83. The Audacious Choice: Leaving Everything Behind to Write Your Truth with Anne Boyd

Join me in this conversation with Anne Boyd, author of the viral Substack newsletter "Audacious Women Creative Lives" and former literature professor who made a dramatic life transformation at 52.

In this powerful episode, Anne shares her journey from academic burnout to creative freedom, revealing how autoimmune disease, divorce, empty nest syndrome, and grief catalyzed her decision to "burn her whole life to the ground" and start over.

Topics Covered:

• Midlife career transitions and reinvention
• Leaving academia for full-time writing
• Overcoming creative blocks and writer's block
• The connection between trauma, healing, and creativity
• Writing process insights from completing a Master's in Creative Writing
• Building a thriving Substack community of 10,000+ subscribers
• Balancing motherhood with creative ambitions
• Novel writing techniques and revision strategies
• The mind-body connection in creative work

Perfect for: Women writers, midlife career changers, aspiring novelists, memoir writers, creative entrepreneurs, anyone struggling with writer's block, mothers rediscovering their identity, and writers interested in the deeper psychological aspects of creativity.

🎙️Find more on Anne Boyd at her Substack

🎙️Find more on Nicole Meier at her Substack

Transcript

THE WHOLE WRITER EP 83 - With Writer Anne Boyd

[00:00:00] Anne Boyd: What ended up happening really was I just burned my whole life to the ground and had to start over and I wanted to start over. I wanted to start over almost from scratch to figure out what was important to me. 'cause I didn't know anymore. I've been living this life and playing these various roles, and even living in a city where I wasn't sure how I got there anymore.

[00:00:20] Anne Boyd: And so I realized that I had been putting my own life unfold while I was raising her. It was almost like a. I had to be an adolescent again and go out into the world and figure out who I was all over again.

[00:00:40] Nicole Meier: Welcome to the whole writer. A place where we talk about what it means to show up as a writer, not just a better writer or a more productive writer or a published writer, but a whole one, someone who's grounded in their voice. In their community, in their creative path, even when the world tells them to hustle, compare, or conform.

[00:01:01] Nicole Meier: I'm Nicole Meier, a multi published author and book coach who believes that nurturing the person behind the page is just as important as refining the words on it. Each week we'll explore the terrain of writing life with honesty, warmth, and practical wisdom, creating space for you to write from a place of wholeness rather than depletion.

[00:01:21] Nicole Meier: Whether you're drafting your first manuscript or publishing your fifth book, you'll find conversation and companionship for the journey here. So settle in, bring your questions and your curiosity, and let's discover what it means to write and live with authenticity and purpose. Welcome on in listeners.

[00:01:43] Nicole Meier: I'm so pleased to have my guest, Anne Boyd here today. And if you are a female creator, specifically a writer, this episode is definitely for you. Before we welcome Anne in, I wanted to share a little bit about her. So Anne Boyd is the author of the Viral Substack Newsletter, audacious Women Creative Lives.

[00:02:03] Nicole Meier: She's just completed a master's in creative writing for fiction at the University of Manchester. She is now working toward her lifelong dream of publishing a novel while coaching writers and hosting retreats. She's also the author or editor of seven books from her 23 year career as a literature professor.

[00:02:23] Nicole Meier: She wrote two critically acclaimed books published by WW Norton, Constance Fenamore Wilson. Portrait of a Lady Novelist was reviewed on the cover of the New York Times book review and named one of the best 10 books of the year by the Chicago Tribune. Her next book, Meg Jo, Beth, Amy. The story of Little Women and Why it Still Matters was an indie bestseller and received rave reviews.

[00:02:48] Nicole Meier: It was chosen as one of the best books of the year by Library Journal, the Daily Mail, and a Mighty Girl. Anne received four National Endowment for the Humanities Awards, two for public scholarship. She has also appeared on N-P-R-B-B-C radio and CBS Sunday morning and has bylines in the Washington Post literary hub and elsewhere.

[00:03:10] Nicole Meier: Welcome, Anne. Thank you. Thank you for having me, Nicole. That was so fun to read your bio because you have such a rich career. And I first was attracted to you on Substack because you have this beautiful newsletter, I think with a community of over 10,000 people. It is all about supporting creative women, but it's fun to read your bio, to see just the rich layers and all the things that you've done.

