Categoriearchief: English posts

I can’t believe I didn’t sell that book…

gallery-1453072090-mcdsean-ec180-h (1)I can’t believe it!
For probably a year or so, I ve been shy selling my favorite book.
Big, diaries and erotica

I simply didn’t mention it, and hardly ever linked to it.
Not even last month, when the male protagonist, my lover Mr.Big broke up with me. 

And my shyness didn’t have anything to do with the fact that;
– the description alone is more revealing about me, than any civic-minded respectable author would ever reveal about themselves in their entire career.
JUST the description!
– I feel vulnerable because I have been a mistress/ this mistress, and fear it may one day cost me my life
– this book about the first two years of my affair with Mr.Big is a sad reminder we’re no longer together
– the book is the most in-my-face confrontation, that I need to write about my love life. It’s like written proof of my indiscretion (or written proof that I m a human and a writer, not a Swiss bank) 

No.
All those things are true, and have their own levels of awkwardness attached to them, but the reason I didn’t sell my book about my affair with Mr.Big was because there was an “n” too many, in the description.
It said “an” scarred single, instead of “a” scarred single.
And I just cringed every time I saw that.

I publish my own books at Lulu, and I thought I remembered that every time you adjust something about your book, EVEN if it’s just in the description, you were compelled to buy/order a new copy to “check” it before it was allowed back on the market.
Adjusting my description would cause a delay, maybe it would be blocked until I had “checked” the new edition.
I knew that it could probably be bypassed because they have a really good customer service, but I simply had not come around to do it.
And every time I wrote a piece, I thought:
“I should link to my book about Big!”
Only to then realize, grinding my teeth, I still had not fixed “an” into “a”, and decided I was not going to promote it with the description in this shape.

It’s very late, Sunday. Should be in bed already.
I was writing “fix description Big” on my to do list, and suddenly I was like “Oh to hell. Let’s get this over with.”
I intended to fix it, order a “new copy”, allow the book to be blocked for a few weeks until I had it straightened out: I didn’t care.
I was at the “at any cost” stage, rather than putting something that was 9 months overdue on a to-do list.
Only to the read the sentence: 
“If you only adjusted the description or the price, you can clear the book right away.”

So there you go!
Big is my favorite book probably because it is so personal. I talked myself out of publishing it many times.
With the reasons I gave you before, and things a lot like it.
Even now, I read that description and know what’s in the book, and think:
“I can’t believe I published this.”

But by fixing it, I ve run out of excuses not to sell it ;) 

Big, diaries and erotica

or check the store, with all my books

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

PS: If you are Dutch/Nederlands, your best buy is
“Het Boek Benjamin”
It includes my main 8 books, including 3 Dutch ones
Mango / 22 erotische verhalen/ de Candystop
En natuurlijk “Big, diaries and erotica”

My diaries en erotica are available at my BOOK SHOP

coming soon: new books 

1. Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2020
2. I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW
3. Big Mistress – confessions, columns and sex advice from the other woman
4. Blote Kont- (Dutch)
5. ALL THE THINGS – unpublished work 2010 – 2020 

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready is to follow my 
English blog which I established in 2018:
laurenharteveld.com

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

Facebook 
Twitter @LSHarteveld

Two be one

“He could make women feel good about themselves but he couldn’t give himself to them;
Because he could not give himself away.”

about Leonard Cohen
from Words of Love

I just saw Words of Love about Leonard Cohen and I m having many thoughts on the ruthlessness of what it means to be an artist.
This wants to come out so badly, I ll be typing the damn thing on my phone although I will clean it up later, when I have time to post it properly.
But God damn.
What powerful truths were spoken.
And I just felt the impossibility of ever finding lasting love. And the magnitude of what you re asking, as a creative, from your muse and lover.
I think the worst scenario would actually be to have one settling down with you, only to then crash under the weight of your art or be torn apart by the storm of your creativity.
But I m getting ahead of myself.

One month ago my lover broke up with me. And although we had a secret affair, and were in that respect the opposite of Leonard and Marianne’s open arrangement;
Ours lasted 5 years, theirs 8.
And although I respect his decision, my feelings for him have not changed.
I could practically see one of us sending a goodbye audio message from a death bed in 30 years.
But again, I m getting ahead of myself.

Marianne and Leonard in Hydra, Greece

Marianne and Leonard in Hydra, Greece

The thing that struck me most was Leonard’s observation that love means you become the content of the other, and the other becomes the content of you.
And my lover has even become my content in the most literal sense; As an online writer, content refers to me writing about him.
Something I really wish I could not do…
I m not just a creative, whose unpredictable life force does not provide stable grounds to build any kind of arrangement;
I will also write about you.
We had a secret affair, so no one knew. And I will keep having secret affairs, to control the damage the mementos of my undying love do, but ideal it is not, says Master Yoda. 

