gina laventura

Cheers, my dears and hello my loves,

it’s been a while. Since I last wrote or said these words. Since I blogged.

But here we are and Miss Laventura’s back in the game. So, what’s new?

I guess, it would take a while to recap the last four years that I haven’t blogged, so I try to stick to the main events that might be interesting to you. Moreover, I’d like to set the tone for what I want this refurbished virtual home of mine to look like, be like, feel like in the future.

But let’s start with a quick recap. As you might know, I have published my book Live Loud & Suffer in Silence in 2020 and during the pandemic and the lockdowns I produced videos and wrote blog articles etc. Well, after the lockdown as life started to establish itself again in a “new normal”, just like many of us, I had to work again. Quick note: Contrary to the perception many seem to have, I don’t live from writing books (yet). But I also write for a living, yes, if clients need texts for websites, brochures, you name it. And as an editor, for texts of any kind, books, you name it. And as a project manager in the communications and creative field. So, I’m the one who helps you bring your ideas to life, you know. At least that’s my current focus, but that’s another story. After the pandemic or at least after harsh lockdowns and when you were allowed to work with masks and under certain conditions again, I picked up teaching German to immigrants and refugees again. A socially relevant, beautiful job, but also exhausting. So, I did that for a couple of years and it didn’t leave that much physical or mental capacity to keep consistent with blogging. Or with the endeavour of finishing the German version of my latest book.

I quit that job last autumn and now we’re here. So, that was enough of a rare more or less private insight into my life. Let’s get back to literature and the like, cause here I have some stuff to tell that happened.

So, in 2023 I had my first book reading in the part of the city I grew up in. I presented and performed some texts from Live Loud & Suffer in Silence and also some bits from the German manuscript. An excerpt of that reading can be watched on YouTube.

In the same year I won the first price in a poetry slam.

In 2024 I read one of my texts, actually a shortened version of a #sundaystory, first published here on the blog, at a reading in Cologne.

At the end of 2024 Live Loud & Suffer in Silence got a 5 star review from ReaderViews.

Just several months later it won the Bronze Award in the category Classics Short Stories.

Now, I’m working on a second edition of Live Loud & Suffer in Silence with an edited author bio and a fresh epilogue. And I’m planning to pick up the work on the German version again. So, stay tuned, 2025 should become quite a literary year.

That being said, how does it all feel?

It’s still unbelievable for me that some of my wildest dreams have become true in miniature format already, you know. Since I was fifteen or seventeen I’ve always said “One day I’m going to write a book.”, which turned into “One day I’m going to write and publish a book.”. And one day came. Now I got two books under my belt and hopefully many more to come.

I said “One day I’m going to present my texts on stage.” And I did. “One day I’m going to present my texts on stage and win an award.” And I did. “One day my texts and/or books are going to win an award.” And that just happened.

But this girl dreams big, you know. So let’s see, how much “one day” in the future will have in stock.

But here is the thing: That didn’t fall into my lap. As much as you might believe in manifestation and thoughts materialising (I do too), you need to put your hands, heart, mind to it. Nothing comes from nothing. But acknowledging that I worked for it still is not as easy as calling oneself lucky and blessed. But it doesn’t do justice to the effort and energy my younger self has put into all this and to the effort and energy I’m putting into this right now.

I guess, the past years have changed and altered some of my beliefs, my belief systems, my priorities, my ways of interacting with the world, with myself. And I’m glad they did.

Which leads me to what I want this new, not new place here to be. I realised that there wasn’t a problem with my passion for writing and blogging, I really love writing, why else would I keep on doing it, right? But the biggest issue I faced time and time again was inconsistency. How come?