[00:03:37] Nicole Meier: Well, 

[00:03:37] Anne Boyd: thank you. I appreciate that. I feel like I am in my second life at a former life, and now I'm doing a 

[00:03:43] Nicole Meier: second one. That makes a lot of sense, and I think as a writer, people are probably nodding along as they're listening because when we do come to our writer selves or our creative selves, we do feel like it's opening up a whole new chapter, pardon the pun, but it's really true.

[00:03:58] Anne Boyd: Yes. I've used that metaphor myself many times. Starting the chapter. Yes. 

[00:04:04] Nicole Meier: Okay. Well, speaking of changes and new chapters, I do have my first question for you. So I know that you made a dramatic life change at 52. You left academia to become a full-time writer in travel. So my question for you is, is there a moment or realization that made you decide it was time to take that leap?

[00:04:25] Nicole Meier: I also wanna know, did you overcome certain fears about doing that? 

[00:04:29] Anne Boyd: Yes. Well, huge fears, and it wasn't one moment, but a series of moments, a cascade of things that happened, I guess straws that were getting piled up and one finally broke the camel's back. They say, I had been unsettled in my career and I was.

[00:04:49] Anne Boyd: Disenchanted with academia, with academic writing in particular, but also my institution was not supporting me and it became very difficult for me to envision a future in that career path. And so I have been for years, dreaming of being a full-time writer and, and I was writing a nonfiction. I was, I wrote a biography.

[00:05:13] Anne Boyd: I wrote a book about little women, which is sort of a biography of a book. And I was very involved in the biographies international organization on their board, and I kind of saw that as my ticket out, and I tried that route. It's very difficult to support yourself full-time as a writer. And I knew that what's gonna be difficult, and I took a book coaching class and I was learning that I really had a lot of skills that were marketable that you just, when you're stuck in academia, you feel stuck.

[00:05:43] Anne Boyd: You just feel stuck. If you're in the humanities, you feel like your skills aren't really marketable outside. It's like your business professor or something. So it was very difficult for me to envision making the transition and it was over series years. I took that book coaching course and I published my own books and went on book tours and was at festivals, meeting other writers and learning about the kind of advances that they would make and sort of trying to figure this out.

[00:06:11] Anne Boyd: And then the pandemic came along. And meanwhile I was already getting very ill. I had an autoimmune disorder called manure's disease. Um, fluid collects in your inner ear and you get tinnitus and you can't hear very well, and then you also get vertigo. And so vertigo, that's particular debilitating. I didn't know that.

[00:06:34] Anne Boyd: Wow. Yeah. And all they would say is that it's caused by stress and I've learned that. That's not an answer at all as to why this is happening to you. Stress itself is another symptom, and Western medicine does not know how to treat autoimmune disorders. They only wanted to gimme steroids or even do some surgical procedure in my ear.

[00:06:54] Anne Boyd: The steroids didn't work or they made me more sick. It's not gonna let them go into my ear with some just, oh my gosh. I was trying all things to get better supplements and diets and all the things, and what I. Kind of zeroed in on the fact that there was too much stress in my life and I was coming from my work, and then during the pandemic, I wasn't going to campus anymore.

[00:07:16] Anne Boyd: The stress of my life reduced considerably except for I discovered during the pandemic that under the pressure cooker of being at home 24 7, that a lot of the stress was coming from my marriage as well. I'm also anticipating the fact that my daughter's gonna be leaving for college soon. So, you know, there's a series of things happening that make you think that, well, it's not just that I don't wanna be a professor anymore, it's that my whole life doesn't make sense.

[00:07:42] Anne Boyd: And I got very sick during the pandemic. Very, very sick. And so I had to go through this whole process of trying to de-stress my life and doing all kinds of meditation and journaling and therapy, and it really helped a lot to the extent that I was able. September, 2022 to start traveling full time. I just was moving around.

[00:08:01] Anne Boyd: We sold our house. I left my marriage when my daughter went off to college and I began traveling because I didn't know where I wanted to live yet. And the other thing that happened during the pandemic in 2021 was that my half brother died of my cancer. Oh my gosh. Yes. And I was there with him when he died and that night.

