Book Coaching

Your Daily Reality

You sit down with every intention to write. Instead, you check email — just quickly. Then Instagram. Then you remember you needed to know more about 14th century cartography for your story, so down that rabbit hole you go. An hour passes. The cursor is still blinking at you, unimpressed. So you grab your favorite craft book, flipping through it, hoping the answer to writing what comes next is in those pages instead of your own.

We call that procrastination,
but it's actually protection.

Inner Criticism · Self-Sabotage · Doubt · Rumination · Perfectionism · Inability to Focus · Lack of Motivation · Fix-Yourself Mindset · Imposter Syndrome · Procrastination

It's not you.
It's your nervous system.

These are protective patterns, not personality traits. They're signals for support. Which is good news. You can change your experience.

Not with more willpower, motivation, or discipline. What you need is more support.

There's a kinder way.

You don't have to quit. You don't have to lose what you love, or have it prove you're not good enough. Every writing struggle or setback doesn't have to validate a disempowering story you have about yourself.

Welcome to a more exciting & empowering relationship with your creativity.

The Anchor

How you show up on the page traces back to one thing: how you're relating to your creativity. As a hobby or past time. Or as an essential part to being alive + human + fully self-expressed.

Every "yes" to someone else has quietly become a "no" to your creativity. It's time to stop over-giving, so you have the energy to follow your soul's calling.

Sound Familiar?

I specialize in coaching women writers who...

Over-function and over-give, in every relationship — including the one with their manuscript
Can't stop saying yes to everyone else's deadlines while their own book waits
Have become everyone's editor, therapist, and go-to — and no one's priority, least of all their own writing
Are exhausted from giving everything, and want their story to matter too
Are watching their book stay unwritten while life passes by
Know they have a book in them, but don't know how to claim the time to write it
Are done pouring from an empty cup onto everyone's pages but their own
Want to matter, too — and want their story to matter

What It's Costing You

On paper, your life is good. Maybe even great. Which is exactly why the meh is so hard to admit, let alone explain.

There's always something else. The inbox, the errand, the person who needs you right now. The book waits, untended, at the bottom of a list that never actually ends.

And yet something in you has dimmed. Not dramatically. Quietly. The one thing you want for yourself is always the thing that gets moved to tomorrow.

Creativity isn't frivolous — something to get to once everyone else is taken care of. Creativity is your self-expression, and it's essential to thriving.

What's Possible

"I now believe my creativity has every right to thrive. So do I."

You get to write what's true, not what you feel like you have to explain or justify. You become the woman, and the author, you're proud to be. You stop watching your story pass by and start writing it.

Settled in who you are. Proud of the pages you create.

Your Creative Life as a Thriving Writer

You understand what's been in the way of writing consistently and confidently, and what your nervous system needs to be regulated.
You befriend your fears instead of fighting them. Curiosity and self-attunement become your way through.
You feel safer being seen. Sharing your work. Taking up space.
You have the courage to write authentically and explore deeper creative work.
You create from wholeness, not deficit. From purpose, not pressure.
You feel empowered, confident, and capable — because you finally understand yourself.
You know how to nourish and support yourself through all seasons of creativity, with a deeper sense of self-trust.
You approach your creative career with clarity and conviction, and you know you can advocate for yourself.

How We Get There

Kinder Book Coaching with Adra gets at what's actually underneath the procrastination, the self-doubt, the blank page dread. Your nervous system isn't sabotaging you. It's protecting you. And you can't write your way past that with more discipline, more schedules, or more willpower.

You stop abandoning yourself, and your book, and come home to your own aliveness.

Through nervous system regulation, deep awareness practices, and real manuscript coaching — a way of working that meets you and your story exactly where you are, not where you think you should be.

Meet Adra Hartley Blake

Adra is a certified book coach and trauma-informed somatic practitioner, with 20 years in education and 15 spent exclusively in health and well-being.

She works with women who've spent years giving everything to everyone else, including their own stories, helping them understand the language of their nervous systems, so they can stop abandoning themselves and finally write the book only they can write.

