Writing Brave with Brooke Adams Law

In this episode, I’m joined by Brooke Adams Law—award-winning author, book coach, and founder of the Writing Brave Movement—for a heartfelt conversation on writing with emotional honesty and trusting your inner voice. Brooke gets real about her own writing journey, from rejection to publication, and offers encouragement for navigating perfectionism, procrastination, and the creative wounds that keep us stuck.

What You’ll Learn:

• What it really means to “write brave”
  
  
  
• How to listen to your inner wisdom as a writer
  
  
  
• The root causes of writer’s block and how to move through it
  
  
  
• Simple exercises to start healing your creative wounds
  
  
  
• Why persistence and self-trust matter more than perfection
  
  
  

Timestamps:
 01:21 – Meet Brooke and the Writing Brave Movement
 04:25 – Defining “writing brave”
 13:09 – Writing from intuition and inner wisdom
 23:51 – Signs and symptoms of writer’s block
 27:00 – Creative wound healing practices
 35:29 – Brooke’s story of doubt, grit, and getting published

This one’s packed with heart and hope. Tune in when you need a boost.

You can visit Brooke’s website at www.wearewritingbrave.com to take her quiz, Discover YOUR Writing Routine Personality.

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Not that every single story has to be heart-wrenching or anything like that. I think there's all kinds of writing brave. And it doesn't necessarily have to do with tone, but I was like, I want to always be risking something emotionally and trying to make that emotional connection with a reader. Welcome to the Write It Scared podcast.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

I'm your host, Stacey Fraser, a formerly repressed creative soul, turned fiction writer, story editor, and author accelerator certified fiction book coach. At Write It Scared, we tell the truth about why writing a novel is so hard by acknowledging that most writers grapple with two stories: the one they want to put on the page to the best of their ability, and the often subconscious internal story that prevents them from doing it. This show is designed to help you identify and rewrite the internal narrative holding you back while you discover and write the story you want to tell and learn all the tools to help you do that successfully. Join me each week for a new episode where we'll talk about writing to deepen our understanding of the craft and of ourselves as writers. Writing a novel is an inside job that we do not do alone. Welcome to Write It's Scared. I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in. Hi, writer. Welcome back to the Write It's Scared podcast, where we talk about the brave and often messy act of writing our novels so that we can do it with more clarity and confidence. I'm your host, Stacey Fraser, and today I am in conversation with Brooke Adams Law, who is a book coach and a novelist, and we covered a lot of ground in our interview about writing brave and how to use our intuition as writers and how to heal creative wounds by using our voices with compassion for ourselves. It was a fantastic conversation. Brooke was a wonderful guest. She is incredibly candid and held nothing back as she talked about the process of writing her debut novel, Catchlight, about being rejected multiple times before eventually publishing that debut novel. I hope that you enjoy her interview. Without further ado, here is her bio. Brooke Adams Law is an award-winning author and founder of the Writing Brave movement. Brooke helps creative, intuitive people claim their author identity so they can start, finish, and publish brave, dazzling books. Brooke's debut novel, Catch Light, won the Fairfield Book Prize and was named Best Indie Book of 2020 by Kirkis Review and was featured on Good Morning America's blog. Brooke spends her professional time coaching her book clients, writing her own novels, and running the publishing arm of her business writing Brave Press. In our personal time, you can find her reading in the backyard, breaking up disputes between her children, and drinking Decaf Cafe Olay with oat milk. Hi, Brooke. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I'm so excited to talk to you today. How are you?

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Hey, Stacy. I'm doing well. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me. So where are you in the world? I live right outside New York City. So yeah, New York. It's very gray and rainy on the day we're recording this, but we are bicoastal.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

I'm in California. So we wait. So I gave you a bit of a bio, but if you would be so kind, would you please share a bit more about yourself and your journey to becoming a writer and a mentor for writers? Oh, yes.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

So I am the author of Catchlight, which is a novel. It is about a family of four-grown siblings. They can't stand each other. And when their mother is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, they really have to figure out how to come together, not just to take care of her, but also to like have relationships with each other again. And Catchlight won the Fairfield Book Prize in 2019, which I'm really proud of. And it also was a best indie book of 2020, named by Kirkus Reviews, which I'm also super proud of because it was a long road for me to get that book published, which maybe we'll talk about. So, in any case, I am also the founder of Writing Brave, which is a book coaching company. And I work with writers in a variety of formats. So I do one-on-one and small group coaching, and then I also have digital courses and I run an event every year called the Writing Brave Summit, which is a virtual conference. And we also have a hybrid publishing arm. So there's always, always lots happening. And I'm working on my second book right now. So super fun.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Yay. I just started reading your debut, catchlight, and I'm really enjoying it. Yeah, thank you. So thank you for writing it. So I am just so curious about writing brave. Tell us more about writing brave, why you created it, and what is behind that name. Because I absolutely love it. It's almost like it's like the inverse of write it stare.