[00:08:24] Anne Boyd: I decided I was going to Europe. All the other things were kind of already sort of in motion, but I didn't know what I was gonna do yet. And then I just decided I'm going back to Europe. And then I had spent time in Europe when I was younger and felt more myself during those times. And also in later trips, I would start taking my daughter when she was old enough, I started taking her over with me for the summers and I would teach in some study abroad programs.

[00:08:47] Anne Boyd: And so I, there's a lot of things, so it's not a simple answer, but. That's how it all kind of started. What ended up happening really was I just burned my whole life to the ground and had to start over and I wanted to start over. I wanted to start over almost from scratch to figure out what was important to me.

[00:09:07] Anne Boyd: 'cause I didn't know anymore. I've been living this life and playing these various roles, and even living in a city where I wasn't sure how I got there anymore, and things had just happened along the way, but I felt like I'd never actually chosen any of that except for having a daughter. That was always the most important thing.

[00:09:24] Anne Boyd: And then when she was off to college, suddenly nothing else made sense. So yeah, I think that period of life was a huge transition for a lot of women and your children. We've even, you've been funneling all of your life force into them, really. And so I realized that I had been putting my own life hold while I was raising her.

[00:09:48] Anne Boyd: It was almost like. I had to be an adolescent again and go out into the world and figure out who I was all over again. Yeah. 

[00:09:56] Nicole Meier: I just love that you're sharing that because I know so many people listening, myself included, are nodding along. We can relate to that on so many levels, whether you are a parent or not, whether you're entering midlife or not.

[00:10:11] Nicole Meier: There are those moments where you say, I've lost myself. But what I love that you mentioned is that. You had the foresight or enough clarity to say, where do I feel most like myself? And that really resonates with me because when all else is lost, that is something that's helpful to say. Where do I feel most like myself?

[00:10:33] Nicole Meier: And you had a little inkling. 

[00:10:35] Anne Boyd: I didn't have a pinpoint on the map though. I had a concept continent. Yeah. So I was like, you know, so I was going to. Spent time in France. I spent time in Germany. I spent time in Italy and Sicily and in the uk, in Scotland, England in particular. And I really fell in love with Scotland, but ultimately found myself feeling most of home in the uk, Scotland, and England.

[00:11:00] Anne Boyd: And that was a whole process, though I left three years ago. That was a huge life change. It was huge. It was major and it really was a big, it was like a hiatus from my life. I just had to pause. But the time that I was traveling, I didn't know what I was gonna do yet. I didn't know who I was, but I always knew that being a writer was part of it.

[00:11:23] Anne Boyd: That desire was still there and specifically a creative writer, but I didn't know how to do that. It's kind of an interesting story actually, how I decided to. Become a creative writer. Focus on that was, I really wanted to always do it, but I always, I was always afraid. I always felt like it was something that some people just had and the rest of us didn't, or I wasn't sure how to learn how to do it, and I'd read all the craft books and everything, but it's just so much advice and so overwhelming.

[00:11:55] Anne Boyd: So I was writing a memoir actually while I was traveling, and I also decided I wanted to stay in the uk and I had tried to apply for a visa. As a writer. Writer, and it's the complicated story basically, because I wrote nonfiction, I wasn't eligible. You're kidding. I would be eligible. Why is that? It's because the global talent visa is for people in many different fields, including writers.

[00:12:21] Anne Boyd: Writers are endorsed by the Arts Council. And the Arts Council does not consider nonfiction writers. Artists, even Memoirists, are not considered artists. They actually told me because I did submit an application because there was no one else to submit to, and I met all the criteria. I had all the evidence that they had asked for, for my publication of my book about little women, and they wrote back to me and said, you don't write literature.

[00:12:46] Anne Boyd: You write about literature. 

[00:12:48] Nicole Meier: Wow. We could do a whole podcast just on that, 

[00:12:52] Anne Boyd: unpacking that. I mean, just imagine this is the culmination of your life's work and you hear this, and I, all of my hope for writing on this, and I felt like the universe was telling me in, in kind of a brutal way, but the universe is telling me, maybe now it's time you write that note.

[00:13:08] Anne Boyd: Mm. Beautiful realization. Yeah. So I decided I would. Find myself some time to stay in the UK as a student and do a Master's of Creative Writing. And I did that at the University of Manchester because I wanted to study with Jeanette Winterson. She teaches there and she's an incredible writer. And then while I was there, they hired Sarah Hall, who's amazing and also studied with Beth Underwood and she's incredible.