But it is not “just” becoming each other’s content.
Leonard describes that in order for this to work, you need to have the same size. 
You re different.
Feminine, masculine.
Sun and moon.
Yin and yang.
But you have to be equal in size.
Someone smaller than you cannot fill you up, and neither can someone bigger than you.
And that s when I knew Leonard Cohen had just pointed out to me how unlikely it was, that I would ever find love again.
Not just because I write about my love life.
Not just because of the forces of creativity tearing at me, and anyone close to me.
But because HE needs to be just as big as ME.

I ve met new men in the five years we were together, and fell in love twice.
All the others were not a match, and with some I could feel they put me on a pedestal which ruled out any warm feelings from my side.
Whenever I got worked up about something like that I often wondered if a man I did like behave like that, would I like it?
No.
I would immediately fall out of love.
But they never did that, so I stayed in love. Although obviously over the course of my life some men have dropped off the radar, and even the first of the two men, whom I got to know in the past 5 years, is no longer active in my vibration.
But I did not actively fall out of love because they behaved like I was more than they were.
Two men in 5 years who I really liked.
Both in relationships and I suspect not the open Leonard and Marianne type ones.
Mr.Big too, was unavailable, I became his mistress.
Which makes zero available men I fell in love with in 5 years.
But at least thanks to Leonard, I know why that is.
WHY I only meet so few whom I love;
Because we need to be equally big.

The only thing that comforts me is this;
At least they can get out if they want to.
There is no shortage of women interested in confident men of any age. The men I m in love with do not have to settle for me, in fact if they are the settling kind it is very unlikely they will choose me.
Anyone but me.

But it is also a comforting thought that the only way they can find, or have found, real love, is with someone as big and equal in size as them.
We’re in the same boat.
They may not be creatives, and write about their encounters or burden the relationship with unpredictable energies that will eat you both alive;
But this one goes for them as well.
You need to be equal.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

My diaries en erotica are available at my BOOK SHOP

coming soon: new books 

1. Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2020
2. I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW
3. Big Mistress – confessions, columns and sex advice from the other woman
4. Blote Kont- (Dutch)
5. ALL THE THINGS – unpublished work 2010 – 2020 

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready is to follow my 
English blog which I established in 2018:
laurenharteveld.com

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

Facebook 
Twitter @LSHarteveld

 

Happily ever after (HEA) was more important in Star Wars than in Marriage Story


At 1 minute 45 we see the darkside prince falling in love with Rey from Jakku *romantic music known as The Force Theme playing*

The-Rise-Of-Skywalker-Promo-Ben-Solo-Death

“Many women feel like they have wasted their time buying into a franchise that ultimately never cared about fulfilling its own promises about happy endings, telling a complete story, or even offering hope and compassion to the characters that needed it the most.”

from
Star Wars: Why Reylo Outrage Inspired #ReleaseTheJJCut

I just got back from seeing Marriage Story, and it left me a bit sore.
I had assumed that because people were so enthusiastic about this movie, the couple played by Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson would ultimately get back together after their divorce process gets from bad to worse.
I had gone to the movies because I longed to see Adam Driver on the big screen, and had vowed not to see The Rise of Skywalker anymore.
The Rise of Skywalker, TROS, was 2019.
This was the new year and it was not invited.
So instead of breaking my resolution for a TROS-free decade, I went to see Wedding Story, also with Adam Driver. I have skipped The Report because that was too serious and heavy for me, but Marriage Story was doable.

Like I said, all the positive feedback for this movie had convinced me there was much to like, and probably included a happy end.
After all, it was called Marriage Story.
Making it painfully obvious that I had learned very little from Rise of Skywalker, which should have been called The Rise of Palpetine.
But hey! That does not sell!
Neither does a movie called Divorce Story.
So I went to the movies, chose Marriage Story, and I was disappointed.

In Dutch we have an expression that allows you to say something is “a dragon of a movie”.
It was as if I was watching a Woody Allen movie, and I’d rather not.
I read people thought the director of Marriage Story created movies that looked a lot like Woody Allen’s, because they revolve around relationships and New York. But I think them and me differ on whether that’s a good thing or a dragon of a movie.

So either way, Marriage Story was (for me) almost unbearable to watch. There was no reason for these people to get a divorce other than that they both brought so many unspoken expectations into that marriage, it was simply doomed to fail unless they were going to talk about it.
Which apparently they could not without getting very angry with each other.

Neither one of the parties was taking any responsibility for not setting any boundaries and goals of their own during their marriage and had just plunged into the deep end hoping for the best.
Which turned out to become a very nasty and very expensive divorce ten years later.