SPEAKER_00 4:39

Oh yeah. And I thought of that. But I feel like they're two sides of the same coin. So I think that's perfect. It's interesting because I talk to my kids a lot about being brave. And my daughter, who's five, will often say, like, but I'm not brave. I'm scared. And I'm like, that's okay because they're part, right? They're the same, they're the same thing, right? And so when we write it scared, that enables us to write brave. I feel like they really are, you know, again, two sides of the same coin. So, in any case, I started my business back in 2018 and I actually started out as a freelance copywriter. So I was writing people's websites and blogs, and I was writing sales emails and things like that. And I had a business coach about a few months before my book was coming out. And she was kind of like, Why are you writing other people's websites when you have an MFA and you have like this amazing book coming out? And she was like, Why aren't you helping people write books? And I was like, I don't know. Why aren't I doing that? So I started out kind of pivoting into coaching people who were writing books. And I started with this one thing where I would do on Monday mornings called the writing circle. And I would just get people, I would send people a Zoom link and we would get on Zoom and just write together. And I wasn't teaching anything. And it was just like really great. And we had this group, and that went on for several years. And I started kind of building out these different ways of working with writers. But the name Writing Brave came to me kind of a few years into that journey. And the story is I was part of a project. I wrote an essay that was going to be included in an essay collection. And kind of post-pandemic, I got to go to a book launch party of that, you know, essay collection. And I was really excited because, you know, there were going to be some really big name authors there. And it was just really exciting. And it was really cool to meet everyone. And I remember I got on the train to go home and I was reading some of the essays of the people that I had met. And I think what really struck me was a lot of the other essays in the collection, I mean all of them, beautifully written, like very clever. Some of them are really funny, but a lot of them didn't risk anything. And my essay was very personal. It was, it's called The World I Build For You. And it's a letter to my daughter, and it's about body image. And it's all about how, you know, when I was pregnant with her, everyone had lots to say about my body. Like somebody asked, someone I didn't even know asked me if I was having twins. Like just multiple people had a lot of opinions about how much weight I gained. And just like I was just like, this is none of your business, right? And so I wrote her this letter and I just said, you know, the world I want to build for you is one in which women can take up as much space as they want and their bodies can look all different ways, right? And it was really vulnerable. And at first, when I was reading everyone else's, I was like, oh my gosh, did I misunderstand the assignment? Right. It's sort of like that moment when you're like, oh my gosh, like I shared this really personal thing, and everyone else is like telling these like clever stories that make them look like glamorous and fabulous. And I was just like, oh God, why did I miss here by telling this like very personal story? And then I really thought about it. And I remember thinking, you know what? Like the only reason I write is to write brave. And if if that's not the quote unquote assignment, like then I don't want to do it, right? Like, I and not that, you know, every single story has to be, you know, heart-wrenching or anything like that. I think there's all kinds of writing brave. And it doesn't necessarily have to do with tone, but I was like, I want to always be risking something emotionally and like right trying to make that emotional connection with a reader. And so that's where the name came from.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

I love that. I always want to be risking something emotionally and connecting. Yeah. The the write it scared just is because it's what I do every day. Yeah. Because I'm in a way afraid to be seen. Like there's that piece of me that's always afraid of judgment, afraid of vulnerability.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

But when I decide what it is that I want, I weigh the cost.

SPEAKER_00 8:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

And then so, so like, you know, being fearless and courageous are not exclusive.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

There's one pendant. Yeah. Brene Brown talks about that, right? Yeah. Vulnerability and courage, right? Are are, you know, you need both. They're they're the same, the same two sides of the same coin, like I was saying before. Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

Yep. I absolutely worship at the Brene Brown altar. 100%. She was one of those people, like, you know, one of those mentors who has no idea that she's a mentor to me. She has no idea who I who I am. But her books like helped me step into the version of myself that I want to be in the world. So absolutely. So I kind of think that writing brave is is part of what you do, it sounds like, is that you help writers step into being the version of who they want to be as a writer.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Yes. I love the way you put that because I do I teach a lot about the idea of author identity. And it's exactly what you just said, right? Of stepping into the like the version of the writer that they want to become. So I have two thoughts on this. One is actually in my mastermind that I teach every year, and we're about to have this, like as we're recording this in real time in two weeks. One of my former mentors is now a business coach, but she is a former professional stage actress. And so a lot of her work is about how do you identify? So it's sort of like goal setting, but not. It's like goal setting in this like witchy stepping into future version of you way. And so I, she's coming to speak to my mastermind and she talks to us about like how do we envision the future author version of ourselves, right? Whether it's like you're not yet published and you're envisioning the day you're gonna hold your first book, or it's like you've published something and you're kind of again still on a journey, right? So it's like you're gonna go to the next level of whatever your author identity is. And then she talks a lot about how do you prepare for that version of yourself, your future self, the way she used to prepare for a stage role, right? So she talks about like, what would that version of you wear? Like if you're going to your book launch event, like what would she wear? And like, could you start wearing a version, maybe not like, you know, full-on glam, but like in your everyday life, but like, could you start wearing a version of that when you sit down to write? And she talks about the idea of like set design. So when you sit down to write every day, are there signals to your subconscious that are showing your brain that we are stepping into this future author version of ourselves? Right. So one of my former students who heard this presentation, she was like really kind of noodling on it. And she was at a thrift store and there were all these old books there. And so she bought this set of old books and she hand drew all these new covers and like folded it on top of them so that it looks like it sits on her shelf and it looks like her fantasy series that she's writing. So she's like, I have this signal on my shelf, right? That's like showing me every day like that's what I'm working on. It's not ready yet, but like one day it will sit on my shelf, right? As all these books.