[00:13:35] Anne Boyd: And it just was really, it was way more than I ever could have expected. And. I learned so, so much. It flew by. The classes flew by, and I've just turned in my dissertation today. Oh, congratulations. Yes, I know. It's so wonderful. I hit submit just today. You know the dissertation, it sounds really big, but it's only 15,000 words, but it's the beginning of my novel.

[00:13:59] Anne Boyd: So I've been writing in script and I've been taking all the things that I've written that haven't worked, or I've decided to do something different. Right. I've put 'em down in the. Like the research areas that they're not in the draft anymore. And I went in there and I looked and I selected them all so I could do a word count to see how many words I've written that aren't actually in my book yet, and over a hundred thousand words.

[00:14:24] Anne Boyd: You're kidding. I've already written more than a book. That's how much I've written to get to where I finally have a beginning that feels right and I've changed it so much. It was. Third person. Now it's first person. It was present tense. Now it's past tense. It was one unified story. Now it's two timelines, and it was about somebody different, and it's grown so much as I kept learning from my tutors.

[00:14:48] Anne Boyd: There were, it just kept getting deeper and richer. And so I'm, I'm happy with where it's ended up. I know it still has a long ways to go and I have to finish the whole book. What I really learned from the process though, is that there's no point A to point B when you're writing a novel. I mean, there's no way I could ever begin to chart my process or count up how many drops I've written.

[00:15:12] Anne Boyd: All I know is I've written 112,000 words. They're sitting in the trash file basically. This 

[00:15:20] Nicole Meier: is so fascinating to me because I'm also a novelist. I work with novelists, and I know that a lot of us have that ticking time clock in the back of our head of. Gosh, it's gonna take so much time to change it from first person to third or to cut out the whole gearing up or whatever it is.

[00:15:36] Nicole Meier: Just to really go back to the basics. Go back to the beginning, but you allowed yourself that freedom. 

[00:15:42] Anne Boyd: Well, it's interesting because I think the conventional wisdom is that you should turn off your internal editor and just write through a rough draft, and I probably would've done that, or certainly written farther than I got.

[00:15:58] Anne Boyd: There were times when I started writing ahead and I would get well into like part two, and then I'm just like, okay, what am I doing here? I'm lost now. Or I'd get to a point where it's just like, it doesn't feel right. I don't really know my main character well enough yet, or I don't know what this story really is about.

[00:16:15] Anne Boyd: I mean, I have the plot, but it's like, so what? So it's a love story except during World War II and it's a great love story. It's amazing. It's like, well, why am I telling it? What's the point of all of this, which is a question we ask a lot in nonfiction. I don't know that anyone was asking me that in terms of fiction, anyone in my program, but I was asking it myself because actually when I started writing my dissertation, my advisor started asking lots of questions, are they doing this?

[00:16:43] Anne Boyd: And blah, blah, blah, blah, and I realized, I don't know, because I don't know why I'm telling this story and what this story is really ultimately about and what the point of it is. So then I realized that there was more to the story about what happened after the war and what happened to the woman's children because she left her marriage and fell in love with this refugee of the Nazis and helped in escape France.

[00:17:08] Anne Boyd: But then what happened to her children afterward? So now it's a different story, but it's a story that actually touches me very deeply, and I know now why I'm telling it. It's just the whole thing makes so much more sense now. But I feel like there's something. Important about going back to the beginning instead of just pushing forward when you're not really sure what your story is yet.

[00:17:31] Anne Boyd: I wanted to have that firm foundation to know what my story really was and who knows what will happen now as I write forward. But part of it was just that I had to, 'cause I had to turn on this dissertation and had to be perfect. I had to go back and keep trying to get right. 

[00:17:48] Nicole Meier: Well, I love that because I always tell writers when we talk about the point of the book or story message, I just say boil it down to how do you want your readers to walk away from it?

[00:17:57] Nicole Meier: When they reach the end, how do you want them to feel? What do you want them to take away? And a lot of times we can't answer that right off the bat because we don't know ourselves. And you've just demonstrated that beautifully talking about the process. And it's also a reminder, this isn't sort of a hard charging, gaining.

