All posts by Lars de Wilde

General info: I'm a musician, general creative, and avid traveller. I love to get to know new and very different people everywhere. Travelling suits me because I've always been the outsider even here at home in the Netherlands, so I already have lots of experience in that regard (being diagnosed with Asperger's does that to you XD). I've finally got my bachelor in medical biology this year after 7 years of ups and major downs, and great adventures on the way. I'm also a Game Master for tabletop roleplaying games (which are awesome and you should try it too! :D). So why am I here? For the longest time I had no idea that this (writing) would be my path to walk in life. I've always had a passing interest in stories and fiction, and during my secondary school years I wrote a lot of poems (Dutch and English) just because I felt like writing them. I went on to university with some pressure from one of my parents and had a great time getting to know people there, but the study itself was a morass. It was always interesting, but my passion was never there. It felt like school all over again. I felt obligated to study, with expectations pushing on my chest and shoulders. I muddled my way through it, and after a major burnout I had to reexamine my life bigtime. This is a can of worms if ever I saw one, so you'll just have to ask me that in person ;) Early during my university years, I wrote a song which triggered an entire world to manifest itself inside my brain. And I wanted to bring it to paper to share it with others. This was about 6 or 7 years ago now. Ever since then, I've been trying to autodidactically learn the basics of storytelling and writing. Lots of youtube content, blogs, even some podcasts (Writing Excuses by Brandon Sanderson among others is a lot of fun for anyone. '15 minutes long because you are in a hurry... and we're not that smart.' Cracks me up every time). But I just couldn't start the actual novel. This last year for my last university electives I chose a course where we had to be very creative, and one of the assignments was to write a short sci-fi story. That confirmed my desire to write, and now that uni is done, I want to commit myself to this lifestyle. It is the only full story that I've written so far in all honesty, and it has shown me the things I still have to work on. It was also a rollercoaster to write! So again: Why am I here? My reason for everything: I want to inspire others to discover themselves. Because my own self-discovery and self-actualization have been the driving force of all great things in my life, I want to inspire others to start the journey as well. To share my perspective whilst taking them along for a ride in a world forged by my hand, mind and soul would be the greatest priviledge in the world. Every step I've taken in the last 7 years (even more consciously the last 3), I've done in some way to become a writer. An example would be me playing tabletop role-playing-games like Dungeons&Dragons, which helps me work on theme, setting, plot and character development. The only thing that has held myself back the most is myself, and my perceived lack of experience. A short story is one thing, but a novel is a whole other beast, especially if one wants to earn a living with it (deep down, that's the dream of all creatives I think). I require a perspective that I lack to lift the blockade and grow my self-confidence to the point where I can stand on my own two feet and write with a zealous fury (the good and passionate kind obviously, I'm not marching on bloody Jerusalem to cleanse the heretics XD). I want to ask for your help. I need to get to the point where I have gone through the whole process of writing and finishing the first draft of a novel (plus some revisions) at least once. Then I will be free to go wherever I want. Hopefully I can get to meet some other aspiring writers and join a writing group so we can help each other as well. If you stuck with it until now, thank you for taking the time to read my life summation. Let's do the best we can! I am seriously excited to begin this new chapter (haha writing jokes!) of my life. I'll end this like how I end my daily journal entries: Thank you for listening, Lars