For storytellers who want an exciting, empowering relationship with their creativity
A 12-week live nervous system empowerment course for storytellers who are done letting the thing they love feel like proof they're not good enough.
Led by certified & trauma-informed book coach Adra Blake Hartley
Starts July 1 · 12 weeks live · Includes a private community room · Live story coaching available in Studio Access
"Every time I talk to Adra, I learn something new about my own creative process and how to better support my nervous system."
— Kristin Dwyer, Bestselling Author
In Time With You · The Atlas of Us · Some Mistakes Were Made
This isn't another craft class. The Thriving Writer is a course about what gets in the way of writing consistently & confidently —{" "} and how to change it.
Join Kristin Dwyer and Adra Blake Hartley for a 12-week live nervous system empowerment course{" "} that gets at the root of why so many talented, dedicated writers keep getting in their own way.
You'll leave with more than new skills.{" "} You'll leave knowing how to regulate your nervous system and relate to yourself — not just as a writer, but as the author of your life.
What sets this apart
Most writing courses teach craft. Some teach mindset. A few teach productivity. The Thriving Writer teaches something none of those do:{" "} how to work with your body's determination to keep you safe, instead of fighting against natural survival techniques.
Not just regulation — the capacity to move toward what you want and receive the success you desire.
Body-based tools that show your system it's safe to express yourself and be seen.
Why you protect yourself the way you do — and how to work with it instead of against it.
Science-backed methods to update what your nervous system believes is safe, possible, and allowed.
Tuning in to your deepest fears with curiosity — to support them, not shame them.
The unapologetic freedom to want what you want and embrace what makes you uniquely you.
When you combine these things, you don't just write better. You become whole as a person — someone who shows up fully, creates from alignment, and moves forward with clarity and self-trust.
Why effort alone isn't enough to reach your goals
You've committed harder. Made schedules. Told yourself you just need to be more disciplined, more consistent, more serious. You've read the books, listened to the podcasts, maybe taken a workshop or few.
Those all probably helped for a while, but then the patterns came back. Self-doubt, procrastination, imposter syndrome: common stress responses to something that feels very high stakes.
That's not a failure of effort. That's what happens when you try to override a nervous system response with willpower. You can push through for a time, but your body will find a way to pull you back to what feels familiar and known. Because familiar and known is safe, even if it's not desired.
Your nervous system's number one job is to keep you alive. That means the patterns you hate most — procrastination, self-doubt, the freeze before the blank page — aren't failures. They're protection. Your nervous system isn't sabotaging you. It's doing exactly what it is supposed to do, brilliantly.
You can't write your way past fear by forcing it. But you can change your relationship to it. Learning to interrupt those protective patterns with curiosity and kindness, not criticism, is what changes everything.
Regulation isn't enough. We must learn how to relate to ourselves with kindness, care, and patience. Because we're human. Self-criticism only makes our experiences harder. And the dysregulation more frequent and intense. We then get stuck in self-protective patterns and stress responses. These aren't character flaws. They're signals that your nervous system needs more support.
You don't need more motivation. Or willpower. You don't need more discipline. You don't need another cool notebook (but get it anyway). You're not lazy, broken, or untalented.
Your nervous system needs more support.
You can't think your way out of stress or survival mode. You have to show your body it's safe to be safe. That being successful isn't a threat. Especially when writing can be vulnerable and publication requires you to be more visible in the world.
Disempowered to Empowered
This is what the move from surviving to thriving actually looks like.
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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 The Thriving Writer.
Not as a craft course. Not as another productivity system. But as the thing I wish had existed when I was spending thousands of dollars and years of my life trying to figure out why I kept getting in my own way.
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. Support. And the tools to change.
Adra is a certified book coach, motivational speaker, young adult author, and trauma-informed somatic practitioner specializing in nervous system empowerment and inner relationship coaching.
After a decade at the intersection of storytelling and somatic healing, Adra created The Thriving Writer around the piece she'd spent years searching for:{" "} not craft or discipline, but the nervous system support that makes both possible.
She guides people to better understand the language of their bodies — because the nervous system governs everything: how safe we feel, how freely we can express and create, and how much we allow ourselves to receive the good in life.
"This is it. 10 years of education and experience in one course, so you don't have to struggle like I did."— Adra
In their words
What past clients have to say about working with Adra.
