How do you combat burnout as an author? With deadlines to meet and edits to make, it often gets overwhelming and creatively stifling to deal with all these. To tackle this, host Ella Barnard chats with interracial romance author Brooklyn Knight. After a recent burnout episode, Brooklyn quit her job to become a full-time author. Here, she talks about her experience and how she’s managing her work now to prevent further episodes. She also offers advice on how to keep growing as a writer, plus gives tips on how to write shorter and faster. Tune in to get more insight into her writing process and how she builds her characters.
—
Listen to the podcast here:
How To Prevent and Combat Burnout As An Author With Brooklyn Knight
We are here with Brooklyn Knight. She is a romance enthusiast who lives on the island of Bermuda and has been writing stories since she was a little girl. Over the years, her gift for designing and bringing characters to life has evolved and she enjoys creating vivid, memorable characters and unforgettable situations. Her characters are thought-provoking and evocative, and they will draw emotion out of you like water from a well. You can tell she’s a good writer.
—
Welcome to the show, Brooklyn.
Ella, thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be here with you.
Brooklyn has been a reader for a while. I’m very excited to learn more about your author’s journey. Please tell us more about yourself and your author’s journey.
I have been writing since I was a little girl. I remember writing my first book in grade three. We were in arts and crafts and I had some construction paper and I wrote this story about an elephant. I remember stapling the edges and holding this little book and being so excited like, “This is a book.” Over the years, through high school and middle school, I was writing. In 2018, when I was like, “Let me publish this,” it took off. People were like, “How did you do it?” It’s because I have been writing for so long that the craft came together. The experience and the years of writing and getting better all came together.
You did not publish the elephant book?
The elephant book did not get published, unfortunately. It could have been pretty cool.
You were writing in middle school and high school. Tell us a little bit about what you are writing and publishing.
I write interracial romance. People ask me, “How did you get into that?” I tell them, “My characters come to me. I don’t choose the stories. The stories choose me.” My debut was called The Maid’s Daughter. It was set in 1954 Beaufort, South Carolina. It’s the story of a maid who sought work in the rich house, a Black woman. She had a little girl with her. The son of the house and the maid’s daughter fall in love.
This is the 1950s down South, “What are we doing? This is not going to work.” That’s the story that came to me. From there, other books came. My heroes are always of different nationalities. My heroines are always Black women. That’s how I felt is interracial romance. In general, I’m a romance author. What I write is steamy romance.
I know authors who love clean and I am like that but come on.
The Maid’s Daughter was clean. My characters present themselves to me and wanted me to take me into the room. I wrote what was coming, what I saw as I interacted with my characters, but there is a place for clean romance. I get it.
Some traditional authors I love write clean. I love them for their witty banter and stuff. What were you doing besides writing? You have told the author’s journey, but part of the author’s journey is what’s happening outside. What’s been going on?
I quit my job to write full-time. December 31st was my last day. It’s pretty scary, but it’s also exciting.
What happened? We need to know the story.
I was working. I am a Clinical Mental Health Therapist. I have my Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Therapy. I was doing my PhD. I quit my PhD when I realized that I wanted to write books, not dissertations. That was a huge move. I went up for a promotion and one of my colleagues beat me. He got it. He’s a cool guy, but it made me reevaluate everything because I had put so much energy into my professional life.
The interracial romance community is a very supportive, strong network of readers who are voracious.
When I did not get that post, I was like, “What does this mean?” Brooklyn was thriving. I have developed a fan base. I have a huge email list. It’s growing. It’s 1,500. I was like, “If I put my energy into developing my writing, I could grow my royalties to be substantial.” My husband was supportive. He was like, “Let’s do this.” I was like, “I quit. Let’s write romance.”
You have your newsletter. You did not have to give numbers anything, but you have some financial proof that it’s working.
I do. That’s the thing, working 9:00 to 5:00. My royalties are pretty good. I’m like, “If I did this full-time, I could make some good money.” That’s what I’m doing.
You have people who are like, “How did you get into the interracial stuff?” A lot of romance is like, “Let’s just do it.” A lot of romance is all White. I write short romances. I’m releasing a lot. For a year, it’s 1, 2 or 3 a month, sometimes more. There are a lot of characters and I’m like, “I don’t want them all to be White.” I have done some interracial romance stories, too. What have you found about the readers? I’m very curious about this market.