SPEAKER_01 11:49

And so Oh my gosh, I love that.

SPEAKER_00 11:52

Yeah, I really love ways of kind of building it in.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Yeah, so it's kind of like this idea of you can't think your way there, you have to act your way there. And manifestation is actually a combination of belief and action. Yes, exactly. Yeah, I love that idea though, of because I have a shelf like on my bookshelf that's empty because that's where my books are gonna go. But I love the idea of filling them with a physical manifestation of what my books will be. That's that's so cool, Brooke.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Oh my gosh.

unknown 12:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:24

Well, so the couple of things that we're gonna really hit on today, and we've already started to dive into it, but uh one was like, what is writing brave about and how do you help writers? But also one of two of the things that you focus on is helping writers write intuitively, or or maybe it's more helping writers who are intuitive understand that inner wisdom and write from it, and then also talking about how to heal creative wounds and to solve writers' blocks. So those are the two things, two discussion things on the table. I'd really love to hear more about writing intuitively and writing from inner wisdom and what that means and how we can use it if we are intuitive writers.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

So a lot of the writers who find me really resonate with this idea of intuitive writing. And I think that there's a lot of teaching about writing on the internet that's very craft focused. And it's like, you know, things like save the cat or story grid, and nothing's wrong with any of those things. But like some of my writers come to me and are like that kind of linear thinking where you try to plot everything out or you're trying to decide things ahead of time, or if you're writing nonfiction, you're still you're trying to like fit things into an existing structure. Like, does it work for a lot of people? And it doesn't work for me, right? I talk all the time about how I can't like I'm a novelist, but I cannot plot ahead of time, and my life would be much easier, maybe I could, but also like it's more fun to not do it. But whenever I try to, I just like you know, swerve and do like a 180 and like right. So even now I'm revising my second book, and so I have some notes, you know, about a chapter I'm revising right now. But something just came to me as I was writing. I was like, oh, now this is gonna happen. And it was so much better than what I had thought up in my bulleted outline, right? It was so much more interesting because I followed that sort of breadcrumb of like, oh, what if he did this thing instead? Like, what if he took this really kind of crazy action, but it would really show the reader like what he's struggling with without me always being like, and you know, this character is really struggling with XYZ. I could just show them by showing this kind of like surprising moment. So I think that's at its heart what I mean by intuitive writing is it's kind of like some people call it being a pantser or writing by the seat of your pants. A lot of my writers find that term unhelpful because they're like, it's it sounds sometimes like we don't work as hard as people who plot things out ahead time, and that's not true. But I think this idea of letting the writing kind of write through us, which is an idea that a lot of artists talk about, right? Is that, you know, the work knows more than we do. And all we have to do is listen or kind of tune to the right frequency or the right channel, as it were, and just sort of like let it come through. I'm reading this book by Julia Cameron right now, who's famously the author of The Artist's Way, but she has another book called The Right to Write. So the right R-I-G-H-T to write W-R-I-T-E. And she has this whole piece about, she's like, I really think of it as like the again, what I just said, the writing knows more than I do, and it can write through me. I don't need to think so hard. I can just, she's like, I sit down and she's like, I think of it as turning the radio on. She's like, I sit down and I turn it on, and then I write for a little while. And then when I'm done, I like turn it off again. And she's like, but every time I tune in, it's there for me to like access. And I think, you know, not that my writing sessions always go that way, but I think that's always the goal of being able to just sit down and feel like something else is sort of taking over. And, you know, all the practice that I've done and all the learning that I've done help me produce a really hopefully good end result. But, you know, when I'm writing, a lot of times it's something moving through me, and I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Oh, I didn't see that coming, right? So there's a lot of surprise involved, which I also think is really fun.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

I love this idea. And from what I understand, I mean, just from the blurb of your book, there is a mystery in it. There's a secret, right? Somebody's keeping a secret.