And then there are moments when they could have seen how easy it was to love each other, and that it is all a big misunderstanding and yet they don’t see anything!
As the viewer you can see the potential is still there, yet apparently they experience it as a cathartic cry and still go through with the divorce.
It made no sense.
So on my way home I started pondering if I needed to write about this movie Marriage Story.
And if so, what was I going to write?
Ultimately I decided I was going write about it in conjunction with The Rise of Skywalker.
Both movies had ended on a bad note, in particular for the character Adam Driver had played.
But Marriage Story had received raving reviews.
Whereas The Rise of Skywalker had mixed reviews from critics and Rotten Tomatoes shut down the pole to prevent its audience review would go down. It’s had the same audience score for two weeks.

So I started thinking about this critically acclaimed Woody Allen-like divorce drama, which was loved by the audience and not by me; Versus the critically not acclaimed Rise of Skywalker movie, which was also not loved by the audience nor by me.
Although many disgruntled fans still wanted to make the point TROS was “Way better than The Last Jedi!”

To understand what that means, we must go down and search Star Wars at its roots.
Take a meta perspective on the origins of the latest trilogy, in order to reveal why for people like me, The Rise of Skywalker was not just a bad movie in particular in comparison to The Last Jedi;
But also why people like me are invested in Star Wars in a way that does not even begin to compare with seeing a one-off Woody Allen-like movie.
To understand why a movie like Marriage Story will never get my heart, nor any other heart like mine, pumped with excitement or broken from grief, we need to go back to 2015.
To a movie called The Force Awakens, which was the first part of the new trilogy also known as “The Sequel trilogy”. And we need to establish that this movie, nor its successor The Last Jedi was an accident, but that they belonged to a story that was set out by Disney for this trilogy.
A story that was abandoned.
As was the group of new fans that had embraced it as their own:
The group of people, known as Reylos.

The Story of the Reylos

For over 2,5 weeks I have been glued to my Twitter timeline, reading everything about the heavily disappointing Star Wars 9 The Rise of Skywalker. My addiction ultimately paid off in giving me The Ultimate Article on Everything Wrong with The Rise of Skywalker.
Star Wars: Why Reylo Outrage Inspired #ReleaseTheJJCut

This article pleads for release of the original/ real ending, by JJ Abrams. And although the title does not fully cover it, the article sums up everything wrong with Star Wars 9, in particular from a Reylo perspective.
I will explain in a minute why that is defendable as the most relevant perspective.
But let me first explain what “Reylo” means.
It stands for the relationship between Rey and Kylo Ren. Their love story roots in the myth of Death and the Maiden, in the Phantom of the Opera and it is almost a direct clone of Disney’s other favorite (Star Wars is owned by Disney), Belle and the Beast.
The Beast, Death or the Phantom was Kylo Ren, played by the tallest actor of his generation Adam Driver, who has made it big with numerous highly acclaimed movies.
Adam Driver played Kylo Ren, Disney’s dark prince, who would be united with his equal in the light, the girl Rey from Jakku.
Together Rey and Kylo would bring balance to The Force:
The darkside warrior with the light inside of him and the lightside warrior Rey with the dark inside of her. Like the black yin and light yang, both having one dot of the other inside of them.
Oh!
Now that I am unapologetically making Kylo Ren “Yin”, which is also the female element, I am reminded of an interesting perspective which was offered on Twitter directly, so I don’t have an article (yet?), about how the tall handsome warrior Kylo Ren is actually portrayed as very feminine.
Not only does he posses the long flowy Disney prince hair;
He also uses his voice, his eyes, his mystery to seduce her. At one point he’s shirtless when he talks to her, throwing Rey off as she stammers if he perhaps has a cowl to cover himself up.
For me it were indeed these feminine aspects that made Kylo irresistible.
So Reylos, or Reylo shippers are the people who “ship” (from relationship) the pairing of Rey and Kylo. A pairing which – and this is important in the light of where things went – was setup and supported by Disney themselves.
As much as more traditional Star Wars fans may argue otherwise, episode 7 The Force Awakens  (2015) and in particular episode 8 The Last Jedi (2017) were setting up a story that was more sexual, sensual, spiritual and more mythical, than any of the previous Star Wars movies had ever been.
If the third trilogy was rooted in anything from the past, it was much more in the Prequels; A series of movies George Lucas himself made at the beginning of this century. And at the time, the prequels were heavily criticized by the fans of the originals.
Fans of the originals did not like the prequel trilogy.
And now both fans of the originals and fans of the prequels, didn’t like the theme of the sequels.
But here is how it differs and where the recent criticism turned into the downfall of the entire sequel trilogy:
Because in the case of the prequels, the criticism never got to influence the story.
George Lucas knew the bigger story and he stuck with it.
But what happened in the sequels is that episode 7 was different, fresh, but not too different. And was still ambiguous with regard to the love theme. It was this ambiguity that ensured the older fanbase liked it, and drew in the first of the new fanbase.
The Reylo shippers.
But then came 8, The Last Jedi.
The romantic story was dialed up and all hell broke loose. Criticism was usually not directly aimed at the romance, nor at the socially conscious themes 8 had included.
Instead it was projected at what was “done to” Luke Skywalker (he was a bitter man regretting the choices he had made, instead of a Jedi superhero), and on how many or more how few lightsaber fights 8 had.
But the point that should have been made then, is that those complaints were entirely irrelevant to the bigger story which was being told. The story that after hiding in episode 7, was finally becoming more explicit and more visible.
And if George Lucas had done this trilogy, just like he had done the prequels, he would have held the course. He would not have changed the story, because of nitpicking on choices that didn’t have anything to do with the bigger narrative.
But as the old Star Wars fans were angry because they saw Star Wars canon, and the characters as they saw them, being compromised in 8, Disney grew uncomfortable with the path they had chosen.
There are people pointing out that Disney has creative freedom, and that it’s okay for these three movies of the final trilogy to have an entirely different tone;
There are even those wondering if Reylos have a right to ask or expect a Happily Ever After.
Yes, we do.
Not because that is what “we” want to see, but because that is what has been fed to us.
THAT is the story Disney set up, that is the entire thing this sequel trilogy is based on. Or was based on, until they first got cold feet after the backlash from the Last Jedi.
And then weeks before the premiere they got cold all the way up to the waistline, because they changed the entire ending.
The ending of The Rise of Skywalker does not contain any original material of Adam Driver “acting” his death. They used material, in all likeliness from his Happily Ever After, and edited it using every dirty trick in the book, until it looked like he had died
And Rey – who had been hailed during the entire movie as being half of “A dyad in the Force! A power like life itself! Unseen for generations!” was copied from her Pasaana shots, and pasted into Tatooine.
Alone.
And voila!
Disney’s half of the Dyad, also known as Belle, is now redubbed to Wonder Woman in space, and doesn’t need anybody anymore. There was no footage of her mourning the dead side of her dyad, her other half, and the man with whom she had been having heated Force conversations with for over a year;
Instead they let her commemorate his uncle, Luke Skywalker with whom she had a difficult relationship with; And his mother Leia.
Just like Adam Driver didn’t do any acting for his ending, this footage too was most likely entirely fabricated and the actress who played Rey never got a chance to act as someone who had just lost her soulmate.
They just copy pasted her into the desert.
Rey in the final minutes of the film, has been compared to the Stepford Wives: She does not show any emotion only an artificial smile.

