Radio DJ Fien Vermeulen will make her debut as a writer on Friday with the book Het Regent Zonnestralen. Vermeulen says she went “very deep” to write the personal book, she says in conversation with NU.nl.
Radio DJ Fien Vermeulen will make her debut as a writer on Friday with the book Het Regent Zonnestralen. Vermeulen says she went “very deep” to write the personal book, she says in conversation with NU.nl.
She had known that Vermeulen likes to write since she was about six years old. “I was already writing stories then and went to the local bookshop in Amersfoort. I thought books were being made there,” said Vermeulen.
When Vermeulen was 21 years old, she became ill. She went to treatment for lymph node cancer. “A lot of people in my area wondered: can’t you write about this?” Writing about her illness while she was still in the middle of her recovery, she said, was too confrontational.
The title Het Regent Zonnestralen was a fluke for Vermeulen. A few months ago she participated in the program Hiphop Stars, for which she had to turn an existing song into a hip-hop number. Vermeulen chose Het Regent Zonnestralen by Acda and De Munnik. “My mother thought the song was so beautiful. Not much later we heard that she had cancer. Then the song took on a completely different meaning for her.”
Idea for book came after participation in Expedition Robinson
Ultimately, Vermeulen stopped writing for a long time. After her participation in Expedition Robinson, it started to itch again. “I was sitting there in the sea and thinking. Then I thought: it can’t be that it is all for nothing? That was the moment when I decided to write a book about my life.”
According to the radio DJ, it took a while before the book actually took shape. “Everything in the book is super personal. To prevent tunnel vision, I worked on it together with someone else. They could keep asking me critical questions,” Vermeulen said.
‘Hope people see that sharing is good’
When Vermeulen herself was ill, she said she often felt very lonely. “Eventually I found out that by sharing my own story I had much more in common with people than I thought in advance,” said the radio DJ.
“I hope people will also see this after reading my book. People need to see that sharing is good. That it’s okay to be open.”