[00:18:15] Nicole Meier: Make a product sort of process. This is a, let's understand the human condition. Let's understand what it is I want readers to take away. And you also, you kind of lit up when you talked about this new approach and this new sort of, let's talk about after the war and let's talk about her children. You really did light up when you were saying that, so I can tell it's meaningful to you.

[00:18:36] Anne Boyd: Yeah. The story's based on a real person and her real life, so I'm not making up the essentials of the story. But I wanted to really get inside of it and feel like I really understood why she made the choices that she did and how she was able to rationalize things as they were happening. And it was war time, and there were lots of reasons why she needed to leave her marriage, but she lost two of her children by doing that, as many women did, who left their marriages.

[00:19:10] Anne Boyd: The children, as they grew up, suffered serious consequences, and seeing her wrestling with that just added so much more dimension to her character. It wasn't just this heroic love story. It becomes more complex. It becomes, there are lots of shades of gray, and I don't know how I would answer the question of how I want readers to feel when they've done reading it, except for I want them to feel that wildlife is complicated and there are no easy answers because.

[00:19:40] Anne Boyd: It's a question of when is a woman allowed to live for herself and choose love, but if she has children, at what point are women allowed to be themselves first and mother second? You. Yeah, 

[00:19:56] Nicole Meier: you just said it perfectly. 

[00:19:58] Anne Boyd: There's your, 

[00:19:59] Nicole Meier: there's 

[00:19:59] Anne Boyd: your tagline 

[00:20:00] Nicole Meier: for your, I 

[00:20:00] Anne Boyd: figure out how to say it 

[00:20:01] Nicole Meier: because 

[00:20:02] Anne Boyd: it just even sounds like, oh my God, can I even say that?

[00:20:04] Anne Boyd: Mother's second. What do you mean have to put motherhood first all the time? I understand that. Yeah. We expect so much of mothers and. Mothers are still human beings. 

[00:20:15] Nicole Meier: Yeah. Okay. This is a beautiful segue because what you're saying resonates so much. I mean, I'm a mother of three young adult children. I understand so much of what you're saying, but you also have had the capacity to open up your knowledge, your wisdom, your encouragement to so many other women writers at the same time while you're writing this novel.

[00:20:40] Nicole Meier: So I do wanna talk about your substack and your thriving community and your message for what you call audacious women. So do you wanna talk a little bit about what drew you to that sort of mission? 

[00:20:51] Anne Boyd: Sure. Well, my substack was called Letters from Anne, which is a certific type of Substack title, right?

[00:20:59] Anne Boyd: Newsletter title. And I was writing about my travels and what I was doing. And then one day I had started trying to write more about the women writers that I was. Started collecting these women writers and artists as I was traveling, because I didn't know what I wanted my life to be, but I was fascinated by these women writers and artists that I was learning about.

[00:21:20] Anne Boyd: And I just wanted to know, how do women do it? What choices do they make in their lives? How do they commit themselves to their art? Are they able to have love and children and relationships and their art? And what I found was that no, most of them, so many of them. Had to make a choice. The ones who were successful probes the career, had raised points and sometimes just for the rest of their lives they were celibate and didn't have children, or let the parents raise the children and basically abandon them.

[00:21:54] Anne Boyd: It's all these kind of interesting scenarios. And then I came across writer Tova Jansen. She was a writer and artist, and she really inspired me because her motto was Love and work. Maybe it was work and love 'cause I think she might have put the work first, but still that, and she wanted to bring them together.

[00:22:13] Anne Boyd: Those were the two important things in her life. And she had a partnership with another woman, artist whose name I can't remember. It's a finished name I think. And difficult, but they had, their living quarters were near each other and they visited and their studios and they'd spend every evening together, they'd go do their work and then they'd spend every evening together.

[00:22:32] Anne Boyd: And I thought, oh, this is such a beautiful. Scenario. You know, I love that. And that was sort of getting like, but all of these women were so audacious in the choices that they made in their lives. And I was so inspired by them on many levels, just the work that they did too. Some of them are like Kay Boyle, who is the writer I'm writing a novel about now, and also Domar.