The interracial romance community is a very supportive and strong network of readers who are voracious. I have tried to tap into that readership and maximize it. However, I recognize that if I want to grow as an author, I need to branch out and be a little bit more creative. It’s the fact that White women and White men characters are the ones that sell.
I have over 50 book covers. I have ones with Black men and they are awful. I hate it. It does not stop me from putting Black men in the series, but they don’t sell as the others in a series with the same type of story, all short romances. I’m still the one writing every single one of the characters. All I do is change the color of their skin so that there’s more diversity. That’s it. I don’t try to make them Black characters. They are people falling in love. My numbers don’t sell as well. I hate that. It’s not stopping me, but it’s reality.
If you look at it from a business standpoint, you have to take that into consideration. This is the fact. This is what it is. Learning along the way, I had a Black man on one of my covers. The same thing happened. It didn’t move. This is within the interracial romance community, though.
They are like, “We are interracial romance the other way.”
I switched it and put a White guy in there and it sold. It was like, “I know what to do.” It’s business.
I’m like, “It’s business. I’m making enough. I’m releasing often enough that I can still do it even if.” I’m doing it anyway. That’s the luxury that I get to do. That’s not something everybody gets to consider. I will agree with you in branching out and making more money. I have come to a plateau on how much I’m making in my little short story, romance genre. It’s partially because it’s a very inundated little genre.
It is saturated. A lot of people in the last few years are like, “You can make money with this,” and jumped into it as I did, which is fine but also because my creativity is not flourishing in this. It’s an interesting journey on this side to be like, “Making money, balancing money with creativity, with noticing the market is more complex than people can see on the side of, “I have not done this before.”
Even that advice to market is great advice. You do run the risk of compromising your muse. If you are just writing what you knew people are buying, it’s an interesting thought.
For example, I did have a muse when I started writing. I’m like, “My creativity is flushed.” It’s gone for that particular thing. I can still do it, but I’m not passionate about it at all anymore. I need to watch the market and balance that. I write to market, but I like to match where people’s creativity matches the market. It’s interesting to find out that that changes because the market and my creativity change. What you are passionate about changes. It’s not always the same thing, which I did not realize in the last little bit that I’m like, “This is a real thing.”
I have a writing coach and her advice is that if you are going to be doing this full-time, you may not feel it, but you have to. These are her words to me that you have to cultivate that discipline and get it done. The characters and plot may be stale, but you have to get it done. That’s something that I’m working on, not moving with the whim of the characters, because I’m very visual. My characters talk to me. I see and hear them. When they stop talking, I have to learn to power through that, massage them or wake them up and be like, “We have a story to write. Talk to me.”
How have you been practicing that? Are you doing it? Is it working? What are you doing?
Yeah, I am. I’m doing a novella. I’m not good at novellas. My books are 300 pages. My coach is like, “You need to write 150 pages.” As my characters are still three-dimensional for me, I link that to my work as a clinician and counselor because I work with people and see personality. I create characters who are very three-dimensional and it takes me 300 pages to get their story out. I have to learn to get that story out in half the time, so I can publish you a book a month.
How are you massaging the characters so that you can write about them even when you are not feeling?
I have quit my job, which has released so much pressure. I have been able to sit down and let my characters breathe and they start to talk. I can start to type and they will kick in for me. There’s no pressure. There’s no rush because I’m doing this every day. I wake up. I have my cup of coffee. I get the kids all to school and then I’m writing.
There’s no pressure. My characters are working with me. A lot of what I was experiencing, like the writer’s block, was because of having that 9:00 to 5:00, very intense job, depression, anxiety and suicide. That’s the stuff I was dealing with and I had to come home and write. It was a lot. I sit with my characters a bit, relax, listen to some jams and then it all comes together.
This is so timely because I co-write a lot with another author who is going through burnout. I almost wish that she could read on this interview because it’s parallel issues. It’s so interesting.
Burnout is real.
Are you outlining or are you a pantser? It sounds you might be a pantser.
I am, but I don’t want to be. I call myself a plan-ser. I plan and I pants. I was reading something that says, “People who think they are pantsers are not really pantsers because you pantser your way through that first draft and then you have to go back.” That is your outline, that first crazy draft that you model your way through as a pantser. Once you go back to make revisions, that’s the outline. We don’t ever pants. We do it backward. There’s no such thing.