SPEAKER_02 16:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

So as a person who also writes things in that lens, I always feel like I have to know. Like, oh my gosh, how am I gonna like keep this from the reader? And you know, but I like your approach because it just kind of like it's like relax, it'll it's okay. You know, it will come if it's meant to come. And I think that takes a lot of to me, what I hear is like trust in a process. So tell me how you help writers, like for example, me. I tend to hold on and grip things really hard because I want to know. Yeah, you know, so how can a writer use inner wisdom to write intuitively?

SPEAKER_00 17:28

Yes. I love this. Okay, so I think the first thing is going on what you just said, like this gripping, like I have to know, is like actually bringing a lot of compassion to that part of yourself and being like, oh, honey, of course you want to know. And maybe there's things like right in your in your life that you can be like, there's all these reasons that I had you have that compulsion to want to know, right? And and it makes total sense that you really want to know. I hear, right? Like it's all so I always start talking to my my writer the way that I talk my myself, my own inner writer. Sometimes the way I talk to my children, I'm just like, oh honey, like, yeah, of course, you really want to know. It's really frustrating that you don't know yet. I would say as a personal story that, like, so for a while before the book I'm working on now, I was working on another book, which I had to pause because there were a lot of themes in it that then actually happened in my real life. And I was like, okay, I just need a little processing time. But when I was working on that, and I mean it was like three years of time, I was just like, I don't know. This is really out there. I don't know if this is ever gonna come together. That was really like my sole, like my primary feeling, like most of the time. And I had to really develop this practice of leaning into not knowing. It's very uncomfortable. So I have a writer in my mastermind right now who was saying this exact thing. She's like, but I just have to know. It's so hard. I don't know what the end result is gonna be. I don't know like how I should structure the book, all these things. And she's like, I just wanted to be perfect the first time. And I said to her, like, hey, so she is a former physician and she had to leave her job, her job as a physician because she was injured at work. And so, and I said to her, like, when you're a physician, you have to be perfect the first time. Cause if you are doing a cesarean section, like it better be perfect, right? Like there's people's like health and safety and lives on the line. But when you're sitting at the computer writing a book, right, it doesn't have to be perfect. So I think part of it is, and and you don't have to know everything right away. So I think leaning into and practicing that skill of not knowing can be really helpful. And I actually encourage my writers, and I do this myself, is I will keep a list of things about my book that I don't know yet, which sounds really funny. But I will often be like, well, like if I start getting frustrated or like gripping too tight, I just make a list of like, hey, I don't understand this yet. I don't know how this is gonna work. I have this idea, right? Like the thing in capsite that's a secret. Like how, like, I might ask myself questions like, how do I keep this from the reader? Like you were saying, how do I keep this from the reader? You know, how do I reveal it in the most interesting way possible? Right. I may I might like keep a list of like those questions, and then I will sort of ask my subconscious, like, hey, can you work on that for me? I love that. Yeah, and just sort of like set it as an intention of like, I'm trusting that this will come clear in time, right? So the book I was working on previously, I worked on it for two years almost every day, and I was really like, Where are these characters going? Like, what is it that they want? What are they trying to do? Like, I don't know. And then one day I was just playing around with an Oracle deck, and I just like picked a card about something else, and I saw the picture, and I was like, Oh, and I had this entire like everything clicked into place where I was like, this is where they're going and this is what they're doing. And I could just see like the whole, like it was sort of like the clouds parted and I could see it, right? But it took two years of working on it every day for me to like have that moment again, it's not efficient, but it's fun.

SPEAKER_01 21:09

I love that, and I can just see that you're somebody who truly loves your writing process. Like when you talk about it, you just light up instead of being like it's been two years and I still haven't produced something. Or you know, so that's so those are I think you just bring such amazing points to the table. It's like there is a learning curve to understanding how to sit with discomfort and uncertainty and then not knowing. And for some of us, the learning curve is steeper.

SPEAKER_00 21:42

Well, yeah, and I think it's it is, it's really hard. And it's not the way we're trained in the case. And situational too. Yes. And it's not the way we're trained in school, right? We're trained in school to know the answer. To know the answer. That no one teaches.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Well, I think it's lovely and it sounds exploratory and just a way to it in it maybe a lower stakes way. You know? And some things evolve well under pressure and sometimes maybe they don't.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

And I remind myself and my writers a lot that nothing is wasted, right? So those three years I was working on that book, like I will go back to that book one day when the time is right. But yeah, but sometimes I'm like, it's been five years since my last book came out, right? Like it sure would be nice if I could write a book a year the way other people seem to do. Right. But also it's just, I don't know. This is sort of the season of life that I'm in, and I have young kids and I run a business, right? And it's like, is again, I think you said it really well, just trusting the process that it's gonna keep unfolding and applying the lens of your reality and narrowing the focus to just that lane.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

Like you're not anybody else, you're you with your experience. And I have to remind myself of that constantly. And there's nothing, there's nothing wrong with that. We don't have to be anybody else. Our experience is just as valid. Yes. Without comparison. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about how to work through writer's block by healing some creative wounds. So let's start out by just understanding what your definition of writer's block is, because it's kind of different, I think, for everybody in the writing world. And some believe in it and some don't. So what's your take?

