In conversation with Caroline Brewer

The Art of Being a Writer

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In conversation with Caroline Brewer

Linda Parkinson-Hardman

Aug 17, 2020

This week, I’m in conversation with my close friend and first-time author Caroline Brewer. We first met back in 2009 when we both attended business network and later Toastmasters International meeting. Caroline’s book is called More Than You Think and it came out, first in Kindle format and later in paperback during lockdown and I was incredibly honoured when she asked me to write the foreword.

Caroline explained that the seed was sown for book back in 1987 at a moment of significant change at the company she was working for. The idea languished for the next 25-30 years because the seed did not land in fertile ground. It was reignited when she signed up for supercoach Michael Neill’s Creating the Impossible programme. Right at the very beginning she realised that the only thing stopping her was her thinking. Later working with Elsie Spittle on her course, True Nature this coalesced with the insight that she no longer had to think about it and could ‘just get on and write the book’.

To put the conversation in context, Caroline and I discussed recognising you could either be in the flow of life OR you could be entertaining your own thoughts; you cannot do both at the same time. And that getting caught up in thoughts is just a product of how the mind works and when we see the reality of this we realise that it’s not necessary to take those thoughts seriously.

We also considered the impact of thought on our creativity and noticing that being in flow is being receptive to what comes through you without judging it. Of course, we don’t stay in that space all the time and our thoughts do impinge and challenge our perception by forcing us to judge what we are doing.

Some of the writing challenges that all writers and authors face cropped up during our chat including coming up with a title that wasn’t already taken, planning vs ‘pantsing’ and the all important learning curve of marketing. During the conversation we touched up on the paradox that whilst we as writers and authors would like everyone to take something from what we write, the reality is that we have no idea what that will be as everyone is different and their experiene of our writing is always unique to them.

If you’d like to find out more about Caroline and her book you can catch up with her on her website https://designed2thrive.co.uk/. And you can also catch up with the interview I did with Caroline during the book launch here: https://youtu.be/e_JEsPsVmT4