I remember being 12 and thinking “it would be amazing to make a manga!”, right after watching the anime “Bakuman”, which tells the story of two mangaka (manga artists and creators). Dreaming is free, people say, and it really is, and it does you good. If it were not for those childhood dreams, I probably would not have broken away from what is expected of a young Black kid from the outskirts.
Today I am going to step away from games a little and talk more about myself and my journey, picking up texts I started in the first issue of this newsletter. You do not need to go back and read everything; it is much better to focus on what comes next. This will be a talk about persistence, dreams, and both abandoning and achieving them. I hope it inspires you, young writer, or you, who right now is between one dream and another, between reality and fiction.
Every journey is a bit lonely; anyone living one knows it. The photo above is from a time when I cared more about writing than about making money, and it is actually nice to remember that, to think there really was a calmer time. I was exploring the Parnaíba Delta when I found a landscape that looked like the ones in my stories, and I immediately asked my girlfriend to take this photo. It was when I saw the photo, the result, that I made a very serious decision: I needed to relaunch my first book, my first ebook, “Contos de Anayr: O deserto”.
You know, our “first” anything is never good enough, and relaunching first things… is chaotic! You visit a past self you forgot existed, feelings, goals, and you even remember the reason behind every line. And it is funny how with every letter I forced myself to keep going, always thinking “this will not make me any money, but it will be nice if someone reads it.” Someone read it, and someone thought it was nice. That was enough.
Dreams are fragments of a perfect reality; we only need those little pieces to be able to bear the real world. Fighting for them matters, but what happens when, even after years and years of trying, they do not come true?
Cristais de Atlântida and Despertar Arcano
I published Contos de Anayr in 2018 and relaunched a revised, expanded version in 2020, and despite the criticism I kept writing in the world of Anayr until 2022, almost in secret. Few people know, but I have at least 4 more books set in Anayr, all in revision. In revision since 2019. I will probably forget about them at some point.
Now let us go back a little, actually… a lot. 11 years ago. I was 15 when Cristais de Atlântida (Crystals of Atlantis) was born. At first it was an idea I talked about with one or two friends while walking to school. Then it became one of those simple stories on sites like Wattpad. Soon I realized it was too big a story for me to write alone, so I went where every young person went to ask strangers for help in 2013. Facebook.
Browsing Facebook in 2013, I found two friends. One of them stayed with the idea for a short time and soon gave up, but the other, whom I will call just Amy, holds to this day 50% of all rights to Cristais de Atlântida and any derivative works that have come or may come from it. And she earned it. If it were not for Amy, I probably would not be the writer I am today. She was one of the first people to believe in me and help me make a dream come true. The dream of seeing people read a book of mine.
Having someone help you make your dream come true does not guarantee it will happen. In fact, it cuts the chances in half, because now your dream depends on two people. Unfortunately, that is how I see it.
Cristais de Atlântida was about a young prince of a kingdom isolated from the rest of the world. It was about Mihael, who falls in love with a young woman who washes up on the shores of Atlantis by accident and cannot stay there, because her presence weakens the crystals that keep alive the natural glory surrounding the golden kingdom.
What would you be capable of doing for the one you love?
When we finished publishing Cristais de Atlântida on a site similar to Wattpad, we deleted everything from there, put it in a document, organized the ideas, rewrote passages, and after that… well… that was it. The idea is there. Stored away, isolated, maybe dead.
Years later we went back to work, Amy and I again, and for a moment it seemed fine to start a new project, this time called “Despertar Arcano” (Arcane Awakening). It was a sort of sequel to Cristais de Atlântida, set in the present day, with several points of view, enigmatic characters, quite an adventure, romance, battles, magic and so on.
And suddenly… silence. We stopped again. And here I am, and there is Amy. Nobody talks about it anymore.
Have you noticed? Talking about abandoned dreams is a nightmare. It is bad to admit you abandoned something you fought for every single day. It hurts to realize that all the time you put in did not produce anything relevant, anything everyone could see and admire. But do you know what this whole journey gave me? A career.