bad endings

I feel Star Wars was never for me.
Or, as the article said it: 

“Star Wars has the bitter taste of a franchise that accidentally tapped into women’s interests but had little interest in them as intelligent viewers engaging with the material.”

from
Star Wars: Why Reylo Outrage Inspired #ReleaseTheJJCut

We were lured in with the promise of an epic fairy tale, and then we were kicked out that we should be strong, be alone and eat sand.
That made Star Wars 9, The Rise of Skywalker, so painful for me and all the other Reylos.
Stories are there to transcend our pain and suffering. They provide healing.
I think the main difference for me, and perhaps for other Reylos too, is that I would never bring those kinds of expectations to a real life human being.
Not into a real life relationship between a man and a woman.
Expectations are projections of who will save you and complete you. According to Disney they don’t even belong in fairy tales. Even there the heroine just has to suck it up.
But I think the reason Marriage Story never really got to me, is that even I, a romantic Reylo, know that expectations of your other half completing you,
definitely do not belong in a marriage.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

My diaries en erotica are available at my BOOK SHOP

coming soon: new books 

1. Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2020
2. I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW
3. Big Mistress – confessions, columns and sex advice from the other woman
4. Blote Kont- (Dutch)
5. ALL THE THINGS – unpublished work 2010 – 2020 

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready is to follow my 
English blog which I established in 2018:
laurenharteveld.com

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

#thankyourianjohnson | A Reylo Fairy Tale on The Rise of Skywalker

Christmas Eve, 2019
introduction to the story

Four hours ago, I sat down in order to write a compassionate review of The Rise of Skywalker.Something that would uplift the hearts of everyone who had been disappointed in any way shape or form, by the final episode of the saga.
And this included the people who had worked on it for all those years, and director JJ Abrams.
I was convinced that if I could look at JJ Abrams with the same compassion I had given the villain of the trilogy, the darkside warrior Kylo Ren, I would be able to connect with the part of JJ Abrams that had done the best he could.
And who was probably haunted by his own inner demons.
Just like Kylo Ren had been a victim of mental abuse since before birth, when a dark Lord invaded his mind and crushed his soul.

Kylo Ren never had a chance of staying on the right path.
And I was sure that in that light, the controversial choices of JJ Abrams too, could be explained by his deepest darkest fears getting the better of him.
Things that frightened him to the bone but that had been so terribly close, that he had been unable to separate them from his very own being. 
Much less do anything about them.
897c4a72b6bdf959768dca2ee5ab890cAnd yet the intention to develop a more compassionate view of the man who had once given us the beautiful Star Wars 7 – including a bridal carry scene halfway through the movie and a bell in the first scene with Rey; both promises of a fairy tale-
did not bring out the wave of inspiration and healing I was hoping for.