[00:22:54] Anne Boyd: I lived in Do Mar's House for a month on a residency. Oh, you're kidding. And that was amazing. She is an artist who was also one of Picasso's, Mr. Suzanne Valdon, who was a French painter, she was a model initially for Weir and others, and she became this amazing, amazing artist in her own right. And so these are the writers and artists I was learning about and writing about, and that's how I came up with Title Audacious about my creative lives.

[00:23:22] Anne Boyd: And then because I wanted to write less about myself and more kind of offering something to readers. And then there was this day that I had posted some pictures of my trip in Sicily. On my Facebook or Instagram or something. And somebody I knew commented, I like your life. I thought, you have no idea what my life is like.

[00:23:45] Anne Boyd: You just see the pictures I'm posting on Instagram, right? And so I wrote a whole post about what my life was really like, and I called it two years ago. I put my life and it was about how I was still struggling to find my footing. I still didn't know where I was gonna live. I had missed out on that Visa application.

[00:24:02] Anne Boyd: I was trying to decide if I wanted to do a Master's in creative writing in the UK so I could stay. I didn't even have a place to live in at that time. I was so up air and I was like, really? Would you really like to live this life? People seem to have this idea. So I wrote this post and it went viral. It was amazing, and it was going viral before anything happened on Substack, because I only had a thousand subscribers left.

[00:24:27] Anne Boyd: And I'd had the same number of subscribers all year. I wasn't growing or anything, I was just flatlined. It was the number I came in with that I came into CK with. And then all of a sudden, this piece was getting passed around and it started showing up, I guess in the feeds, in the notes or something on algorithms.

[00:24:44] Anne Boyd: And Elizabeth Gilbert saw it and she shared. 

[00:24:49] Nicole Meier: For the listeners that's the author of Pray Love and so many other beautiful books. 

[00:24:53] Anne Boyd: Yes. An an absolute hero of mine on so many levels. And I just cried when I saw Oh, she, she said, you know, I love everything about this. And I just was like that. She had read my writing and commented.

[00:25:09] Anne Boyd: Yeah. And then that she shared it with her readers. I mean, I, I just couldn't, I was absolutely floored and. I was trying to sell my memoir then, which I did not sell by the way. It did not get picked up. Memoir's hard right now. I mean, I don't know how long. Memo's hard. Yeah, memoir's hard. So that was another sign that the universe was telling me it's time to write that novel.

[00:25:32] Anne Boyd: Yes, yes. And so with Elizabeth Gilbert's endorsement and the virality just went exponential at that point. And so suddenly I had all these people who were. Interested in my life choices. And so I was, was tired by your life choices inspired, but also really appreciating that I was being honest about how difficult it's been.

[00:25:58] Anne Boyd: So I've been very honest since then, and there have been some very difficult times because my Minnie's disease came back this year, the first part of this year. I was very, very sick with Vertigo again. And so I've written about that and I've also wrote about. All the stuff that I've learned and the tremendous healing journey that I've been, it's been incredible, and that healing journey has allowed me to reach depth in my creative writing that I never could have before.

[00:26:28] Anne Boyd: And I've learned so much about the healing power of the mind and how plastic the brain is, and how reprogrammable the subconscious is because the subconscious is actually doing all the work all the time. We don't realize how much of what we're doing all the time is based on this programming. A lot of it's sort of laid in there for when we're very young and when something gets triggered, it can really throw you off.

[00:26:57] Anne Boyd: And I think every time we sit down to write there is the potential for being triggered. Writing is such incredible, incredibly deep work. It touches us on so many levels, and I know so many writers who. Get frustrated or feel blocked. They feel like they're being choked almost. There's something that wants out, they don't know how to say it.

[00:27:21] Anne Boyd: And that's energy. That's energetic blockage. And I know you've talked about that on your podcast before. I really appreciate that you're interested in the whole writer because so much of the discussion on how to write or how to be a writer is about craft really surface stuff. How to get an agent. Yes.

[00:27:43] Anne Boyd: But it's the deeper work that has to be done first to even get to the point where you're writing something that's even worse, the time or attention of an agent. So I'm really interested now in having done a lot of that deep work myself, helping other writers do it. And that's something that, yeah, I'll be sharing more is my newsletter develops.