It’s like a very long 300-page outline.
You have to just cultivate the discipline and get it done.
That’s exactly what they say, but because I write, I also edit. I write very clean. I was saying to my husband, “My writing process is every time I sit down to write, I go back to the chapter before, read it, clean it up and then go forward.” By the time I get to the end, it’s a very clean draft. I go back and make minor changes.
How do you make sure you are hitting all the beats?
I don’t formally outline and this is something I am in the process of learning to do. Even if it’s the loose outline, it’s so hard to explain. My characters talk to me and I don’t want people to listen and think that I’m psychotic or I have auditory hallucinations. I’m not crazy.
These are writers here. My characters don’t talk to me, but I can imagine if my characters talk to me.
Let’s say that. In my imagination, because my characters talk to me and interact with me and I see them, I know what’s going to happen. For example, the book that I’m writing, I don’t know how it’s going to play out, but I have an idea. I know where I need my characters to be by the end of the chapter, if that makes sense.
For example, you have a character, a man or woman, somebody.
This particular book is in first POV, do a first POV. I’m writing it from the hero’s perspective and the love interest. This guy is a thug. He’s a street guy. He kills people. He’s pretty rough. The girl is this beautiful woman. They were in high school together. They loved each other in high school and they are opposites. He has to go and kill a guy, but she is going to divert him from his task.
She’s going to, “We need to do this and that.” The way I’m explaining it is not coming out the way I wanted to, but the point that I’m making is I know what has to happen. I don’t know how it’s going to happen. I don’t know what the dialogue will be like, but I know what my end goal is for these two characters.
That’s similar to when I outline. I come up with two characters. Yours sounds a little bit like Grease the movie. You have the bad boy and the sunshiny girl. I will do that. I will come up with the two characters. In Grease, I’m like, “Do I want her to go bad or him to go good? Which way do I want, and how do I want that to happen?”
When I outline, I come up with the climax. “What’s going to happen there?” I work backward from it in the outline. I’m like, “What has to happen for them to get to that spot? What has to happen for her to go put on black leather and get a perm? What has to happen for her to get back?” I work backward, but that’s interesting. That’s going to have to happen. You are outlining when you do it.
No, I’m not. I’m flowing with them. I may say this is what needs to happen, but as I’m writing, the dialogue will go another way and it will be like, “This is what’s going to happen.” For example, I wrote a book. The guy was a wolf shifter. He was a man, but he turned into a wolf. I did not know he was a wolf shifter when I started the book. I was writing the story that I thought was going to happen. All of a sudden, it was like, “This guy is a wolf.” It’s Torn, one of my best sellers. People love this book. I had a plan, but I give my characters the room to be like, “This is what I want to happen.”
I have read thousands of romances in my life, maybe 10,000. I’m getting older and every year, that number it’s added to. I read 200 books a year. I suspect that for lot of romance authors, the beats are ingrained in their brains. They have read so many romances that they are like, “First, they have to meet, and then one of them has to do this, and then they have to get a little closer and then break a little further apart, a little closer and then a little farther until finally, one of them has to make a decision.
I didn’t consider that, but that is exactly correct. It’s subconscious if you are a romance author. I suspect it’s the same for any genre. I’m studying mystery because I’m in the process of creating a new pen name who will write mystery. There are rules and expectations for each genre. As I have been writing romance for so long, I subconsciously knew, “The meet cute, the coming together, the argument, the angry sex.” I know what has to happen. Subconsciously, that helps me to create these beats.
You write good characters because of your counselor. I don’t have that background, but I stopped contact with my narcissistic mother. She stopped contact, so I have not talked to her. I have never said on air, “My narcissistic mother,” but I am now. Anyways, I saw TikTok where it was a therapist who’s like, “I am convinced that people who think they are empathic or empathetic are people who were raised by narcissistic parents who are completely aware of people, patterns, feelings and motivations all the time.”
I’m like, “That’s me. It makes me very good at asking questions and writing characters.” I can take any character and you are like, “What’s the motivation? Why would he do that?” I’m like, “Here’s why.” In any situation, I can be like, “This is why.” It’s awesome. I have not talked to people very much. I’m like, “Fuck people.” We are talking about something I love writing and romance and I get so excited. How are you going to be writing shorter then? What does your writing coach say? You can even promote your writing coach on here if you want to give a shout-out.
