We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Brooke Adams Law a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Brooke, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What do you think it takes to be successful?
I think a lot of qualities go into what it takes to be successful.
But the first one is sort of counterintuitive…and that’s to ask yourself what success means to YOU.
In my late twenties, I had just finished my graduate degree in creative writing, was newly married, and was working full-time for a respected nonprofit in New York City.
By all accounts, I was “successful.”
I was also commuting two hours each way to work and was completely burned out and exhausted.
When I reflected on what brought me to that point, I realized that having a balanced life where I had time for relationships, exercise, writing — things that made me feel like ME — WAS success for me.
Now, as I run my own business, the qualities that create success for me (i.e., meeting or exceeding business goals and generally feeling happy and fulfilled in my life) include:
-A willingness to try new things, fail, learn, tweak, and try again
-Willingness to actively work on my mindset
-Continually reaching for the next goal, improving my craft, and having fun every day
Brooke, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
I founded Writing Brave, which is a book coaching and hybrid publishing company but also a MOVEMENT, in 2019.
I especially love working with intuitive writers. There are a lot of us out there – basically, we are the opposite of plotters (folks who can plan out their books ahead of time). I teach writing craft, but also tools to help writers listen to their intuition and channel the books that want to be written.
I believe deeply that books exist somewhere in their entirety, and they choose us to channel them, and usually they are far beyond what we are capable of writing when we first set out to answer the call of writing them.
I offer support for every stage of the writing, revising and publishing process: https://www.wearewritingbrave.com/everything.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
In my own writing, I just love having an idea — that initial flash of inspiration — and feeling the excitement of possibility of all that it can bring. I love sitting down every day and fleshing out the idea, bringing characters to life, and creating compelling stories. It’s just the most fun.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
In school, we’re taught that if we study and work hard, we’ll get to the “right” answers. We’ll demonstrate our knowledge, get a good grade, and that equals success.
That’s not how real life actually works.
In 2021, I was piloting a new service (now called the Writing Brave Mastermind). I talked about it on social media, I reached out to people I knew, I booked free consult calls and talked to people about it. About six weeks later, I still didn’t have anyone signed up.
I remember the moment I thought about quitting. My brain though, “oh, this isn’t working, let’s try something else.”
And instead I asked myself this question: What if I kept going?
What if I kept going until I had enough people to run this program?
I ended up enrolling eight people, and the Writing Brave Mastermind just started is fifth annual cohort.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.wearewritingbrave.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wearewritingbrave
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@wearewritingbrave
Image Credits
Daniel Silbert