[00:28:04] Anne Boyd: I'm sorry I've gone off on so many tangents. No, 

[00:28:07] Nicole Meier: I'm so thrilled that you have, because this is what we need right now. I was on Substack notes this morning and shared with everybody that I had someone approach me early this morning asking if I would help lead something to have AI write books for people, and I just said Absolutely not, because everything you are saying, I know it's so prevalent.

[00:28:29] Nicole Meier: It's just out there everywhere right now, but everything you're saying about. The deeper work and coming to a better understanding of ourselves and the subconscious and how it opens up these pathways for what we are creating. That's the opposite of having AI write a book for you and market it and say, ta-da, I have a deal.

[00:28:46] Nicole Meier: So what you're saying resonates with me specifically today of all days, but also I know with so many other people out there. 

[00:28:54] Anne Boyd: Yes, because I don't think, I didn't know how to be a writer or how to write creatively for so many years because. I was bringing so much baggage with me when I sat down. It wasn't just, oh, my internal editor, my internal critic was talking to me, went much deeper than that.

[00:29:11] Anne Boyd: I think there was such a fundamental blockage of so many things that I had to push down over the years. So many things that I couldn't look at, I couldn't acknowledge that it happened to me, and I had to go through the process of acknowledging them and accepting them and letting them go. In order to let the energy flow again, and even to have the space inside of me to begin to imagine myself into someone else's experience because I was so stuck and unable to look at the truth of my own life.

[00:29:46] Anne Boyd: And until you can really, really look at the truth and say the truth about your own life, how are you possibly going to do that for your characters? Absolutely. Amen. Amen. Holy amen to that. That's what's required for the writer, right? You have to be able to tell 

[00:30:05] Nicole Meier: the truth. Amen. I mean, really, how can you share someone's deeper inner journey if you don't acknowledge your own?

[00:30:13] Anne Boyd: Yes, exactly. If you haven't taken your own inner journey, and frankly, I thought I was pretty evolved. I got married when I was. Well, I was in, I didn't get married until I was 30, but I was in the relationship for like six, seven years before that, which started to go back to when I'm pretty young and I was studying to do my PhD and then I became a professor, and then I got married, and then I had a kid and the whole thing.

[00:30:39] Anne Boyd: And I was doing all the external things. I was doing all the external things, and I was putting all of my energy into raising my child and helping her grow. And my growth and development just stopped and so I had to go back. Almost to square one. And so getting that vertigo was a gift in a way because it had been triggered and it made me acknowledge the trauma that I've been running away from all these years and discover the core wounds that I hadn't fully dealt with.

[00:31:06] Anne Boyd: I've been in years of therapy and talk. Therapy is not gonna help you rewire your brain. I can't. Because it's just dealing with the conscious brain still, and it's stuff at the subconscious level where the blockages really are you have to access. And so the word that I did was with a quantum energy coach, and I am so excited about quantum energy coaching.

[00:31:29] Anne Boyd: It was developed by Dr. Melanie Salmon, and I'm going to be taking her practitioner course so that I can share this with the people and help writers in particular go on this deep journey themselves and release these blockages. Create the space and allow them to really, really fulfill their creative dreams and be able to speak again in a way that they haven't been able to.

[00:31:52] Nicole Meier: Oh, that just gives me the chills. I'm so thrilled that you're doing that. I'm thrilled that you shared it. 

[00:31:58] Anne Boyd: I'm excited. I mean, that's where I'm headed and I love all of my readers audacious creative lives, and if you look through the comments, they're all these incredible women. I can't believe. How amazing they are.

[00:32:10] Anne Boyd: Interesting, and I know many of them are experiencing the things that I've experienced. It don't mean so much to me to share something with them that I'm going through, and to hear them say that I needed to hear this today or this really resonated with me, this was helpful. Just saying the things that I don't know.

[00:32:29] Anne Boyd: I'm sure there are people saying them out there, but they need to be said and they need to be said over and over again, frankly. 

[00:32:36] Nicole Meier: Okay, so let's think of the listener right now who's saying I am one of those women. I feel like this resonates with me. I do wanna dive deeper into my creative self, but I do feel something's blocked or I can't quite put my finger on it.

[00:32:50] Nicole Meier: Is there some sort of, and I don't wanna make this too prescriptive, but some sort of easy first step that you would recommend for them. Is it journaling? Is it joining a group like yours? What is something that they could look at and say, well, that feels accessible to me. Gosh, that's 

[00:33:05] Anne Boyd: such a good question.