I came to Adra with major imposter syndrome. From the start, she provided a safe space and gave me her thoughtful, clear-eyed, and warm attention and support. As a manuscript editor, she identified what I was doing well and quickly found my storytelling blind spots — her attention focused on what I was trying to do and where I was falling short of my own ambitions. 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
I honestly couldn't ask for a better coach than Adra. Her pacing, delivery, knowledge, and thorough support was really powerful and helped me to progress through the materials and integrate what we were learning into my daily life. 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 experiences and 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
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. Each conversation was insightful, respectful and showed how deeply Adra cares about her writers and their stories. My characters and I both are endlessly grateful to have worked with her. Her comments, coaching call and reflective questioning have all made me a better writer.
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. Throughout this program, I developed a profound kindness towards myself that has allowed me to be with myself no matter what state I am in. I leave this program feeling stronger, capable, and excited for life.
L.S.
The program Adra created is an eye opening opportunity to see one's life with hope, regardless of where you are or where you've been in your life.
Laurie
"Every time I talk to Adra, I learn something new about my own creative process and how to better understand my nervous system, so I can not only support myself but accept myself."
Kristin Dwyer
New York Times & USA Today Bestselling Author
In Time With You · The Atlas of Us · Some Mistakes Were Made
Come as the main character of your story. Leave as the author of your life.
Weeks 1–5
Understand your unique nervous system, map your pathways to safety, and expand your capacity for what you actually want so you can achieve your goals with more joy and ease.
Weeks 6–7
Work with your body's energy through somatic expression — practices that create nervous system resiliency and help you access the creative aliveness that lives in your nervous system.
Weeks 8–10
Meet your self-sabotage with curiosity. Befriend your fears, heal the worthiness wound, and better support your capacity for success.
Weeks 11–12
Integrate everything, name your unique creative superpowers, and build a new relationship to ambition — one rooted in wholeness, not wounding.
What you walk away with
What becomes possible when you expand your capacity to achieve your creative desires.
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.
2 hours each — teaching, guided practice, and live interaction with handouts. Wednesdays, 4PM PT / 7PM ET, starting July 1.
Core Access — The Price of Nice: Stop People-Pleasing and Reclaim Your Right to Be Real · A New View of Commitment: Living & Creating from Alignment. Replays available.
Studio Access — Everything in Core, plus 3 live story coaching calls with Adra.
Practices and techniques that build week by week by design into a complete personal toolkit you keep long after the course ends.
Weekly discussion threads and a room of writers doing this work alongside you. Studio Access includes a private coaching room with Adra.
The curriculum
Most writers have spent years believing something is wrong with them. This week you'll find out there isn't. You'll get a personalized map of your nervous system and begin to understand why it responds the way it does.
Safety or success? No. Safety and success — you get both. This week we look at what co-regulation is and why you need it for capacity, and you'll identify your core pathways of connection. This is also where we begin to develop your somatic literacy — the language your body speaks in.
The gap between what you desire and what you can currently hold isn't a motivation problem. It's a capacity problem. And once you understand that, everything changes.
Unbeknownst to us, even the foods and fasting habits we deem healthy can keep our nervous system in fight or flight. Learning how to eat for peace — not just health — is the first vital step in creating inner balance and helping your nervous system settle into regulation.
Rest isn't laziness. Joy isn't a reward. Pleasure isn't a luxury. This session explores how each one directly supports your nervous system — and your creative life — and why learning to receive now is fundamental to being able to accept and keep the things you want.
Take everything you're learning about your own nervous system and bring it to the page. This call explores how capacity and desire work in your character's arc of transformation — how to write survival responses, protective patterns, and emotional truth in a way that makes your characters more authentic, real, and relatable to readers, and easier for you to understand and write.
This call is available to Studio Access ticket holders only. Saturdays, 9AM PT. It's 75 minutes.
Beneath thought, beneath the stories we tell ourselves about what's possible, there is emotion. And beneath what we label as emotion, there is simply energy. This week explores how emotional energy moves through the body — and how the stories we carry, the words we use, and the beliefs we hold about ourselves create real somatic responses. This is where somatic literacy becomes somatic practice.
Your brain is wired for story — and predictability. It automatically searches for meaning and patterns, but we can interrupt its process and, within the power of the pause, make different choices. This week you learn why our brains limit our freedom of choice — and how to introduce new, lived-proof experiences so the brain stops detecting your desires as threats.
Connect to your writing purpose, your story's essence, and your characters from the inside out — and explore how your characters react somatically to the meaning they make out of their experiences, drawing directly on what you're learning about yourself in this course. You won't have to figure out the plot anymore. You'll feel through it.