On day six after seeing The Rise of Skywalker I was no way near forgiving him, for taking away our happy end.
For turning this into Romeo and Juliet, instead of Belle and the Beast.
But since I had announced on Twitter that I would be writing a compassionate review of The Rise of Starwalker, I felt the obligation to at least mention, that it was still on my mind, but that I could not find the right way to go about it.
So that’s what I tweeted.
And one tweet turned into two.
Two into four.
And by now they had numbers followed by slash/ and the word “thread”.

I knew I was on to something and that I had no idea how long this thread was going to be, or which story I was going to tell.
And this illustrates how I feel about writing and art;
In my opinion all you can do is let the story come out. It must reveal itself.
I m sure writing a film script is in many ways different to blogging or tweeting, but having said that, I do believe that if I had been convinced, that for The Rise of Skywalker, JJ Abrams had been following his own inner-voice?
I would have wholeheartedly accepted it.
Even if The Rise of Skywalker had been about all of them turning to the dark side, and submerging the entire galaxy into darkness for eons to come;
If that’s how JJ Abrams, director and screenplay writer, had seen this movie with great clarity?
Then so it shall be done.
The entire problem was: We never got that impression.

As far as I could see, something already went very wrong when the first director for this episode Colin Trevorrow was fired or resigned, based on creative differences.
This was before The Last Jedi was released, so it didn’t have anything to do with Disney responding to disappointing box office results or anything.
Colin Trevorrow must have experienced a limitation that didn’t allow him to make the film he wanted to make, but the film Disney wanted to make. His resignation should have been a red flag for JJ saying yes.
What exactly had he said yes to?
In the Twitter thread I m sharing below, I ve let this conflict play out with the character of Palpetine, because Trevorrow has always claimed his script did not include a return of the emperor.
The Emperor, came with JJ.
If I read the thread below, I can see I have not totally succeeded in my setup to write a non-salty review, that is compassionate to everyone involved. Technically, it is not even a review.
And I must say I am very sorry for that.

But I let the story out, as it wanted to come out.

And in the end?
That is really all any artist, any creator, any writer, and any filmmaker, can ever do.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.

~Lauren

A Reylo Fairy Tale on The Rise of Skywalker 

Rose

Rose

[ click the link to tweet ]

I really wanted to write a compassionate piece on The Rise of Skywalker,
but my thoughts are all over the place.
I think about toxic masculinity a lot.
I can’t write until I ve found my inner Rose
*/

I m a sequel-fan.
I really never “felt” Star Wars, until right before The Last Jedi: I checked its spoiler reviews and encountered Reylo!
Suddenly the strange feeling I had felt after TFA made sense.
I rushed to the theater and never came back. Until now that is.
*/

I believe JJ did put the option of a love story into The Force Awakens. But he didn’t push it.
The strongest evidence is the care put into making Kylo a Disney prince!
But JJ’s TFA left too much room for interpretation, which caused conflict between fans.
2/thread

So the two years after The Force Awakened a war was fought, between early Reylos and fans of the originals and the prequels.
The Reylos were outnumbered.
No one believed their story that Rey from Jakku would fall for the darkside warrior Kylo Ren.
3/thread

In December 2017 The Last Jedi was released. Critics praised this character driven Star Wars movie, and the Reylos were over the moon!
Rey and Kylo Ren were going bring balance and save the universe by their union of the dark and light.
Until something happened..
4/thread

Fans of the prequels and the originals were furious.
Although once at war with each other, back in 1999 when the first prequel came out, they had now joined forces and they lashed out at the The Last Jedi, with anything that remotely looked like canon.
5/thread

They hit so hard Disney suffered financially, or at least they thought they had.
Or would. Or would in the future. Who knows what they thought.
As a response Disney ghosted Rian Johnson: the same director whose film they had praised and had offered extra work.
6/thread

The Last Jedi haters also took their anger out on Reylos.
But by now they were with many.
The Force Awakens had been the spark but The Last Jedi set fire to the Reylo flame.
For two long years, Reylo fires burned bright on all social media.
7/thread

After The Force Awakened Reylos had been a minority.
But after the Last Jedi the groups were equal in size
And the Reylos used a weapon the antis did not understand:
The narrative.
Which means they were incredibly strong with the Force And they were winning
8/thread

But behind the scenes, in the final months before the release of the Last Jedi, something had happened that would change the fate of all Reylos.
A new man was appointed to direct final movie, of what Reylos considered “their” trilogy
And it would be their downfall.
9/thread

On a quest to bring the final chapter of the the saga back to the fans of the prequels and the originals, the new director forged an allegiance with a mighty foe:
The Emperor
The most powerful misogynist that had ever existed and the arch enemy of the Reylos.
10/thread