[00:33:07] Anne Boyd: Oh, I wrote about this. There's this David White poem where he talks about taking the first step. 

[00:33:13] Nicole Meier: Yes. I think I saw it on your, I saw it from you. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:33:17] Anne Boyd: And the first step, you think of it as a step outward. I have to start my journey. This really resonated with me because I thought I had to go out into the world to find myself, to figure out what I wanted in my life to meet people, have new relationships, and I've done those things.

[00:33:33] Anne Boyd: But what my vertigo taught me was that the first step I had to take was within, closer to myself, not walking away from myself, but into myself. And it was really interesting because before my vertigo, it started like at the end of December, I was thinking about what my word for the year would be. And it was deeper.

[00:33:53] Anne Boyd: I don't know why. I just felt like I wanted to go deeper and my vertigo. It stopped me in my tracks. I mean, I would be on the couch for hours, not able to move really. And so I had to go deeper and deeper to figure out what my body was trying to tell me. And maybe that's the first step is it's just even to examine what's going on in my body.

[00:34:18] Anne Boyd: What is my body trying to tell me? Because the mind and body are so intimately connected and related. The body is almost a physical manifestation of the inner life, the subconscious, the thing that we're buried that we don't want to look at or express. Our body's expressing that for us, if we're exhausted, if we're suffering from digestion issues or headaches or hearing problems or pain in certain parts of your body, I mean, just what is my body trying to tell me?

[00:34:49] Anne Boyd: What can I learn from myself? What can I learn from my own self? And so journaling is kind of where it started for me. I remember the day, and I can't find it in my journals, but I remember the day when I started to write the truth in my journal. I started to say, I'm really unhappy. And I couldn't say that before.

[00:35:10] Anne Boyd: I couldn't even, I couldn't even say it out loud. I couldn't say it to myself. Right. 

[00:35:15] Nicole Meier: That's so relatable. So relatable. Well, I would love to let people know how they can. Find you on Substack, how they can become part of your community, your world, because I know that you are captivating the listeners right now.

[00:35:29] Nicole Meier: You're definitely been captivating to me. I just feel so grateful to you for opening up and being so authentic and truthful. These are the conversations that I wanna have, so thank you so much for 

[00:35:40] Anne Boyd: that. Thank you. I really appreciate that. And these are exactly the conversations I wanna have too. And so I know, I know we're gonna keep having them over.

[00:35:48] Anne Boyd: At my Substack, it's Audacious Women comma, creative Lives. And I'm going to be starting a series of conversations with other women who've gone through big transitions like me, who are doing bold, creative things in the world because I've been so inspired by them as well. And I want to share them with readers.

[00:36:06] Anne Boyd: And, you know, I'm, I really wanna start a reading group of audacious women writers. Now that my course is over, my master's have done, I'm gonna keep working on my novel, but I'm also gonna start working more with writers, with coaching and growing this community, offering more to my subscribers. So I'd love to have your listeners over there.

[00:36:25] Anne Boyd: It's an amazing group, not just for the writing that I'm doing, but also for the way that people connect and the comments community there. Yeah. It's a great place to be, and I just could not be happier to have them because this whole journey and even the writing journey itself is such a lonely one. It is.

[00:36:43] Anne Boyd: And so to feel like all these people are just waiting to hear about what I've done next has been just amazing. Incredible. Ugh. I love that. 

[00:36:52] Nicole Meier: I love that so much. Thank you, Anne, for sharing all of your beautiful wisdom and insight with us today. Listeners, I will put more in the show notes, but I definitely encourage you to follow Anne, join her community, and we can't wait to hear about your novel that you're working on.

[00:37:07] Nicole Meier: I know that more good things are just around the corner, so thank you, Anne, and thank you writers and readers for listening. And we'll see you next time on the whole writer.

[00:37:22] Nicole Meier: If you want to check out my coaching programs for fiction writers, visit nicolemeier.com. That's M-E-I-E-R. And if you like this episode, I'd love you to take a minute to leave a rating and review for this podcast. This will help more writers like you to discover the show. And to get going on their writing journey.

[00:37:43] Nicole Meier: Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, happy writing everyone.