Certified Book Coach · Trauma-Informed Somatic Practitioner · Motivational Speaker · YA Author

A Note from Adra

I've been in the publishing industry since 2015. I've read the books, attended the retreats and conferences, worked with book coaches, pitched agents in person. I spent 10 years and thousands of dollars trying to make my dream come true, but one core piece was missing.

I didn't realize how my body was protecting me from what comes with success: the fear of being seen, the risk of judgment, the pressure to write what will sell, the fear of being too much, or not enough. Visibility and exposure that felt like danger to my nervous system.

Which meant I was stuck in patterns I couldn't even see, let alone break. I just thought I needed more willpower. To try harder. To find a better plotting method.

I did everything you're supposed to do.

Nothing moved me forward into brave, authentic writing until I discovered how to regulate and relate to my nervous system. That's when everything changed. I stopped blaming myself and started helping myself.

That's why I created Kinder Book Coaching.

Not a craft course. Not another productivity system. What I wish had existed was someone in my corner, one-on-one, paying attention to me specifically, not a curriculum built for the average writer in a cohort of strangers.

If any part of this sounds familiar, it's not because you're not talented enough, not disciplined enough, not serious enough, and don't already know enough.

It's because you need what I needed. Real support, tailored to you, not a program running on autopilot.

Now, as a certified book coach and trauma-informed somatic practitioner, with twenty years in project management that sounds like it has nothing to do with writing, but taught me everything about how humans function under pressure and what it actually takes to build systems that work with your capacity instead of against it, I built Kinder Book Coaching around one-on-one work. Deep, individualized support, because that's the thing that actually changes how you write, and how you relate to yourself while you're writing.

— Adra

Adra's Coaching Superpower

Adra is a certified somatic practitioner specializing in nervous system regulation, parts work, and self-attunement.

These are the exact tools that dissolve the protective patterns that keep a book unwritten: procrastination, imposter syndrome, the inner critic, self-doubt. Not willpower. Not another productivity system. The nervous system underneath it.

Adra also has 20 years in project management, so she understands how to move from page one to done, while also honoring your body's capacity — with less pushing and pressure, more purpose and clarity.

Why This Work

This isn't just what I do. It's who I am.

I'm wired for this at the core. It's the part of me that's always seen the whole picture, and that's always been drawn to transformation on a human, not just individual, scale. Helping women belong in their own lives, and finish the books only they can write, isn't incidental to who I am. It's the throughline.

Underneath that, I'm a foundation builder. The work I do, helping women come back to themselves, regulate their nervous systems, stop abandoning their own inner signal, is literally about rebuilding the internal foundation a book gets written on.

And it's personal. Relationships, love, devotion, the places we give ourselves away to the people we love, that's terrain I've had to learn to navigate myself. I'm not coaching from a distance. I've walked this path.

Underneath "wanting to matter," what you're really building is sovereignty: the ability to lead your own life, and finish your own book, on your own terms.

Kind Words

"I came to Adra with major imposter syndrome. As a manuscript editor, she identified what I was doing well and quickly found my storytelling blind spots. Her feedback made me feel absolutely seen as a writer. I've never gotten feedback that felt so true, as though it came from the wisest parts of myself. With Adra, I learned so much, in what felt like a sacred place."

— Claudia

"Adra has a tenderness with characters that I didn't know I needed. Her thoughtful questions and insights provided me with the opportunity to look deeper within myself and my story, and allowed me to pull out more than I could have imagined. My characters and I both are endlessly grateful to have worked with her."

— Lauren

"I didn't just learn tools to help regulate my nervous system, I learned about my unique nervous system and identified what can cause activation and what helps to keep me balanced. I developed a profound kindness towards myself that has allowed me to be with myself no matter what state I am in. I leave feeling stronger, capable, and excited to write."

— L.S.

"Adra is incredibly kind, understanding, and wise. She really listens and offers ideas and ways of thinking that made me feel seen and supported. I will forever be grateful for her guidance."

— Lori

"Adra is incredible. The questions she asks and the journaling exercises she leads you through will lead to discoveries that are so insightful. I feel more empowered and aware of myself and my patterns."

— Stephanie

"The program Adra created is an eye-opening opportunity to see one's life, and one's story, with hope, regardless of where you are or where you've been."

— Laurie