I’m sure she will appreciate it but shout out to Lee Mariano. That’s my coach. She is a New York Times Bestselling Author herself. She’s awesome. She’s good. If anybody needs her information, my contact information will be shared. To write shorter, I need these questions. I hope that people appreciate this show because I don’t feel I’m being very helpful.
It’s very helpful because you are not the only person who writes long and are encouraged to write shorter. You are in the middle of it. Maybe you are like, “Ask me in a year.” We will get to that. We will do that. I write short. I struggle with writing longer. I do get curious because I’m like, “What’s going on?”
If you asked me how to write longer, I could definitely tell you, but to write shorter, how am I going to do this?
I’m getting an impression that I would need to listen to my characters and let them take me in a direction. I struggle with that. I’m like, “This is what needs to be in here.”
For me, I let my characters breathe on the page. I love dialogue to give readers insight into my character’s thoughts because I’m a huge one on show, don’t tell. You will never hear me say, “He would say it.” I will draw that out so that the character can see it. I will never tell you that he would say it or that he was happy. Even showing and not telling draws out an entire scene. There are times when you need to tell, but for the most part, I dialogue my character’s talk. It’s very realistic. That’s how I stretch out.
How much are you able to write? You are going full-time. How much are you finding that you are writing getting completed every day?
Just let your characters breathe on the page.
I have an entire writing schedule. I know which book will be published at the end of the month and I have a three-month publication schedule. I write a 300-page book in about twelve weeks. Once I pull out my calculator, for example, with this book, I need to write 1,800 words a day. Once I have my writing deadline, by this day, if I write 1,800 words a day, I will hit 40,000 words. I move into self-edits, professional edit, book cover, and all of that stuff. As I type, I can spew out 2,500 words a day, especially if my characters are talking. I can be typing away, so that’s how I calculate what I need to write. I hit those numbers every day.
I’m very curious. You are showing, not telling and writing 2,500 words. This is where I struggle. I get to the point where I’m like, “He’s going to be sad. How do I describe that? It takes me a while to come up with the words.” Do they come up pretty quickly for you?
They do. Back to me being a therapist, I see sadness all the time and what’s interesting is my clients don’t tell me that they are sad, but I can see it. It’s easy for me to describe my characters being sad because I see it with my clients.
This is something that I want to explore as I do this next new version of the show how people translate what they have done and their experience into making their writing better. I’m very curious about that. I love that that’s what you do.
I wrote a book that I’m going to publish. It’s a craft book and I wrote it under my government name, but it’s called The Psychology of Character Design. I take psychology principles that I learned during my Master’s and Bachelor’s, like Freud and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. I have taken these psychological principles and applied them to the process of creating characters. Thinking about what you said, I have been able to apply it directly to how I create real characters because of my training as a clinician. I’m going to be publishing that pretty soon.
Let me know when you are publishing that. There are so many writing books out there. There are so many outlining books out there because people don’t know what’s going to work for them until they try it. The same thing does not work for everybody. Some people will love that entry way into viewing their characters in a different way because that will be the thing that makes sense for them. For some, it will be, “I’m wild,” which is amazing.
That’s why I never think there are too many writing books because you don’t know which one is going to work for which person. When I was younger, I took a Psychology 101 class thinking, “Maybe I will be a psychologist.” I went through and I was reading all the stuff because of 101. It’s a little like, “Blurb. Here’s this.” I was like, “I’m all of them. I don’t want to do this. This is too confronting.”
I realized all of these mental illnesses I was reading through in 101 are the extreme of how people are normally. Everybody has aspects of them, but somebody with mental illness has it to the extreme. I was diagnosed with ADHD and I have been clinically depressed on and off multiple times in my life. It’s interesting but too confronting. I was, “No.” I wonder if I came it with the characters where it’s not all about me, that would be very interesting.
It’s very common for Psychology students to diagnose themselves once they learn about all of the theories and the diagnoses like, “I have this.”
I was like, “I have all of them. I’m autistic. I have bipolar and I’m narcissistic.” I have watched that Hoarders TV show before. That’s what I watch when I have to clean my house because they are saying the exact same thing I have said. They are like, “I might need it someday.” I’m like, “I have definitely said that.” That’s why I’m very interested in this book that you are writing.
