Laura Jane Williams writes and travels the world. She explores beautiful, life-changing places and goes from one place to another, stopping only to take in the scenery and learn something new. When we spoke to her, she was in Rome and was enjoying the beautiful hot weather there. It was heatwave hot. But this is nothing new to Laura who has been travelling for ten years, with her trips ranging from working in Italy during the summers to backpacking around South East Asia.
“Being away and travelling made me want to diversify. Then, I got this agent who said ‘Oh, I’ve read about this book that you’ve been writing, do you wanna sign with me?’ It’s just been the weirdest most incredible year and it’s just been bizarre that one thing has lead to another to another to another, just because I trusted myself. I try to be very honest about the on-going process of liking yourself. It’s like having a girlfriend or a boyfriend: you have to work at that relationship every single day and sometimes they’ll piss you off! Sometimes I piss myself off and it’s like committing to staying in a relationship with myself in the same way you would put on lipstick and go out to the cinema to watch some shitty film that your boyfriend wanted to go see! You have to still do that stuff with yourself.”
Now, she’s got herself a book deal and her memoir, BECOMING, will be released in June 2016. Here’s all you need to know about our favourite new author/traveler/superstar.
Taylor Magazine: Tell us a bit about yourself and how you started travelling.
Laura Jane Williams: I’ve been writing for years and years. I was a copywriter, then I did some freelance writing and worked in PR. I’d get told that I was so lucky that I got to write for a living but it wasn’t the writing that I wanted to do. Two days before my 28th birthday, I got let go from this job I had and I took it as an opportunity to be like “I’m gonna be really purposeful with my life!” I had some money saved up but I didn’t have this plan that I would start travelling the world and freelance and live the dream. I just trusted myself. I’d been working on this book for ages so I focused all my energy on that and I got picked up by Thought Catalog, who wanted me to freelance for them because I was writing so honestly on my own blog. From there everything sort of snowballed.
Taylor Magazine: What inspired you to come up with the ‘Ask The Question’ idea?
Laura Jane Williams: Once I said “I’ve got a one-way ticket to Bali and I don’t know what will happen,” people started to pay a different kind of attention and I found myself getting reems and reems of emails. People were very generous with what they said, a lot of people said I was an inspiration or that I made them feel braver about their own lives.
People would come to me looking for advice and I found myself saying, “I don’t have the answers, please don’t think that because I’m happy I know what the formula for being happy is!” I just explained that I’m really good at asking myself the difficult questions and from that I realised I don’t want to put myself in a position where somehow I seem superior. ‘Ask the Question’ was designed as a way for me to say, “If you wanna come along with me and you wanna know these really difficult questions that I’m asking myself, sign up! I’ll share what I’m grappling with and I’ll ask you the same question and you can answer it however you want.”
Taylor Magazine: So you gave them the freedom to contribute and get involved as much as they wanted to?
Laura Jane Williams: Yeah exactly! It felt like a really natural fit for me and how I want to build my brand moving forward. It’s really important to me to never present myself as somebody who has the answers… because I don’t.
Taylor Magazine: What do you think it is about you as a person that attracts people? There’s something about you that makes you so likeable and makes people feel like they know you!
Laura Jane Williams: It’s really good to hear that! Because I’m working with an agent and I’m making money from my blog now, I do refer to myself as a brand but I’m able to differentiate between that brand and who I am as a person. ‘Ask The Question’ is newsletter from me to my mates. I told people how much I earn at the beginning of the year, I’m not a millionaire, I’m just a normal girl. I also think a lot of travel or lifestyle bloggers or are unattainably beautiful, perfect specimens and I’m just not.
Taylor Magazine: Was there anything in particular that happened where you needed to be the one to love yourself?
Laura Jane Williams: Yeah, the memoir that I’m writing is about my ex (who was pretty much the man I thought I was going to marry) who dumped me and married a girl who used to be my best friend. I really hit rock bottom. It was humiliating and upsetting and I’d lost a really good friend and my boyfriend who I’d been with since I was a teenager. I just did not know myself at all. I was really promiscuous for a really long time and just a really shitty not whole human being. I was actually living in Rome when I made the decision that I was going to spend the year celibate (which everybody thought was hilarious). But I was finding my value.
Taylor Magazine: What’s been the trip that’s been the most pivotal, most exciting, most adventurous?
Laura Jane Williams: I’ve gotten something different from all of them. Going to Siberia was amazing but it was a once in a lifetime experience in that I would just never go back… I’m not rushing to go back to somewhere where it’s so cold! Bali was phenomenal. I felt really at peace in Bali, and Italy. Every time I’m in Italy I feel like I learn something else about myself, and Bali has sensual and deep and mysterious energy.
Taylor Magazine: Do you still see England as home? Would you like to live in England for the majority the year?
Laura Jane Williams: No haha! I love London but as a city it costs so much money just to exist, I can’t justify spending that money for a lifestyle that isn’t actually that amazing. My budget for Rome was pretty much the same as what my budget for Bali was. The cost of living is actually quite similar! To eat it shouldn’t cost fifty quid just to go out with your friends and in Rome and Bali you can spend eight pounds and eat really well.
Taylor Magazine: Where do you see yourself living?
Laura Jane Williams: I just read about a guy, his name is Collin and he was saying that he makes less than $30,000 a year which is about £20,000 and he spends four months at a time going from place to place to place. I think I could do maybe three months at a time. It’s a nice amount of time to get an apartment or a base in a place, explore and get to grips with it and then move on to the next thing.
Taylor Magazine: Tell us a bit about “The Book of Brave!”
Laura Jane Williams: I launched an e-book called ‘The Book of Brave’ but basically it’s about having the adventure of your own life. The one thing I know about myself is that I am genuinely a happy person. Even when I’m miserable, I vibrate at a high level because I’ve done the difficult work and asked the difficult questions. There’s nothing anybody could say to me that isn’t worse than a conversation I’ve had with myself. I trust myself because I don’t judge myself. So yeah, the e-book is a couple of thousand words of ‘Fucking trust yourself because you’re amazing.’ Go forth and be brave and cool.
We suggest you buy The Book Of Brave here and be prepared to feel pretty good about yourself. Laura has a knack for making you feel like you are brave, empowered and fearless. And if you have a day when you feel like the total opposite and want to eat pizza, question your life and choices, Laura talks about that too. Enjoy!