For two years the new director worked on his masterpiece:
One film, to rule them all.
One film, to bind them.
And while the world held its breath to the grand final of The Nine, The Emperor said his cooperation required one more thing.
A human sacrifice.
11/thread

The director could smell victory was near.
The fans of the prequels and originals were excited about the upcoming movie and Reylos were looking forward to see their ship sail to its final destination.
The war had stopped
For a brief moment there was peace in the galaxy
12/thread

“What sacrifice, my Lord?” the director asked.
As his mind went over who he could spare from his cast and crew.
The Emperor answered: “Bring me the heart of Kylo Ren.”
The director was shocked.
“But my Lord, it is not mine to give. It belongs to Rey from Jakku.”
13/thread

But the Emperor did not yield.
Months before the movie’s release the director ripped the heart from Kylo Ren’s chest and gave it to the Emperor.
Then he ordered the cast to return to set except for the actor who played Kylo Ren.
His services were no longer needed
14/thread

In the final months the director reshot 30% of all material, and feverishly edited his masterpiece.
But the actors had become quiet. They did what they were obliged to do, but no one talked about the movie or promoted it.
Their faces had become like masks.
15/thread

Rumors grew.
Stories that the director had sacrificed the heart of Kylo Ren reached the Reylos.
And while the fans of the prequels and the sequels uncorked their champagne and toasted to the return of the emperor, the Reylos refused to believe their hero had died.
16/thread

Timezone after timezone, Reylos around the world went to see the premiere of the movie.
And one by one they fell.
Because the rumors were right: In sharp contrast to the happy end, as promised by the promotional material that had been released, Kylo Ren died.
17/thread

The Reylos had been betrayed.
Kylo Ren had been erased from the film, and just like Rey from Jakku – who ended up all alone on a desert planet exactly where she started – the Reylos too, were exactly where they started. But they had learned an important lesson.
18/thread

The Reylos went their separate ways.
Some raised money for
 @AITAF, from the actor who had played Kylo Ren:
Others started
#thankyourianjohnson, the Reylo patron saint
But not one Reylo ever spoke of what they learned.
Because some things are best forgotten.
19/THE END

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

My diaries en erotica are available at my BOOK SHOP

coming soon: new books 

1. Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2020
2. I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW
3. Big Mistress – confessions, columns and sex advice from the other woman
4. Blote Kont- (Dutch)
5. ALL THE THINGS – unpublished work 2010 – 2020 

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready is to follow my 
English blog which I established in 2018:
laurenharteveld.com

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

Twitter:

bridal carry in The Force Awakens, also directed by JJ Abrams:

897c4a72b6bdf959768dca2ee5ab890c

 

My Year with Kat – How one woman can change your business and your LIFE. For free.

51wqFgHu9eL._UY250_8 December 2017

If I have regrets it’s that I didn’t know Kat Loterzo 18 months earlier, which was when I first stepped onto the marketing path.
But maybe all those other freebies, coaches, paid programs, books, and spending hundreds of euros on Facebook and Google ads were necessary to truly appreciate Kat.
Maybe it really takes throwing away one and a half year of your life, and wasting a king’s ransom rebranding your yoga studio, with marginal results – zero if you compare it to the costs I made to get those results – before you listen to the message of someone as LOUD AND OUTSPOKEN as Kat Loterzo. Who says it comes down to one thing.

And one thing only;
You being YOU.
A message so radically different than anything that calls itself marketing, no one will believe it.
Not unless you have hit rock bottom and learned the hard way that being the good girl, doing your studying, mapping out your packages, and knowing your ideal clients “better than they know themselves” (I m not making this up!) – that all those things are going to do absolutely nothing for you.
Let me type that again, Kat style!
Ab.
So.
Lute.
Ly.
NOTHING!
That it will only result in the way I spent last year’s holidays, decluttering my expanding collection of marketing materials. I almost overlooked the few things I had in there from a new coach. Kat Loterzo. 
Or Katrina Ruth, which is her new name. She rebranded herself about a month ago. 
This new coach Kat Loterzo, was just a few A4s in my marketing folder. And at that time she was so new, I didn’t feel I had to make a decision on her.
So I stored them, and more or less forgot about it until I watched a two hour YouTube video called 
2017 Manifestation Training
And I was mesmerized.
In retrospect it was the moment I fell in love with her. Although unwittingly.
One year after giving her my email address, and the Christmas sorting my marketing materials, I can now see how important she has been this year.
And that I ll spend this Christmas confidently clearing out the entire marketing folder, except the material I got from her.
Unsubscribing for all newsletters and leaving all communities, excepts hers.
And Kat will change your life too, before the year is over if:
1. you start feeling rebellious the moment someone tells you something should be done a certain way in order for it to work
2. you either have your own business or you would love to have one
3. you know which activities light you up from the inside
If you score three out of three (no cheating!), then Kat is your woman.
You can join her Facebook page here, or subscribe to her YouTube
Last week I made a few important decisions.
To focus on yoga, to write for yoga, to message for yoga, to make a living out of yoga, and to keep my LS Harteveld writing as a hobby. And had the two most focused, and satisfying weeks of the year. And two clients returning to me.

