I’ve been urging my littlest loves to pick up a pencil and write. I so very much believe that everyone benefits from wandering with words for awhile. My earliest memories of taking pencil to paper fill me with a sense of constant awe and extract excessive doses of gratitude. Writing is my therapy, my personal space and place of happiness, my safest vault for life’s most sacred stories, and where I feel most connected to my God given gifts.
And so when the dinner table talk turned to the subject of diaries I enthusiastically endorsed and encouraged everyone to pick up the pencil.
Do you pick up the pencil? Do you dare to write the things you are not comfortable to say or share elsewhere?
Or, are you like me, forcing vulnerability thus framing the fundamentals of life’s brevity and beauty in an open forum?
Regardless, this form of self-expression is not to be taken for granted.
This bring me to this blog and the renaming and rebranding of its intention. Growing up my diaries were filled with a recounting of events and experiences, but mostly, of dreams. As I’ve written before, I am a wild dreamer. But in this midlife era of everything for everyone, I demand more for myself. I am not in crisis but rather in a state of certainty. I’m supposed to be doing much more for my dreams.
I begin with a plea, and a real necessary evil endeavor, which is a request for a social media follow, and for you to share that request with as many people as possible. I am nearing completion of my book that will soon be pitched to literary agents and hopefully publishers. This comes with a desire and determination that I will one day take my girls into a book store to see my stories on a shelf. This nearly nine year labor of love is a series of stories centered in self-identity satire. It will not be easy to get published. And in short, it shouldn’t be. But the game of publishing has changed so much. These days newbie authors are often called to have social media followers, and while I loathe the approach, transparency is the ruler of my realities.
So here’s me on Instagram. Please follow.
In addition to my public begging, there’s much more. April will see the birth of Audacious, a forty files podcast. If you know of a middle aged person who is audacious, send them my way. In March my audacious list of people I’m pursuing will be public, and all the things will start happening at rapid pace. Until then, if I’m absent, know it’s because I’m seeing this book process through till the end.
Scattered throughout the forty files are more storytelling events and workshops, and some bad-ass personal projects.
In the meantime, I recently read this and the words burned throughout my being. I will relish the words of Jancee Dunn. Her question of , “so how do we make this time more a celebration than an implosion” is the new guidepost for my dreams and directions.
Get your diaries and let’s do this.
Xo,
Katie
The Forty Files 