The other thing I do in the book is show readers how to conduct a therapy session with their characters. I teach you the psychology and then I have a chapter where we do a therapy session with your characters based on the psychological principles that I taught you. It should be pretty cool. Look out for that one.
What’s it going to be called again?
The Psychology of Character Design for Authors: Applying 3D Principles to Create Dynamic Characters. It’s a pretty long title.
That’s so exciting. There’s this challenge when you are working full-time and writing on the side and you are trying to make that transition to writing full-time or in the meantime, you are doing both for some amount of time. If you don’t have the luxury of somebody paying your household bills and being able to do it on the side, you can be doing it on your own. Can you talk to me a little bit about burnout and what your experience is with that and overcoming or working around it?
Burnout is real. It’s a debilitating state to be in. I have burnt out twice. One was this summer because I ghostwrite as well. I had a client who was a lot. After I finished working with that client, I crashed. I could not do my stuff. Things were happening within my marriage. I’m going through a midlife crisis. It was horrible. Life came together and dropped on my shoulders and I crashed and burnt out.
I burnt out before when I was younger. I notice that my personality, I’m an A-type, which means I only try to do everything, but I do everything and I can do it pretty well, but I take one thought. I don’t know how to sit and be quiet. I don’t know how to not have anything to do. I subconsciously fill all of my time with little things. Your body begins to tell you, “This is a lot. We can’t do this,” but because of my personality, “We can. We are because you have done it before and you are successful at this,” but your body gives you signs.
What signs was your body giving you?
I was having headaches. I was super emotional, crying. When I thought about it like, “What am I crying about?” I was snapping at my kids, going to work to my 9:00 to 5:00 and not being motivated to write. You feel yourself withdrawing, but you keep pushing yourself or inserting yourself into life when your body’s like, “We need to take a break.” It was horrible because I’m a clinician.
I’m teaching high school students about, “It’s okay to not be okay.” I felt like a hypocrite because I’m like, “I’m not okay, but I can’t say no.” It was a lot of Psychology going on for me. I was snapping at the kids and at my husband, super emotional and on one day, everything stopped and I could not get out of bed, write and go to work. I had to admit to my boss, “I’m depressed.” He was super supportive, but I remember feeling a little bit embarrassed to have to say it.
Even just showing and not telling draws out an entire scene.
It’s very strange. To overcome that, I had to stop. I had to let stuff fall to the wayside. I had to not be there for people. I had to let people down and I’m putting that in the inverted commas. I can’t be there for you. I had to show up for myself. I had to be okay with not meeting everyone else’s expectations at the expense of myself and my family. I had to stop.
My shoulders are lowering as you say that. These past years have been hard for everybody in a way that a lot of us are trying to acknowledge personally. This is hard. Societally is not being acknowledged. A lot of people, media, and things are acting like COVID is the only problem, but not all the emotional and mental stress that’s coming with it, plus then personal stuff happens on top of it.
We have reference to a time when things were pretty cool. The ’80s were pretty cool. I subconsciously remember when I was this age, but the reality is the kids born in this generation don’t have that reference point. It’s interesting to see them navigate COVID and technology and how quickly everything is changing. They are bouncing along, it seems, and we are struggling because we remember when things were better. These are the things that I think.
It seems everything’s been a little more challenging. It seemed like I had had a lot of personal things happen. I did an episode with what’s been going on with me the last few years, even without COVID. COVID and the general stress around that have made everything harder. Everything that goes wrong is a little worse than it would have been.
You let things go and you give. This might be going a little to your other career a little bit, but it’s useful for writers who are going through this. How do you be gentle with yourself when you are doing that? You can be gentle with yourself or blame yourself. There are a few different ways, but blame is a common one for a lot of women who especially think they should be doing better.
You have to recognize and accept that you are your greatest asset. All of the things that you value, like helping other people or being a support system for others, you can’t do any of that if you are not healthy. You have to acknowledge that without me, there’s nothing. I can’t help you if I’m not okay. I got to that point where I had to stop. I had to let things fall.