But it’s not the money that was coming in that made me so happy.
Kat was allowing me to be me. To listen to my heart and to speak my true message. I could feel that energy flowing through me.
Needing little sleep.
Being fully confident.
Then something incredibly sad happened in her Inner Circle. She posted a video about it, as she always shares what’s going on in her life. It was about someone I didn’t know, but I felt for her. She gave us an account, so we could donate money for a gift, if we felt inclined to do so.
I hesitated.
It was not someone I knew and I didn’t have a budget for expenses like this.
Then I said to myself; 
“If I get a new client, before the day is over, I m going to donate to this gift Kat wants to buy for their friend.”
I wrote three different blogposts and hustled my ass off.
When I came home from teaching I found an email from yet another returning customer, taking me up on the offer for the yoga studio.
I just wired the money to Kat.
She earned it.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

My diaries en erotica are available at my BOOK SHOP

coming soon: new books 

1. Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2020
2. I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW
3. Big Mistress – confessions, columns and sex advice from the other woman
4. Blote Kont- (Dutch)
5. ALL THE THINGS – unpublished work 2010 – 2020 

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready is to follow my 
English blog which I established in 2018:
laurenharteveld.com

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

Twitter:

The book, the guy and the filing cabinet

56fce34df43cbc13279d924dc987ea18--painted-file-cabinets-organization-ideas30 August 2017

My mother got me the most unusual gift. 
At least I haven’t heard of anyone ever intentionally acquiring one of these. And it’s not something that ends up in your house without serious intent and commitment!
I ve never heard of anyone putting one of these on their wish list or owning one. Aside from my mother and her parents before her.
I don’t even know of business owners owning them!
And I know a lot of small business owners.

What my mother got me was; a metal four-drawer filing cabinet.
(not the one on the photo – that’s how mine would look if I would invest in painting things so they look nice!) 

She had purged her archives and one of her four metal (grey!!) cabinets had become available. 
There was only one condition: I had to arrange for it to be carried up the stairs of my apartment. I probably have to give my firstborn to ever compensate my friend for that favor but it was worth it.
Since yesterday, I am the proud owner of my very first, metal, fire-resistant filing cabinet.
Which in 2017, a time of collective decluttering, Marie Kondo and minimalism, feels absolutely ancient. 

I felt we were hauling a Second World War relic up the stairs.
I also received about two hundred folders, but you can also store ring binders, photo albums and diaries in there, without putting them in a folder.
“That should be enough to get you started,” my mother said when she gave me the box of folders.

At which the friend who was helping me responded;
“You can now compartmentalize your life into two hundred separate bits.”
How neat.
So no, I m not short on folders. But I can tell you, that cabinet? It’s FULL. Not a 100% but only because I haven’t stored or sorted through still-to-be-processed photoprints, didn’t file my correspondence in there and didn’t include my photo negatives, nor the four kilos of children’s drawings my mother returned to me.
Now that I had a cabinet, I was old enough to file my own drawings.

Although there is too little room to store everything I want, the result is phenomenal.
I can now take Facebook’s memory feature “What happened X years ago” to a whole new level. 

I can show you what I did on this day 26 years ago! 
My diary, my agenda, my photo album, my folder with souvenirs; 
I can see it at a glance!
And I happen to know, that 26 years ago something HUGE happened; I met Benjamin.
I know exactly where it happened, and yet there is almost nothing that reminds me of it…

Someone took a picture of me at the event, and it coincidentally had him on it as well. That’s all that remained.
All other evidence got lost.
I know there was a paper trail surrounding the event and there is also one agenda missing. It’s the one agenda I threw away. Maybe it was in an effort to be normal and to get rid of an agenda as soon as the year had past. Or maybe it was because I knew exactly how important it was and therefor I wanted it destroyed.

Fifteen years later I started to reconstruct our history, in the Dutch novel Mango.
I kept on writing which became in the English book Dutch American Diary.
For six, seven and ultimately eight books, I wrote about Benjamin. And after their release, I created one collective work: 

Het Boek Benjamin (The Book of Benjamin)
For whatever paper trails and agendas I destroyed, whatever log I failed to fill out and whatever diary entries I didn’t make;
In the end the story of Benjamin produced more written evidence than all of the four drawers of my filing cabinet combined.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

My diaries en erotica are available at my BOOK SHOP

coming soon: new books 

1. Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2020
2. I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW
3. Big Mistress – confessions, columns and sex advice from the other woman
4. Blote Kont- (Dutch)
5. ALL THE THINGS – unpublished work 2010 – 2020 

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready is to follow my 
English blog which I established in 2018:
laurenharteveld.com

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

Facebook
Twitter @LSHarteveld

Porn King

James+Deen+Stoya+Canyons+Premieres+Venice+Q49L_LKLhV0l8 August, 2015

Every time someone asks me how my summer is going, I answer:
“I m not going anywhere”. 

