to text them back. You know when you say, “Sorry, I forgot to get back to you, I mentally texted you.” Well, I’ve mentally blogged. I certainly didn’t mean for that.
It’s December 31st, New Year’s Eve, a time for a reflection on the recent year passed. As most people are probably feeling right now, I too feel a mix of emotions for the past year. I can’t help but feel a bit of sadness to be perfectly honest. A whole year has passed and I know I am not where I want to be yet as a writer and as a person, but I know I’m on my way. And I know I probably am where I am meant to be at this point in my life, but still sometimes the New Year’s Eve sadness creeps up on me uninvited. Even if I had a decent year, which I definitely feel like I’ve had, it’s still there. I think it’s inevitable and in a way it’s a beautiful sadness, an earned sadness, the kind that is a privilege, because I am still alive and well and another year is just on the brink of the day’s end. It’s the same kind of sadness I feel just after the sun dips beyond the horizon. Another day has ended, but it’s okay because another day will begin, another year will start.
Having that said, I am more hopeful and excited than anything. I truly believe 2018 will hold immense promise for me. As far as I can help it, I want to transform my life into what I want it to be this year. More than anything, I want to become a full time writer and share my stories and creative work with you all. I still believe that it is possible. I’ve had so many creative ideas built up inside of me for so long, it’s time to make it all happen. I need to put the fear and excuses behind and just do it. Think Shia LaBeouf as my own personal Navi shouting, “JUST DO IT,” insistently over my shoulder. I bet you just visualized that. You’re welcome.
Okay. Back to being serious. I am going to be contributing to my blog more often and I think this will be a wonderful opportunity to work on my writing skills and my voice. I had the opportunity to partake in a writing bootcamp session with a phenomenal literary agent over the summer and she gave me some incredible insight on how to be more authentic with my storytelling and the stressed the importance of VOICE. I can’t wait to explore my own here in this blog and in future stories that I plan on writing. I have so much to learn yet.
I’ll be honest, early on while writing my manuscript for Destiny of a Gamer, I would hear over and over again how agents would be looking for a strong and interesting voice and I didn’t fully understand the impact of writing “a voice.” Maybe it was just the rebel in me or maybe I just didn’t get it. So, I did a bit of research and read The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (a story said to have a good example of a strong voice) and he did such an excellent job of telling the story from Hazel Lancaster’s eyes, it felt like I was in the mind of a real person and I couldn’t stop reading the book. I hadn’t been that hooked with a book in a long time. It was like he created a real person and I was hanging out with her. Not to mention, I was super impressed that a grown man was able to give us the inside view of the mind of a teenage girl. It was just so natural and effortless, not forced, not overly done to imply a hormonal teenager or a quite simply a girl being a girl. That takes some serious skill and insight. John Green knows the power of using voice and he did it such a way that made Hazel’s story become so real to us, so we could relate, feel Hazel’s emotions, and believe we were hearing the story of a sixteen-year-old girl falling in love and living with stage 4 thyroid cancer.
Behold such power! I want that power too. I want to create those emotions and to form those intimate connections between readers and my characters. In order to do that, I need to convey a strong voice. I want my worlds and characters to be real to you and I want to give you a story that means something to you. I want to give you an adventure you can experience with the right depth, vividness, and authenticity you need to “live it” within your mind.
So yeah, I want to contribute to blogs regularly and I want to be as authentic and real and me as possible. I see the world a little differently than most, half the time my imagination is in overdrive and I simply can’t help it. Creating is cathartic to me. My creations must find a way out and I must share them.
I’m going to write about a variety of things. I’d like to do some game reviews and give my thoughts on the games I’m currently playing or used to play. Video games have played a huge role in my life and have shaped who I am as a person. I’d like to share some of that and how games have inspired my work. I will also include book updates about my novels and where I am in my publishing journey. There are going to be some character/story driven posts where I might write in the POV of a specific character or I might go into some lore that takes place in my book’s world, or item descriptions or something like that. The sky is the limit. I may not know when my book/books are going to be published yet depending on when and if I were to get a literary agent to represent me, but I can still share some of that world with you in another way until then. I will also share details about myself in “Get to Know the Author” posts, the magical place where I live (I promise it’s truly a magical place out in the country) and I’ll share what kinds of images and elements that inspire me.
I’m really excited about my Instagram profile (@katiedasilva_author), because I am going to take great strides in creating an RPG-themed IG account. I have already started on a winter-themed shoulder pauldron I want to use for photo shoots and I plan on making more armor in the future. I have swords I am going to design and I will include all kinds of fantasy elements into my photography. This imagery will reflect my fantasy novels. I want you to know the worlds I see in my imagination. That is so important to me. I love writing, but I am also very visual as well. I offer both. This year, I also plan on commissioning an artist/artists to create character and setting art inspired by my novels. This is something I wanted to do for a long time, although I have already done my own concept art, which I have here.
Sorry for the ginormous info dump, but I want you to know what I have planned. I hope you can be excited for what I have planned too. This is the year that things are going to happen. I wish you all a happy and safe New Years and I truly hope that 2018 is going to be your year too. It can be. Just believe and give 2018 all you have. No excuses. Just do whatever it is whether you are ready or not. You may never be “ready.”
Just do it.
What do you have planned for 2018? Let me know in the comments.