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The Daring Author
The Daring Author
The Power of Play - Breaking Through Creative Blocks
Have you ever felt like you're wearing a mask when you share content online? That feeling of disconnection between who you really are and what you allow yourself to express publicly can be suffocating for creatives.
My recent trip to Japan unexpectedly transformed my approach to creative expression and personal branding. The moment I stepped off the plane, I felt a surge of feminine energy, playfulness, and freedom that I hadn't realized was missing from my daily life. This awakening made me confront an uncomfortable truth: I had completely lost my authentic voice online.
As writers, we excel at creating characters and speaking through their voices. We can pour our deepest thoughts and desires into fictional personas while keeping our true selves safely hidden. I discovered I'd been doing exactly this—finding it easy to post content for my pen names and business accounts while remaining paralyzed when it came to sharing my personal thoughts. The fear of judgment had effectively silenced me.
What's been most liberating is realizing that most of my fears about others' judgments were simply projections of my own insecurities. When I finally gathered the courage to share unfiltered thoughts without expectations of validation, something magical happened—people connected with my words in ways I never anticipated. The authenticity created bridges where careful curation had built walls.
This experience has completely transformed how I approach personal branding as an author. Bringing readers into your thought process, sharing the emotional journey of creation, and expressing genuine opinions creates meaningful connections that marketing tactics simply can't replicate. Your unique voice is the most powerful tool you have—are you ready to use it without apology?
Curious about how stepping into your authentic voice might transform your creative journey? Subscribe to The Daring Author podcast and join me as we explore the intersection of authenticity, creativity, and personal branding. What would you create if you weren't afraid of being judged?
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Website: https://thedaringpress.com/
hello and welcome back to another chapter of the daring author podcast. Now I have so much to share. There has been something that has switched within my life. So I have recently been on a holiday to japan. Now, I haven't been to japan before and as soon as I got off the plane I just felt my feminine energy come alive, that playfulness, that just urge to explore, to have fun, to let go and just play and be and experience everything. And it was such a beautiful experience, something that I had been craving a lot and didn't realize it until I actually stepped away from work and actually went away.
Speaker 1:And it really annoys me that it takes going away on holiday to actually stop, to rest. Waiting for the weekends, waiting for oh, I'll rest when this happens and that happens. And what I've taken from this trip and brought back into my life now is that playfulness and that you know, just to let go and have fun, to experience every little thing and to just. I think it's like when I come back I was like, okay, I'm going to be a tourist in my own city, like I'm going to go and explore and go see new things and just experience life and live now, and that playful energy, really helped me to ground, to not take life so seriously, to let go, and I'm really stepping into just sharing my thoughts, to expressing myself through that, and what it has opened up has been this huge thing that I didn't even realize, that I felt blocked and I'd lost my voice online. So, as writers, we find it really easy to be our characters, to create our characters, and it's like a mask, right, because parts of us and what we experience and what we see and what we consume is always in our characters Now. So I find it really easy and you do too, probably to create these characters and to create who they are, right, from their perspective, right. But what I found was I had lost my online voice and I didn't know how to share my own personal thoughts and what I was thinking and sharing my thoughts about life and what I'm experiencing and whatever comes through me.
Speaker 1:I journal a lot. Journaling has been a huge part in my life. I always share my thoughts and that's the way I express myself and why I became a writer back in the day and why I continue to write. But I just felt this real block of actually sharing something on my profile on Instagram. So I find it easy to share on my other pen names where it's talking about a book or whatever it is. But when it comes to my own personal thoughts and personal brand is what I've come to realize I just felt very blocked because I was worried about, oh, what would this person think? Or, you know, I can't write that or say that, because what if somebody thinks this of me and that? And it just really blocked me. It's like, okay, just don't share anything.
Speaker 1:So I didn't post anything for a very, very long time on a profile which is every part of me. So I run multiple businesses, I write in different pen names, I am a multi-passionate entrepreneur, creative, and I have lots of different parts that make me me right. And I always was like, okay, I can only write, I can only share this on this profile, I can only share. And it was like creating masks and something that I've done my whole life is creating masks and putting that identity on. Okay, I can share it in this profile because that's me there, and then this other profile that's me there and it's kind of like in characters, how we, how we do that, and be like, okay, I'm going to share this deep part of me that no one even knows, but it's in my character's voice, so no one will even know that it's part of me and my deep and darkest desires, thoughts, whatever I want to express and we do that a lot and you probably will be like, holy shit, I did not even realize that until I just expressed that, right. So I felt like I was very like okay, I can only be this here and that there, but I never had a space, apart from my journal and my personal journal, where I could just share what's on my mind and something that has unlocked.
Speaker 1:Since being in Japan and feeling that playfulness and experiencing that, I've come back and been like I want to share more, I want to have a profile and I thought, oh, I need to create a new profile where it's my real name and this is who I am, and it's like why can't I do this on this profile? That sort of is that already? But then it was the thoughts of oh, what would this person think? And oh, no, I can't write that because my mom's on that account or my dad's on that account or this person in the life that doesn't really understand this side of me and I really had to let go of all those layers and just be like who gives a fuck, like who cares.