SPEAKER_00 23:26

Yeah. So I think writer's block is anytime you want to be writing something and you're not doing it. So it could look like procrastination, like you're just not making time to sit down and write. And you kind of have that nagging sense, like, I should be writing, I should be writing, I'm not writing, right? Maybe you set a goal at the beginning of the year that you were gonna write your book and it's you know, whatever month it is when this comes out, and you're like, oh the right. So I think procrastination is one symptom. I think perfectionism can actually be another. So if you are going over and over and over the same passage of writing instead of writing forward, if you're not producing new work or writing new work, I think that can be a symptom of writer's block. Another one that people don't talk about that much is sort of like how mean are you being to yourself about your writing?

SPEAKER_01 24:17

This is so funny. I call I I've put all of these things under the umbrella of resistance. I call it the three poisonous peas. Procrastination, perfectionism, and pessimism.

SPEAKER_00 24:27

Oh my gosh, I love their.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

It's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 24:32

It's so good. And then the last thing I will say, and this sort of like ties into the other ones, but my friend Rhonda Douglas, who runs the organization Resilient Writers, she has this term that she calls bouncing. And so this is when you sit down to write and you write for like five minutes, and then you bounce to your email or you bounce to the fridge, snag or right? Like you're kind of bouncing to like other activities. I think all those are kind of symptoms of writer's blocks. So I love the three P's, the three poisonous peas. I love that term. Cool.

SPEAKER_01 25:01

Okay, so so yours is definitely more about resistance versus also about it not just the book not coming, the ideas not coming as well. Okay, so how can a writer determine what's playing into that and if it's a wound that they need to heal?

SPEAKER_00 25:17

Yeah. So I think a lot of times there is a creative wound is at play to some degree, right? It might be a greater degree or a lesser degree, but I think it's you usually if any of these things are happening, I think there's usually a wound in there that's like, you know, at play to some degree. So the way that I define a creative wound is it's any time that you made something and it wasn't received the way you hoped it would be. So this could be from the time you were four years old and you made a picture and your parents didn't put it on the fridge. And it's all the way up to, you know, you sent out 50 or 100 query letters and no agent wanted to represent you, which is actually what happened to me with catchlight, or you gave a presentation at work that didn't go well, or you did a pitch that, you know, a client said no, right? So I think it it plays in professionally too. And I think pretty much every writer I've ever worked with has some story about a teacher or a professor who told them they weren't a good writer or they would never be a writer, or they should never write again, or like right, like every almost everyone I've met has like some kernel of a really horrible teacher comment or story. So all of those kind of go under the umbrella of creative wounds. And I think they really can kind of influence or create writer's block or resistance along the way.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

So, what does a writer do when they come up against our three poisons, P's, plus bouncing? So procrastination, perfectionism, pessimism, or just not being able to stay in it. How do they identify like the trigger? What and what do they do? What can they do about it?

SPEAKER_00 26:58

Yeah, the exercise that I take people through in terms of working through creative wounds is the first step is to sit down with the journal and set a timer for just like five to seven minutes and just do a free write of like even like bullet points of like all the creative wounds that you can remember. So anytime you made something that wasn't received the way you hoped, there's any like just and just seeing what comes out. And I will say I do this exercise a couple of times a year, and I remember new things or things that I thought I had moved through, like they still, I'm like, oh, that still has some charge to it. Okay, that's still showing up, right? So, okay. So I think the first part is kind of surfacing them. And then I kind of like to take people through a process, but you can totally do this on your own, where you sort of imagine, like, I like to close my eyes and imagine there's like a big bonfire in front of me. And like any of the emotions that are ready to be kind of transformed or released or let go, I can kind of like put them on the fire, right? And they can kind of like burn up, like turn into ash. And then there's sometimes there I get sort of a nudge of like this one story needs a little more work, or this one memory needs a little more work, right? And so then I will kind of pick that one moment and sort of journal about it a bit more and be like, well, what is it about this that's really sticking with me? Sometimes I write out everything that happened. Sometimes I want to express the emotion or or the feelings in some way. So, for example, this is actually kind of a funny story. It's funny now. But about a year ago, I pitched someone to be on their podcast and it was a pretty big name podcast, and they said yes, and I was so excited. And I, you know, met with our team and we had to do like audio testing. It was like, you know, whatever. And I we did that a couple of times, and the person was having like some scheduling issues. We had to reschedule a couple of times. So the third time that it was scheduled, I woke up that morning and I had a really sore throat and I like couldn't talk at all. And so I sent them an email and I was like, I'm so sorry, but like I'm really sick and I can't, I can't do it. Can we, you know, send me a thing and I'll reschedule, whatever. And she just said, Oh, I'm not gonna reschedule. Like, sorry you're sick, but you know, we've rescheduled too many times. And I was like, so crushed. I did this thing and I showed up and all the things. And I even asked her, I was like, would you reconsider? Because, you know, I was like, I understand life happens, and you know, we reschedule it according to your schedule a couple of times. That's totally fine. It happens, but like, would you consider rescheduling? And she was like, no. And it was just really hurtful and painful. And so one thing that actually helped me like kind of express the emotion was sometimes I do this if I'm feeling really mad, is I put on the voice recorder on my phone and I pretended that I was leaving her a really snarky voicemail. I mean, I didn't even have her actual phone number. It's just like I pretended that I was leaving with like really snarky voice now. And then I just deleted the voice memo. But it was so helpful to actually say out loud everything that that like angry, hurt, like annoyed part of me was feeling. Yeah, and it just felt really good. So I think sometimes you just need some guardrails to not accidentally send things out, like write them and burn them, or like, you know, whatever. But I think it can be really helpful to like let that sort of hurt, angry, you know, snarky part of you like have a literal voice in some way in kind of a safe way. So I think again, expressing, expressing to the person who hurt you in a safe way, and again, not sending it to them. I think it can be really helpful just to kind of move it all the way through.

