We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sarah Moncada a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Sarah, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?

I don’t know if I can identify something as ‘the’ kindest thing someone has done for me, but this next one is definitely high up on the list, and it’s very relevant to my creative project, so I thought it’d be a good story.

For my birthday celebration in 2022, I had organised a little party at my house with all my friends, and had invited the closest ones to have dinner all together. We were around seven, the cake had been brought out with all the candles, and my friends began giving me their presents. They had chosen to give me a group present, and bought a bunch of small things. They got me a japanese teapot, as well as a beautiful silver candle holder, and candles to go with it.

Already, I was beyond happy with their gifts.

Then, they pull out one last thing, it’s a piece of paper. It’s not just a piece of paper, I realise. It’s a cardstock, on it, the design of a book cover. There’s the back, the spine and the front printed on it. Making this 2D card feel like I could fold it over manuscript. On the front cover is small cute background with the title of my book, and my name. On the back, there’s a biography, and made-up comments from the NewYork Times saying my writing is amazing. A small picture of myself. And best for last, as publishing company, they wrote ‘Milou Publishing’. Milou is my little rabbit.

I thought it was the sweetest thing I was ever gifted. It was simply so thoughtful. In the bio, they had also wrote that I had published in 2024. I have made it my goal to want to publish by then.

Sarah, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I first started getting into writing when I participated in a writing tournament for my school. I think we were about 6-7 years old. There was this library we could use, hang out in, read in. For some reason I was often there. I was obssessed with reading the series ‘Goosebumps’, I think I read the library’s entire collection.

The library oganised this little tournament to encourage kids towards creative writing. I have no idea what I wrote, it was all on paper and the school kept the stories. I just know that’s what started my love in story writing. And I mean writing, because creating stories started way earlier. It wasn’t through writing but through drawing. I drew stories, on big A4 papers. So much, that I even tried creating comics books, all at a really young age. I think I was 5. I wasn’t a fan of the little boxes of comics books though, I liked the space my big A4s gave me.

I didn’t write that much more until I was 13. It was 2013, and fanfictions were a big thing on Wattpad. I started reading those, and that’s when I decided I would write a book. Until 16, I started at least three-four books. I could never finish them though. It was hard, having to think of a whole storyline to unwind. I also felt self-conscious, that what I wrote was probably not so interesting, that it had probably been written by someone else already. But I never truly gave up.

I’ll always remember that time my English teacher gave us a creative writing assingment. He was a big literary guy, Mr Miller, loved books. In class, he started reading my copy, and then when he gave me it, he said I should be a writer. I still think about him sometimes, and I never forget what he said.

A few things happened next, that led me to my writing project which is still currently ongoing.

In September 2021 in Amsterdam, I had just spent my summer reading many books, one in particular had touched me in a deep way. It was decided, I was going to write a book, and I was going to think out a plot before I started writing this time. So I did that, I wrote down the different topics I wanted in my book, a storyline, the different characters in detail, their relationships with one another, the roles I wanted them to have and their different meanings. And then I started writing.

At the time, I was starting my master’s degree in International Development Studies at the University of Amsterdam. I didn’t have much classes, and the Netherlands had just announced it was going to have a second lockdown that winter. So I was at home, writing every night. I was going through a difficult period of my life mentally, and so that’s all I did. I almost wrote the whole thing in two months.

In January, I started having to focus on writing my thesis, and so I put the writing my book aside. Since then, I have read more elaborate books than I ever have. Books that have very niche genres, and I have been editing my own book, with all this extra information from reading these books with totally different writing styles than I had read before. There’s this one book by Henry Miller, called Sexus, that truly impacted my perspective on writing. This book really helped me with asserting myself as a writer. It’s a fictive autobiography, and so in it Henry Miller depicts his struggle of being a writer who has not published yet. How challenging it is to feel legitimate enough to write, that what we write has value, adds to what has already been made. His book changed my whole perspective. Now I know, that whether my books receive recognition or not, are liked by many or not, it doesn’t matter. I write for myself, I write because I love to write, and what I do will always be different from what someone else does. And so I am no longer afraid to write what I want to write.

Many things started happening in my personal life however, and I strated finding it difficult to focus on editing my book. This April 2023, I decided to go to an artist residency (Mauser Foundation in Costa Rica) with my sole goal being to finish editing my whole book. I met three amazing women there, and the moment spent there was more abount new connection and simple and naive laughter and conversations under beautiful sunsets than the tough work of editing a manuscript of currently 200,000 words.

It’s now the end of 2023, and I am determined to finish editing my book. I have started a new master degree in Art Market in Paris, after a Bachelor and Master in Politics, I have decided to go for the things I have always loved: Art, culture, creation. I am not yet a published writer, but I intend to write for the rest of my life, as my writing style gorws every day, as well as the stories I want to tell.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

In my studies in Political Science, I have obviously studied a lot of different theories, and have seen many empirical cases that deal with very real socio-economic issues. I have specifically specialised in post-colonial studies. As a writer, at first I found it difficult to write about certain topics that I can relate to, when I learn about such more paramount issues in the world. However, when one writes fiction, one ends up writing about what they know, because that’s what’s most authentic. At least this is how I write. The way I describe emotions, sensations, scenes, it’s all based on my own experiences, on the experiences of those close to me. To synthesise the problem I am trying to explain: I found it diffuclt to write about certain topics that felt less important on a bigger societal scale, than others.

A a white young woman, who grew up in a middle class home, I feel stupid writing about topics that concern me, or my social-class, or my generation, knowing about the political, social, economic issues of other (marginalised) groups. But I also would not feel comfortable writing fiction from a perspective I cannot claim to have lived.

This was a struggle of mine in the back of my head as I was first writing my current literary work.

Then I read two books amongst others, that allowed me to resolve this internal dilemma I was having. I read Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Paradais by Fernanda Melchor.

The realities of these two authors are politically specific, and present in their books. Milan Kundera was Chzeck, and so the political context of his country heavily influenced in his books. Fernanda Melchor, a Mexican writer, also writes about Mexico and the social dynamics of the country. These two books’ story lines are fictive, yet they introduced social and political contexts very sophisticatedly. These two books, amongst so many others.

The reason my editing process has taken time, is exaclty because I too, want to insert certain social and political dynamics in my book. I will not write about grievances I have not experienced, but I realised I can delve into the knowledge I have gained during my studies on politics and on social issues, through this personal fictional format that is my writing. That though I grew in Brussels, in a very comfortable situation, and have had priviledges such as affording to study, affording to live inside city centres, it is exactly for these reasons, that I can write too about social and political dynamics that are important, through fiction. And of course if as a write, this isn’t something one is interested in doing, that is legitimate. Books do not have to be social or politucal, but I felt I had to, and I wanted to.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

For me, when I write scenes, sometimes I feel like I wrote something that explains everything I am, and everything I believe life is to be. I feel like I was able to describe a situation, that I thought was so weirdly personal, but that in the end, I could portray poetically, simply, and that I could share. For me it’s really this aspect of sharing what I feel, what I see, what I learn, and think is important, with others. But sharing it not by saying it, sharing it almost like I am allowing someone else to live it too.

If I know that someone reading what I wrote, feels what I was feeling, I have won at whatever it is I am doing.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: sarahmoncada_
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-moncada-1243a81a9/?originalSubdomain=fr