Abandoned dreams are nothing more than the stones on the road to dreams that come true. Realizing that is hard.
MKS: Where It All Began
Remember how at the beginning I talked about being 12 and thinking “it would be amazing to make a manga!”? That did not end at 12. In fact, I would say it is a journey that will never truly end.
I met Meta and Sirouxis when I was 14, and I will call them that here, Meta and Sirouxis, because that is how we created MKS (Meta, Kael, Sirouxis). I had just arrived in a new city, had no friends, was at a new school, and had dreams, ambitions and very little sense of things.
The first time I saw Meta, he was sitting at his desk in class, drawing in a notebook. I remember looking at it and asking “Hey, did you draw that?”. He said yes, and I went: “Seriously?”. It was unbelievable. He drew like nobody else. He and Sirouxis were already friends; they had studied together their whole lives, and I was just a weird new kid. Even so, that same month, at a chess tournament, we got closer. Shortly after, I came up with a proposal: Let us make comics? What do you think?
You have no idea how many adventures that led to.
We tried, tried and tried until we could not take it anymore. We spent at least 4 years trying to make something even remotely good: I wrote, Meta drew and Sirouxis colored digitally. There were so many attempts, drafts, ideas, heroes, adventures, villains and headaches that at some point we looked at each other and said: “Okay, it did not work this time. Maybe we are too young to see something we are missing.”
When you reach 17 or 18, you do not have much sense of things, and still you have to make decisions that will affect your whole life. I chose physics. Sirouxis chose a chemistry bachelor’s degree and Meta also chose chemistry, but teaching. Do you know how many times we talked about comics during college? Not once.
MKS still existed: the WhatsApp group, the rare meetups, the online gaming nights… but what about the dreams? I kept asking myself: what now? What about all those dreams? All those ideas? What do I do with them? Do they think the same thing?
Remember, abandoned dreams are nothing more than the stones on the road to dreams that come true.
I wrote comic scripts professionally for the first time in 2020, and since then it has probably been the branch of my profession that has worked the most and earned me the most money. I have written for Brazilian, North American and Asian clients, and those jobs helped me move out and live on my own.
I still write comic scripts today; in fact, I have to go review one in a bit. I cannot speak for Meta or Sirouxis, but I managed to make that dream come true. Unfortunately it does not taste as sweet as it would with my friends by my side, but if it were not for them, I would not have gone this far.
Is it worth persisting?
Yes, it always is. If it were not for my failures with short stories, books, comics and college degrees, I would never be making a living from writing the way I do today. I would not be writing scripts for games, comics and even documentaries. I would not have the comfort of working from home for the world, or even the ease of dealing with my inner demons.
Making mistakes is part of progress.
And although I hate this somewhat “coach” stance I sometimes take on the internet, I like it when a text of mine manages to pass on a positive feeling to someone, and I hope this one was a hug to those who try, try and try and think life is just trying and never getting there.
Let me tell you something: I gave up on writing 3 times over the years. The first time when I started college, the second time when I dropped out and went to make game art, and the third time when I dropped my second degree (damn journalism) to try to make a living from games. All three times I learned something new, made something new and gained new skills.
The first time I buried myself in studying, and reading was my refuge. When I had time, I let all the ideas out and Contos de Anayr was born. The second time I understood that game art was not my thing, but that I could find my thing in that ocean of possibilities, and I did. The third time I discovered there was a role beyond game writing, beyond game design: the role of a narrative designer.
If I had not given up a few times, I would not have the strength to persist this much. Some stones on this road can be sharp, but if you pause, take a deep breath and remember where you are going, everything gets easier.
Remember: if you do not know where you are going, any road will get you there.
If you got the reference, let me know in the comments!
See you, explorers!
Originally published in Prosa & Pixel, on Substack. See it on Substack · Subscribe to Prosa & Pixel · All issues