SPEAKER_01 30:40

Yeah, I I love that. I mean, I like to say that not I didn't coin this, but I like to use it is that feelings aren't necessarily factual, but they are very important to pay attention to.

SPEAKER_02 30:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:53

Because they can lead you into whatever it is truly that's that's blocking you. So I love that process. I used something kind of similar, actually. I have a way grittier term for it, call an FU letter. Um, and yeah, you just you write it all down, right? Yeah. This is especially useful if you're going to approach somebody with a response. You write all that down, yes, and then you know, read it out to somebody else who is a trust in your trusted circle, and then you delete it. Yeah, and then you can write a new one, and the venom is gone. So it's kind of like the idea of you sit on the email for a while, but I love that. So it's like, okay, give allowing yourself the time and space to process through what's triggering you, where the feelings are coming from, and you know, when they're ready, because they're not always ready, because feelings are attached to neural pathways. Yes. And we're trying to make new ones a lot of the times, and that's not a fast process. I think, you know, I I love I love how you approach it, and just to any writer who's working with this kind of stuff, it's like it's it's it's not supposed to be perfect. It's not, it's not a one and done. And yeah, give yourself lots of grace to be creative. But I love your approach because it sounds it's very affirming and internally healing.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

Yeah, I think that's my hope. And I think the last thing I will say about this piece is what I hear from a lot of writers that I do this work with is they'll say things like, at the time I thought this shouldn't be a that big of a deal. I just moved on, right? I just moved on. And right, it a lot of times, especially if it's something professional, like a professional disappointment, there's this sense of like, well, I couldn't bring my emotions to work or, you know, whatever. And so there really is this feeling of like they write. So there was this some suppression, which is fun, right? Sometimes we need to suppress things because we can't, it's like not an appropriate place. But I think when we kind of open it back up very gently and we just like give ourselves room to feel disappointed or hurt or sad or angry, right? Like all those, all those emotions, you know, it can kind of just complete the process, right? And then it kind of clears out a lot of energy.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

Yeah, I love that. And I can tell you're just so good at holding space for people. Like it just comes right across. Like it's thank you. Yeah. Very powerful. Okay, well, let's transition because a big part of this podcast is dedicated to telling the truth about why the writing is so hard. And we do that through exposing some unhelpful internal narratives that I think all writers face, you know, and we've kind of been we've been talking about those here. Like, you know, what's behind the procrastination? What's behind the pessimism? What's behind the perfectionism? And and so, you know, identifying those those things when they're crafting their stories and then talking about it to normalize the experience, you know, because nobody writes a perfect novel in one shot, nobody edits everything, catches it all on the first pass, and we all have doubts. So by normalizing that, more people will stay in the writing game. They will understand that this is a long process and it has ups and downs, and they there is nothing wrong with them, and they are not bad writers.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Yeah. And I think I love everything you just said. We really are on the same wavelength because I like I think this piece about I think like 80% of my job as a writing coach is normalizing the process for people. Like, I'm like, oh, like people come to me and they're like, oh my gosh, my writing is going so horribly, and my brain is saying all these things, and I don't think I can do it, and I don't write. And I'm like, oh yeah, this is just that part of the process where right, where you feel like that, and your brain is telling you all those things. And I'm like, yep, just keep going. And then you'll get, you know, and it'll go back up, right? And then they come back and they're like, everything is amazing, and I have this fantastic idea, and I had the best writing session ever. And I'm like, Great, this is just the part of the process that feels really great and easy, right? And I think just normalizing, like you said, that kind of roller coaster. Um, it's all part of the process, and and nothing has gone wrong when you start having all these kind of like like the three P's, right? Like all these symptoms. It's like you just bring it on back. It's okay. It happens.