It’s a bit like this video a friend and fellow writer sent to me, in which a woman says “Your book isn’t shit. Your marketing is.” And I guess, this sums it up quite well for me. But the pressure of platforms and all this “how to reach more people in 5 easy steps” – and mind you, none of these 5 steps are easy if it isn’t your full-time job and you either get paid for it or have a nice and sweetly filled savings account – and “keep your instagram feed curated and tidy” switching to “let’s make it more authentic and random” just put so much pressure on me. “You need to do reels, otherwise the algorithm will make you invisible.” Great! Have you ever produced a reel? I did. Guess how long it takes to have it look the way you want. Exactly. And that’s one reel. Watched within 30 seconds, forgotten after 30 minutes. Call me too much of a business thinker, but I doubt this is a great equation and balance. So, there has always been the discrepany between what I’d like to do and which medium I like to produce it in or with and what the world told me what was liked and wanted. And no, I’m not much of that “let’s get ready together while I’m talking about literature” in a video person, because there are days where I don’t feel like getting in front of a camera without make-up. I have been modelling for nearly 18 years now, that does something with you, okay?! I’m not vain or anything, but I grew up in a generation and culture where the message you wanted to get across got lost in comments about you looking tired, the light being shit or criticism of the choice of lipstick colour. And that, my friends, sucks.

So, I finally started asking different questions. Maybe the right questions. Which isn’t that easy as a former or recovering people pleaser, you know. I wrote for you, always keeping the audience in mind. Always thinking about what I wanted to say and how to make it attractive and nice for you as the audience. Which is what basically every content creator, writer, creative does. And I don’t consider it wrong. But when what the audience might like is dictated by an unreliable algorithm and trends you can’t foresee and every time you think you’ve finally figured it out, you feel like you need to start from scratch because the wind or trend has changed, that is bloody exhausting! And I don’t want writing or sharing my thoughts and ideas feel so exhausting that I like to do it for two weeks and then feel shattered and depleted for the next six months.

And I just started gaining back the conviction that there must be a way to combine what the audience likes with what I like. Because it has mostly been about the audience and what I really liked and loved moved to the background into the shadows. The first “rebellion”, if you want to call it like that, was me producing spoken word poetry videos for instagram that dared to be longer than 3 minutes. And yes, that was punished with a small amount of views, so then I produced one in which I actually criticise the short attention span and even that exceeds four minutes, I think. But how can I press my passion into something digestible? Into something that melts on the tongue easily while you’re waiting for the bus? I can do that, I’m sure. But that’s not as authentic as it could be. And isn’t authenticity the well stretched and overused word of this day and age? “Just be yourself.” – but make it fit into the framework set by big corporations with their own shady intentions.

Especially now, with democracy in danger, book bans and many other things going on in the world and opening our eyes towards mass media manipulation and everything, I decided I wanted to go back to the roots. I am a writer. But only if I write. A writer writes. The word says it. And I like producing audios. So maybe I’ll record more of that. And yes, videos too, but only when I feel like it, only when I’m in the mood. Because I can’t go on bending and stretching myself to break myself and my art into tiny little digestible pieces to appeal to what some trend dictates. I mean, I could. But what also happened the past years was that I was confronted with death several times. And call me morbid, but the confrontation with death in your surrounding tends to give your perception on life a twist. And don’t we all want to live an authentic life? True to ourselves? A life fully lived?

So, welcome to my refurbished and newly decorated virtual home.

This time, I hope, I won’t suck at consistency that much. This time, there won’t be a meticulously planned content plan. I’ll keep the categories like #modelmonday and #freelancefriday etc. at the side, so you can read the old posts. But I might not continue them. Or I might. We’ll see. I want more random ramblings, more articles on topics that really move me and might move you as well. I want more prose, more poetry. I want more me here.

And I hope that’s interesting and inspiring enough for you to stay.

There will be more videos on instagram of course, I’ll also publish on substack, but I want this virtual home here to be the base, the more or less independent platform on which I can publish and offer and share to my own best thinking and on my own terms.

So, feel free to follow me on all the platforms there are, Pinterest, Instagram, Substack, YouTube, but you can also subscribe to this website, so you get notified when something happens on here.

And be sure: This time, a lot will happen.

See you soon. Hopefully.

xxx