This call is available to Studio Access ticket holders only. Saturdays, 9AM PT. It's 75 minutes.
This week we look at the most common protective patterns — procrastination, perfectionism, inner criticism, imposter syndrome, and self-doubt — and the roles they've been playing to keep you safe. Understanding not only their job, but their concerns and worries for you, is the first step to working with them instead of against them.
✦ Special live demonstration with Kristin Dwyer
People pleasing is one of the most common and least recognized protective patterns in writers. This mini-workshop looks at how it shows up in your creative life, why your nervous system learned it, and how to begin gently interrupting it so you can reclaim your right to thrive.
Saturdays, 9AM PT. 90 minutes with optional Q&A at the end.
There is no such thing as a fear of success. We are meant to thrive. This week goes deeper — discovering how fears prevent you from having what you want because of the risks and exposure involved. This week is dedicated entirely to the befriending fears work — live, in real time, with Adra.
We create from wholeness, not deficit. This week we look at the wound underneath the ambition to be good enough — the moment when you made sense of something that happened and built a self-concept around it.
This call bridges everything you've explored about your own wounds, worthiness, and inner healing — and brings it directly to the page. Explore how your characters carry their wounds, how those wounds shape their choices and beliefs, and how to write transformation that feels true because it is.
This call is available to Studio Access ticket holders only. Saturdays, 9AM PT. It's 75 minutes.
This week we look at ambition from a new angle — not only the gap it creates, but where what we desire is already present in our lives. We shift from creating from need to creating from want. From pressure to purpose. This way, we are no longer dependent on external achievements — we are free to embrace and enjoy the creative process.
Commitment not as a promise you make to yourself, but as a way of being. A person you become. This is the identity shift that makes everything else sustainable.
Saturdays, 9AM PT. 90 minutes with optional Q&A at the end.
Just as Week 1 gave you a map of your unique nervous system, Week 12 gives you a map of your unique creative gifts. You're not just a writer. You're a creative being — and this week you'll start to understand how your particular creative energy wants to be used, where it wants to go, and who it wants to serve.
The shift
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Ready to begin
"These questions — “What's wrong with me? Why does this happen?” — are ones I've heard from almost every client I've worked with. And here's what I know to be true: nothing is wrong with you. Your nervous system is doing exactly what it learned to do.
The Thriving Writer is where that changes."
— Adra
Starts July 1 · 12 weeks · Live calls with Adra Blake Hartley · Private community room with weekly discussion threads · Live story coaching available in Studio Access
Common questions
The Thriving Writer begins July 1. Live calls run weekly for 12 weeks on Wednesdays at 4PM PT / 7PM ET, and include occasional bonus calls on Saturdays at 9AM PT / 11AM ET, with recordings available for every session.
All sessions are recorded and made available shortly after each call.
Most of the practices and techniques can be done in seconds and minutes, which is what makes them so powerful. They are efficient and effective at supporting your nervous system. Each live call runs up to 2.5 hours, which includes an optional Q&A at the end. Breaks are planned. Most calls will run 90 minutes to 2 hours and be very interactive.
No. This course teaches you how to regulate your nervous system, work with your protective patterns, and build the inner capacity to actually show up for the writing you already know how to do. Think of it as the foundation everything else rests on. Studio Access does include Live Story Coaching so you can integrate what you're learning about human psychology and physiology onto the page.
Not at all. The course starts from the ground up. Week 1 gives you a complete map of your unique nervous system — no prior knowledge required. Everything is explained in accessible, practical terms.
Yes. This course is for writers at every stage — aspiring, emerging, and established. If you're writing, or wanting to write, this work is for you.
This course is educational and somatic — it gives you tools, frameworks, and practices to understand and work with your nervous system. It is not therapy and does not replace it. That said, many participants find the work complements their existing therapeutic support beautifully.
This course is intended to be inclusive and offer new perspectives and practices for supporting your body's capacity — not override or push past where you currently are, regardless of where you desire to be. That said, I defer to you to understand your brain and body best (you live there, not me) and am committed to offering a collaborative approach that ensures you are respected, understood, and supported.
Core students will have access to all call replays and resources for six months after the course completion date. Studio students will be granted lifetime access.
If you complete the first two weeks of the course and feel it isn't right for you, please reach out and we'll make it right. I want you here because it's genuinely the right fit — not because you felt stuck.