SPEAKER_01 35:05

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it is hard to do for yourself. It often takes it takes a community, it takes a village of people who because there's no I believe that the most powerful thing, the most powerful creator of empathy and compassion is hearing other people's experiences and going, Oh, I'm not the only watching.

unknown 35:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:26

So, which is the premise behind the entire podcast. So in that light, when you look back on your early writing life, what did self-doubt look like and feel like for you? How did it manifest? And how is that different today? Ooh.

SPEAKER_00 35:43

I love this question. Okay. So when I first got the idea for catchlight, I had just graduated from college. This is a long time ago now. And I started writing. And in my brain, I couldn't even say to myself, I'm writing a novel. That was too scary for me to say out loud, or in my brain. Like, so I would literally say to myself, Well, I'm writing this thing. Maybe one day it could someday become a novel. Like that was literally the only thought that like felt okay and safe to me to think because I really was like not confident enough to say I'm writing a novel. Like that was, I was like, because what if I don't do it? What if I can't do it? What if I can't figure it out? Right. So I think again, that being like kind of being too scared to even admit that it was something that I wanted to do or was trying to do because I was so afraid that I was not gonna be able to do it. I think that was kind of the beginning, like the seed of where my writing really started. And I think now I'm at a place where whatever's happening in my process, I can say, I know I'm gonna figure it out. Right. So if I'm at a point in the book and I'm like, oh, there's a problem, it's really driving me completely crazy and I don't know how to fix it. I'm just like, you know what? I'm just gonna keep working on this. I I know how to figure things out. I know that I'll eventually figure it out. I just had sort of the past few months have been like a little bumpy in terms of my writing. And I kind of took a like I finished a draft in November, and then I was like, I'm gonna write a revision by January, by mid-January. That was my initial idea. Then I did absolutely zero editing for like two months. I did absolutely nothing. And I was like, okay, well, maybe that was a little bit overly ambitious. I think that I kind of scared myself and also like I needed a little bit after finishing the draft. I just like need a little bit of breathing time. So I just had to remind myself, like, I know how to do this, I know how to revise a book, and I know how to come back to my writing after I've been away for a long time. I think my brain started going to like, you know, revising takes more time. I should be spending more time. And I wasn't even spending my usual amount of time. And so I was like, okay, well, we're just gonna start with half an hour a day because we wrote a whole book that way. We wrote a whole draft in half an hour a day. And so we're gonna revise it in half an hour a day, right? So, and it's it doesn't sound like it's not like sexy or cool, but it's I was like every morning when I sit down to work, I just work on my book for half an hour and then I move on to like other business-related things. And it doesn't look like much from the outside, but I know that it works, right? Because I'm like, you know, I know that I know how to do it and I know that just showing up every day and being in the book every day for me is really effective. And doing a little bit every day is really effective. And so, you know, I I have this mindset now of like, even when things are bumpy, and I was telling you before we started recording that my whole family and I had the flu like a couple of weeks ago, and I was a bit like, I was all behind. Not my revision. Meanwhile, like I don't have a deadline, like I don't have an external deadline, it's really fine. And, you know, when I came back from being sick, I gave myself a couple of catch-up days on like email and things, and then I just went right back to like half an hour of writing a day. And it's like, again, it doesn't sound exciting, but it works.

SPEAKER_01 39:08

Was there ever a time with catchlight when you felt disheartened or like you didn't think it was going to work out?

SPEAKER_00 39:18

Yeah, you know, there were a lot of times. I think so. The way I worked on that book is I spent maybe two years, two or three years like writing a draft, and I didn't really know what I was doing. And I was, you know, working lots of different jobs and moving and early 20s, you know, figuring things out. And I finished a first draft and I remember thinking, I know I could do better, but I don't know how to make it better. So I went and did my MFA degree. And I remember the whole time I was doing that, I remember thinking, like, working this hard on the book is a really big risk. Because I don't know if it's ever gonna pan out, you know. And there were seven years in total when I was writing, and the whole time in the back of my mind, I was like, this might never see the light of day. Like, I'm pouring my whole heart and soul into this, and I'm doing the absolute best that I can, and no one might ever see it. And there really was this sense of like, I was like, someday this could make a really good story, or someday it might just be like, and then it didn't happen, right? It didn't happen for me. And I think in particular, some of the hardest moments were when the book was done and I started pitching it to agents, and I pitched 125 agents, and all of them said no. And I remember hitting this point of like, maybe this isn't gonna be my first book. Maybe my first book is gonna be something else, and maybe this is gonna go in a drawer. And it was really disappointing and like really sad. And then I think it was a year or 18 months later that it won the Fairfield Book Prize, and the prize was a book deal with like a small press. And I was like, wow, that whole time. So I think in total, from the time that I first had the idea to the day that it came out, it was about 12 years. So seven years of writing, and then took about five years to get published. And the whole time I was like, I don't know if this is gonna pay off. I don't know if it's gonna happen for me. I don't know if this book will ever come out. And then to be able, though, for it to come out was just really thrilling. But I think for most of that time, I was like, I don't know. I don't know if this is gonna work or not.