No days off or weeks on holiday.
And yet, I have this feeling I m overlooking something, because I feel as if I just got back from a 7 week surfing holiday in the bay of Biscay.
I clearly must be overlooking something…
And then it hit me! Of course! I ve started on my sexual bucket list with Mr.Big and his performance proved to be above any expectations. 

“You’re now dating a porn king,” a friend said. 
It was a compliment that at the same time indicated I shouldn’t be making any plans. Porn kings are not relationship material. Yet the thought rooted in my brain, and developed a whole new line of thinking.
First, let me admit I made a mistake, dropped the ball, neglected my defenses, that sort of thing:
I told Mr.Big I m in love with him, and that I would make him mine the moment he leaves his wife.
Uh oh.  That’s two things you should not do if you want a chance at winning or even surviving dating a player: To show your weak spots AND share your strategy.
But I did mean it.
The sexual bucket list hardly ever came to table with the other men, in the eight years I had been dating. I had started to believe that garden variety sex was all there was.
I used to have so much more potential and Mr.Big reminded me of that.
And to then think that in the beginning I resisted him!
I refused to answer The Call of him and me becoming lovers.
I remember a conversation, very vividly, where I told Biggie I would not date him because he was a “Major League player”, and would break my heart, and so on.
Until I went home and thought;
“Wait a minute!! I have devoted 8 years to my love life and sex life. And then I finally meet a worthy opponent and I say boo hoo hoo, you’ll break my heart?
Then for what have I been training?
If I m not ready to date in the Major League, then which woman is? I can’t possibly let a 20 year old take my place!”
So I went back in, faced Mr. Big, and said:
“Bring. It. On.”
And he did.
And a few months later, we were doing things from my bucket list.
Sure I wanted him to be my man; Who wouldn’t want to put a ring on that.
But when someone said:  “You’re dating a porn king,”
Followed by: “You’re his equal. If you want, he’ll keep you on as a mistress, regardless of his other relationships.”
The friend said not to underestimate the power of the forbidden;
Our affair had the potential to last a lifetime.
And I had never thought of it that way.
I had always approached it as a game, where the last woman standing would win. And me admitting my feelings to him, was not well played, but that our affair could result in a life long tie? I had never considered that.
For days, I kept thinking about it. How were we playing this game? Where were my advantages, and my weaknesses?
I reconsidered the role of his wife.
I had always seen her as my opponent, but now I saw it was a lot more complicated than that. That her presence was actually working for me, not against me. She was keeping him cornered. Sure, Mr.Big could still move around, and enough to fit in a secret mistress.
But nevertheless, his range of motion would be far greater, if he didn’t have his family to attend to.
If she was taken out of the game, he would be set free, and there was no telling for which team he would be playing or in which hoop he would score.
Secondly: what do I want out of this?
Contrary to Mr.Big I am extremely good with relationships. They’re harmonious, cozy, fun. And this goes for all my relationships. I have excellent credentials.
Yet what I want out of this, more than anything, and what Mr.Big is offering me where all the others failed, is a sexual partner in crime to work down that bucket list with.
To make up new things.
Of course I would love to really get to know Mr.Big, but I have a far 
better shot at getting what I want (great sex) if I leave the whole relationship theme out of it.
Porn King.
You’re his equal.
And that’s when it happened. That’s when the whole King and Queen dream came right back in, as the relationship between the biggest porn stars:
Stoya and James Deen.
Just think about it: who else are they going to date, right? Who would hold up?
Who else would be equal?
Suddenly I saw that seeing a relationship with Big as impossible, or him as too difficult, was just as chicken as backing out to date him. I am his sexual equal and have that impressive rep sheet of 100% harmonious relationships. If I m not ready to have a relationship with him, then who is?
I m in it to win it. I m gonna work the whole field, score in the right hoop, and if the court is cleared, and the new match starts, I won’t retreat but step up and say:
Bring. It. On.

<3LSH
An Unexamined Life is Not Worth Living

My diaries en erotica are available at my BOOK SHOP

coming soon: new books 

1. Reboot – a hero’s journey. Diary 2017-2020
2. I M NOT CHANGING MY FUCKING SHOW
3. Big Mistress – confessions, columns and sex advice from the other woman
4. Blote Kont- (Dutch)
5. ALL THE THINGS – unpublished work 2010 – 2020 

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready is to follow my 
English blog which I established in 2018:
laurenharteveld.com

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

Facebook 
Twitter @LSHarteveld