I had to let that one that was waiting for me to do the therapy session. I can’t do it because I’m not okay, but I will be able to do it when I am okay. I put myself first and it was gentle with myself to say that I’m worth it. Finding the self-worth and value in my gifts, skills, and who I am, earning that and prioritizing that. The boundaries are firm.
The minute I begin to feel drained or someone’s energy is impeding on my happiness or satisfaction. I have to put a boundary up. I’m strict with boundaries because I knew that I am my greatest asset and I can’t compromise that. It’s a top and it’s easier said than done but with practice, you say no, see how it feels. If someone say, “Can you do this?” “No.” See how it feels.
I have been setting boundaries a lot. One of the pros of COVID is that I have spent so much time by myself. I hopped on to Fortnite, the video game, for the first time, which is not typically my type of game, but I wanted to play and have fun. There was some kid in there who was a dick. In the end, after playing the game, I hopped in there to play with some other friends.
It was my first time ever. I’m like, “They are on here. We are all across the country. We can chat with each other. I don’t care if I win.” I want to talk with people I enjoy while maybe doing something goofy. There was this other kid who popped on. He was a dick. Afterward, I was like, “I have been so isolated that I have gotten used to not having anybody in my life that I don’t choose to have in my life anymore.” I have been very deliberate about who’s in my life and I don’t have to have anybody in my life. I don’t have anybody treat me that way anymore. I’m like, “That is a lovely thing. I’m used to a certain level of, ‘Who do I want in my life?’”
You are taking ownership of that.
There was a year of me eating a whole dozen of Krispy Kreme donuts every weekend. It was all I could do. People being gentle with themselves at that moment. You have been gentle because you have the training and you know what you are supposed to do, but a lot of people don’t. When you have that burnout and you are like, “I can’t write. I can’t do what I committed to do. I can’t take care of my kids.” It’s horrible.
Especially if maybe you have had some income coming from that and you won’t because you can’t. Let me know if this is your experience, too. My experience is the harder I am on myself, the more time it takes me to get better. It’s a downward spiral of like, “I’m not doing well.” “You are not doing well.” I’m like, “You are right.” They get worse and worse versus if I can at least remain neutral or gentle and I’m like, “I’m not doing well and it sucks. Let me eat some Krispy Kreme donuts and be zoned out.” Gradually, with the medication, I get better. What do you think?
I have a positive psychology theoretical orientation, which means that when I have clients who would come, I don’t believe in sitting in problems for sessions upon sessions. I don’t do that. I don’t see the point in it. I will listen so we can process it, but eventually, by the third session, we will probably talk about what you are doing right. We are going to talk about a time when you didn’t feel that way and what was happening during that time so that we can implement or recreate that situation.
That’s how I attack problems. I don’t believe in sitting in the problem. Why are we talking about the problem? How is that helping me? It’s not. Let’s talk about what I’m good at and augment that so that you can feel success and then that can be the foundation for you moving forward. I think that answered the question.
I love that because it’s a practical thing that people can do. I’m bringing it back to burnout because it’s stressful. Not everybody has a husband who is like, “Go for it,” providing that emotional support, maybe financial, who knows. Not everybody has that. The practical thing is that if you do find yourself in burnout or suspect that you might be reaching some burnout and don’t want to, I have notebooks on top of notebooks.
Every time I go to Target, Walmart or any store that has stationary, I browse through the notebook aisle to see if there’s anything I like. I take one of my notebooks and I will sit down. I will be like, “I will take that positive thing. When did I feel good? What was working? What did I like about it? How can I recreate that?” I write it down. I have periods in my life where I have done that every day. Sometimes I don’t. I’m not perfect, but one of my favorite quotes is, “Celebrate your progress,” because we tend to celebrate the final.
Find the self-worth and the value in your gifts and who you are. Learn and prioritize that and know the boundaries.
We look at the final destination and we are like, “I can’t celebrate until I get there.” That destination constantly moves, so we never get there. I like stopping. Another way is to look at where you were years or months ago? Have you learned anything or made some progress? Is there something that you did not know then? That’s something to celebrate and be on the positive side and then in setting boundaries. That’s so hard.
It is hard, but it’s very satisfying once you are able to get the hang of it.
In my Boss Up program, I have a whole section about setting boundaries. There could be years of therapy about setting boundaries. I have a whole, tiny section, but it’s one of the most important because it keeps you from burnout. It keeps you putting yourself first, which can be so hard. For the women I coach, it’s one of the hardest things. You overcame burnout and then you started writing again?