Speaker 1:What I'm thinking isn't necessarily the truth of what they're thinking. I can't say that this person thinks this, because it's probably not even true. That's just my ego coming alive and being like, oh, we're scared and oh no, there's fear there that we can't do this because afraid of what this person might be thinking. And if we do that and if we hold ourself back in that it's such a disservice to yourself, it's such a disservice to what you can share, what you can do, what you can expand on. If we hold ourself back and then we look in a year's time and 12 years time or when we're on our deathbed and we're like, oh, I wish, I wish I did this more, or wish I experienced life more, or I wish I did this more, and to think of that and not do think and I'm afraid to actually share, like no, I just I don't want that and it's scary, like this takes a lot for me to put myself out there, for me to share a lot more and I want to.
Speaker 1:I want to just share me like my personal brand and your personal brand, who you are in multiple facets of your life and being creative. It was like we have multiple passions, we have multiple stories that we write, we write in multiple genres. We, you know, we have different things going on and I want to just share what's on my mind. I want to share my thoughts around particular topics that come up like this, like this is exactly, and what the podcast is going to be from now on, and what has been happening is I don't want to talk from a script, I don't want to give you stuff that's just not authentic to me and my thoughts on that. I really want to just share what's on my heart, and I opened up this Zoom link today I keep record Didn't even know what I was going to talk about, but I was just like, okay, let's go and that's what I want to share.
Speaker 1:That's that's, and do you know what? That's? What's going to connect a lot more, because it's like it's my thoughts, it's my opinion on something and it you know it might connect with you, it might not, but it doesn't matter in the sense that it's a way for me to express myself and I know, as us, as writers, like we write to express our thoughts, we write to connect with others. We write people's stories that can't be written so that others can experience that and feel and learn and grow. And just yeah, there's so much there, there's so much power there and what has opened up for me.
Speaker 1:I have a notes section on my phone now and I just share, I just write down thoughts like um, there I'm just reading from now, like there is a thing on boundaries that I wanted to share and my thoughts around that. And I tell you, like when the words come out, and it's like when you're writing a book, right, and the words just come out and then you sit back and you're like where the hell did that come from? It was out of this world, like it was like I didn't even know. It was like you're looking down on yourself writing that or not even, like it's just comes out of you out of nowhere and you're just like, oh, my god, and you know how empowering that felt to just write it out. And I've written stuff on guilt and play, what I was talking about before and my experience on that and like living in the now and like there is so much and it feels so good to find that voice again and it's just for me, like I think it's not for anyone else.
Speaker 1:And when I come from this perspective and for an example, I wrote a post the other day that was on um, on play, what we're talking about before and I just wanted to express myself, I put up a photo, I wrote, I literally copied my notes, what I wrote down and pasted it in, and I was like, and then I posted them, like, oh, that felt good, just to share that, to experience that, to express that, and I didn't expect anything. I'm like oh, you know, I will, it will feel real or it will be accepted. When somebody hits, like, when somebody comments, I'm like, nah, I'm just posting it and whatever comes from that, like, there's no expectations on it, it's just sharing parts of me and expressing myself in that way. And I don't care, I'm taking away that, like, oh, I need to get this many likes or I need to get this, and really taking away that expectation. And you know what magic happened? It resonated with so many people. I got so many comments of like oh, yes, I feel this, or I resonate with this, and that's the purpose of it.
Speaker 1:And I feel like when we're building personal brands, it's really about like thoughts for me and this is my experience moving forward and some people will tell you oh no, don't share, don't share your life on there, don't share this, don't share that. But I think, for me as a personal brand, and what I'm stepping into and I'm going to share more on this as it develops, because obviously it's quite a new aspect and what's been holding me back over the years is that fear of judgment and what I'm stepping into now is just sharing my thought and that is like personal brand, in a way of like sharing your thoughts on something and if you're building something bigger than just your writing, or just like a place for people to connect with you and who you are and sharing your thoughts and opinions, and it doesn't have to be negative, it doesn't have to be like whatever comes through, you like sharing more of that. And even if you think about marketing and you think about sharing your book and sometimes we get blocks of like oh, I don't even know what to share as part of this book it's sort of like that in a way of like taking parts of the book and sharing it, sharing the quotes, sharing those really emotional scenes, and even when you're writing them before you even published it. Like, sharing that and being like this is like sharing the experience of it, of like, oh, I'm writing this scene and it's take like it is taking me down this path and this is how I feel about it, and like, and that deep connection to it and why you're doing it and bringing people into that. That's that connection point of like, oh, she's a real person, there's a real author behind this and, oh, I really want to read this because it feels like she is so connected to it and it's like I want to read that, I need to, I need to read that and see like you're building that and building that interest in it as well.
Speaker 1:So it comes into that, and that's what I really want to share is like, don't be afraid to just share your thoughts, share your words. I think that's a huge thing for us of sharing your words. Don't be afraid of it. Don't be afraid to share quotes, to share scenes, to share things that are happening while you're writing, to take people behind the scenes of that. You don't have to take people behind the scenes and be like, oh, this is what I'm doing every second of the day. It's not about that. It's really about the experience and who you are and connecting to that personal part of you and a part of that personal brand. So that's what I want to share. That is what is on my mind today, and what I will leave you with is just be you, share you, experience you and those that connect with you will connect with you. Those that don't will just scroll past, and it doesn't even matter. What matters is you loving yourself, you experiencing yourself and sharing what is on your heart and what is on your mind.