SPEAKER_01 41:14

Did you feel called to write even though there was no guarantee like it was, it might now work out?

SPEAKER_00 41:19

Yeah, I think Stephen Pressfield talks a lot about this in his books, The War of Art and Turning Pro, which I'm rereading right now. He talks about how I just came across this line and I was like, Yep, that's how I feel. He was like basically he because he had years and years, decades of failed writing projects. And he says, the thing was that I can't do anything else. Like if I stop writing or I try to get another job, he's like, I just get so depressed that no one, like, no one can stand me, including myself. And I'm like, that's what it is, right? So if I'm not writing, I'm just not really that fun to be around. So I feel like I owe it to myself and the people around me to just carry on for sure.

SPEAKER_01 42:00

What I love about your story, one is I love that you're willing to share like the ups and the downs and how long it really took and the number of rejections and all of that, right? The that's the reality. This is a hard, hard game. But what rings through for me is that through the process, you learn how to finish. And that's a skill set. Yeah, that's a skill set that you can cultivate, but it happens through the doing, through the action, through the 30 minutes a day that add up over time. And so, but by the end of all of that, you wind up with a book that you're proud of. Whether or not the world is up for accepting that book, well, no words are wasted. It taught you so much, it taught you how to finish. And if if you can't stand yourself not writing, you're right. I'm right in the way easier, it's gonna be a long time to figure that out. But if but if that is the thing that you're here to do, then you're gonna walk forward more confident knowing that you can do it again. And that's a funny thing, is like, you know, my first novel took me four or five years, and I wanted to tear my hair out many, many times, and I probably did. And then, you know, the second that I it was finished and it was buttoned up and I sent it off, and you know, the world is like, no, no, thank you. I'm like, okay, well, you know, it was my first novel and put that back in the drawer. But I'll be damned if I wasn't burning to do it again. I never would have known that about myself had I not finished that first book. So I just think, you know, finish, finish it, learn how to finish it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:40

Yeah. And the last piece that I will add is that, you know, Catholic was published by a small local, like a small independent press. And I will be totally honest, it did not sell many copies. And I did a lot of marketing and it still did not sell many copies. And like, you know, people read it and they're like, it's so great. And you know, it's critically acclaimed, quote unquote. And also, it didn't sell that many copies. Like, I'm literally like, when I go to get an agent for my next book, I'm like, I wonder if it will actually be a hindrance to me that my first book sold so few copies, right? It's something that I think about. So I think it's important that like even in all the success, like I just said all these things, I'm like so proud of. And then also, like, yeah, didn't sell that many copies. I hope my next book sells more copies. That sure would be right. So I think there are sort of always like, you know, there is always a next level. And also I had to work through some of the creative wounds around, you know, my book didn't sell that many copies. And you know, I wish that it had. So I think it's all part of, like you said, it's all part of the process, and there's a lot of emotions. And I think a big part of it is just is managing the emotions that it brings up. Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 44:46

And in a spirit of acceptance instead of judgment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for your time today. I just have two more questions for you, and then you know, we'll wrap up. But what wish would you like to impart to your fellow writers?

SPEAKER_00 45:04

Ooh. I wish that you would be relentless, which I think is the one quality. Carried me through all the things that I just shared. Be relentless, keep going.

SPEAKER_01 45:16

Keep going. All right. And what do you, is there anything you're currently working on that you want to share with our audience, either personal book writing or that might be coming up or for writing brave?

SPEAKER_00 45:29

Yeah. So the best way if you're interested in my work is to jump on my email list. And you can do that by taking the free quiz on my homepage, which is at wearewritingbrave.com. And the quiz will tell you your writing routine personality type. So I am a turtle, right? I like to do a little bit every day, but there's four different personality types. And once you get yours, you can also look at the other ones, right? Because some people kind of have flavors of different ones. So you can go take the quiz and then you'll be on my newsletter. And the next kind of big thing that I have coming up is actually in September, I do the Writing Brave Summit, which is a virtual conference. And that's always a really fun event.

SPEAKER_01 46:10

Very cool. Well, I will make sure to list the links to both of those things in the show notes so that people can find you. And then also a link to catch light so people can find that too. Thank you so much for your time today, Brooke. You are an absolute joy. And I hope we cross paths again. Yeah, likewise. This was a delight. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Write It Scared podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please make sure to hit the follow button so you never miss an episode. And please leave a review. Reviews help other writers like you find the voices and messages they need to hear to continue to write their stories. Let's lift each other up. Remember, you can be scared and still be unstoppable. I'll see you next week.