I did, once I felt motivated with that support from my husband, my colleagues and counseling, going to therapy myself. I was like, “I’m back.” I’m easing into it, being very mindful not to overextend myself or say yes to everything or too much. I’m easing back into real life. My kids were super.
How did that turn into quitting your job?
It breathed out of it. My husband was like, “Why don’t you quit?” I was like, “What?” In Bermuda, the cost of living is very high. It’s ridiculously high, but to match that, we make a lot of money. The job that I had was a six-figure job. My husband was like, “Just quit.” I’m like, “What? What do you mean quit?” He pulled out the calculator. He was like, “We could do this. We will have to sacrifice a bit, but I believe in you.” My jaw was hanging. I was like, “Okay.” It came out of, “Do what you love. Life is a blip on the radar. Go for it.” That was how I moved into that.
I have a woo-woo on a spiritual level. Sometimes the negative things happen in order to push you. The universe is like, “This is not your path. We are going to make it worse and worse until you realize that you need to change paths.”
Even when I did not get that promotion, had I gotten that promotion, I would have had to stop writing because I would have been so busy managing a department. Everything happened for a reason. I agree with you.
That’s powerful. I cannot wait to see what happens. Let’s reach out. We will talk about writing shorter. We will talk about your book and how you are doing after going full-time. I’m very curious. This will be so much fun. I like to follow up and a lot of people like that too, especially when you are starting. You have got a little bit under your belt and you are like, “Full throttle. ” To see where you are at and then where you are going would be fun.
That would be awesome and even great for me to benchmark this is what I said, this is where I am. That would be pretty cool.
You can read this and be like, “Celebrating progress.” What is the best advice that you would give other authors?
We have talked about so much. Never give up. If you believe in your dream, then go for it. I like how you said, “Celebrating the progress, little steps.” There are milestones that you reach. You were making $100 and $150. That’s progress. It may not be the thousands that you want, but it’s progress. Never giving up, always getting better, writing every day.
Celebrate your progress, even the little milestones.
As authors, we must be disciplined to write every day, always learning, always putting ourselves in positions to acquire knowledge, even this show, one of the first resources that I tapped into, even how you are starting back up again, anyone who’s connected to this show. You have tons of resources available, growing as an author. We never knew everything. Shout out to Ella and the show.
Hop in, take advantage of what she has to offer, continuing to grow, reading other author’s book, inside and outside of our genre. We want to read who else writes what we write, but we also want to tap into other genres, techniques, and skills employed in other forms or styles of writing. Attend writers’ workshops. Finally, not being afraid to push yourself creatively, like how you write interracial. You have Black guys as the lead. You put them on the covers, pushing the limits and not being afraid to do that. That’s the advice that I would give.
I have Black women in my books, too, but they are not on the covers. All my covers are man chest. The women don’t get a spot on the covers because I thought about doing that and realized that putting women on the covers doesn’t sell. I have a variety. We got Latinos. We got Filipino. I have got them all in there, but the men are on the cover being abs. We want abs. It’s not my least favorite thing either. I don’t mind them.
I want to iterate also my best advice, and maybe this is where I’m at from what you have said, having to never give up. Keep all of the advice you gave in the context of setting boundaries so that you can do all those things, so you have the space, mental energy, and wherewithal to keep writing every day, keep learning, and rig it up. If that means setting boundaries and saying, “I can’t do that,” you deserve it.
You sure do. You are worth it.
Where is the best place for people to find you?
My website is under construction, but if people want to see my books and stuff, they can give you my Amazon author page, Brooklyn Knight. You will see all of my current books as well as the ones that will be coming up.
What’s your website going to be?
Thank you so much for being here.
Thank you for having me. This has been awesome. It’s been so much fun to talk, very thought-provoking.
I appreciate you letting me take on my little tangent. Thank you, everybody.
Important Links:
About Brooklyn Knight
Brooklyn Knight is a romance enthusiast who lives in the island of Bermuda and has been writing stories since she was a little girl. Over the years, her gift for designing and bringing characters to life has evolved, and she enjoys creating vivid, memorable characters and unforgettable situations. Her characters are thought-provoking and evocative; and they will draw emotion out of you like water from a well.
