Dear Writer, You Need to Quit (QuitBooks for Writers, #1)

by Becca Syme

There is no silver bullet.

Stop expecting things to be easy. That’s an unrealistic expectation that will never serve you. It will only handicap you.

Alignment is symmetry between your self and your systems.

Question the premise.

Let’s try a premise that commonly comes up with writers. You can’t edit a blank page. But can’t you?

I love love love this! I have questioned this ever since I heard Becca on the Spa Girls podcast talking about this!

Well, it turns out, you can edit a blank page. If you have certain Strengths®2, one of the hallmarks of how your brain works is that you’re editing in your head, before you ever put words down on the page. This is part of how you get your gold. In fact, your best work is going to come when you edit the page in your head, instead of on paper or on the screen.

Intellection

The core premise of my Better-Faster Academy courses is that your productivity (your success) is a system. It’s made up of your environment, your personality, your platform, your resources, and your patterns.

Band-aids won't cure pneumonia.

The key stone, in masonry, is the stone that makes the arch possible. Although it’s small and bears less weight than the rest of the stones in an arch, the keystone is what makes the doorway round. It quite literally allows all of the other stones to bear their own weight. Keystone habits are similar.

The key to remember about systems thinking is that no decision happens in a vacuum. It doesn’t rain because someone is trying to ruin your day. It rains because of a complex set of weather factors, none of which have anything to do with you.

Your life is a complicated set of factors, any of which could be the reason for your success or failure. My Dear Writer… Quit Thinking in a Vacuum.

For the love of everything holy, STOP CHANGING ALL THE THINGS. All of you.

most of us are spending way too much time worrying about marketing and advertising and platform building, because we’ve never thought to QTP

The first step is always acceptance. Because if you continue to hold unrealistic expectations in your head, it’s going to continue to cause you more pain. Some things, you just have to give up.

Second, once you’ve accepted, then prioritize.

pick the top priority only, and take some steps to strategically and intentionally impact that one big thing. Don’t overhaul the system, especially not at first. Take action to change the most important thing, and don’t let yourself back down from that.

Because we are all writers, then the best writers are examples of people to copy.

Because we’re in the same industry, then the most successful marketers are people to copy.

Because (insert famous writer here) says so, then I must do the thing.

Their system is not magic. Their alignment is magic. The way their system lines up with their brain, their goals, and their capacity is the magic thing.

People who wanted to write twelve books a year who could. And…

People who wanted to write twelve books a year who couldn’t.

Because some people need to think a lot in order to write a book, and the common productivity myth that tells people “just stop thinking and write” doesn’t actually help those people write faster. It actively stalls them.

Yet, time and again, when you talk to authors who are successful at the twelve-books-a-year system, what you get is a series of “just do it” comments (which, God bless them, works for them, and that’s awesome… but it doesn’t work for everyone). Or they credit a system for dictation and massive words per day by planning out scenes, stop thinking so hard, and don’t edit as you go.

Or told them they don’t “want it” enough. Or said, with this foolproof system, you can easily do what I do.

the natural assumption is that the ”wrong” thing in this equation is you. It’s not. Let’s just be clear.

There was nothing to be done about it. No amount of “just work harder” or “just ignore what’s going on” would work for her, because she’s wired to be responsive and impacted by the people around her in a way that her friends weren’t.

She’s just not wired to work hard at the expense of her emotional stability, or the stability of those around her.

Dear Writer, Please… Please Quit Trying To Be Like Everyone Else. Just be yourself.

Should you really do things “real quick” before you start writing? No. No, you should not—most of you.

When you get up in the morning, anticipation has already started building. I’m awake. I can now start the behaviors that will bring me so much satisfaction.

Have you ever questioned that premise? What about the premise that you should be reaching for your phone first thing in the morning? What about the premise that you should check your email or do other business before you start writing?

Because I do want you to question the premise of your defaults. Are the habits that you have working for you? Did you ever think about changing any of them?

The difference is, as storytellers, we know how to make conflict productive. Yet in our own lives, we reject conflict instead of embracing it for what it can offer us, learning what we can, releasing our emotions, and getting the work done.

One of the most common issues I see with people transitioning from hobby writing to professional writing is latching on to the belief that writing should be fun. Cue QTP voice: But… should it?

LOL it isn't, for me.

it’s not the “hardness” of writing that’s the problem, it’s the expectation. Plenty of things are hard and also worth it. Plenty of un-fun things are still worth doing. (Here’s looking at you, treadmill…)

The conventional wisdom about how to make work easier is to shore up and/or fix weaknesses. This comes from a long history of trying to figure out exactly what is wrong with us, and fixing those things. Like we could stop having weaknesses if we “fix” them all.

That has been roughly as effective as trying to dam the ocean. We will never stop having weaknesses.

as authors, we get fixated on weakness-fixing. On negative reviews. Like somehow, if we can remove every objectionable weakness from our writing, the readers will come a-runnin’. That’s not how this works.

The better-faster theory (in Write Better-Faster, which is the author systems course I developed) is based on the idea that, with the least resistance and the most capacity, you will have your greatest results.

So, the concept of getting “better-faster” (from my Write Better-Faster courses, and the Better-Faster Academy) is that place—the place of your alignment between personality, platform, patterns, resources, and environment—where you are wired for success, and where you are naturally going to get better-faster. Exponential success with alignment, applied intention, and time.

Two. You want 1-star and 2-star reviews. You want people to say bad things about your book. This is a signal that it’s being read by more than just your pet people. Bad reviews are book legitimizers, in the era of five-star-review-buying and small-team-review-padding. Celebrate those one-stars like a trophy, y’all.

Multiply your strengths (or Strengths®) and quit focusing on your weaknesses. Especially if you’ve been working on your craft for awhile.

Your development plan should consist of targeted learning based on what you’re already doing well. Study the techniques that lie underneath this capacity. Study other writers who do this better than you do. How are they doing it? (Not so you can plagiarize them—let me be clear—but so you can learn from their techniques.4)

It took you six or seven years to finish your first book. You get panicked that it’s going to take you seven years to finish every book.

Because, remember, your writing life is a system.

One: If you set an expectation of one book a month, that’s what your readers expect

The takeaway is: You have to stop setting expectations you can’t sustain. You have to. Or else, write a book a month for as long as you can, and keep the platform going for as long as you’re able, and then accept it when it crashes, or when you burn out. Don’t expect to keep doing that forever.

words. Every book has a plot. Every writer plots. Some do it before they write, and some do it while they write. But every single book has a plot—a series of events that, when strung together, tell a story. Every single story has a structure of some kind. Some are intentional, and some are discovered. (Remember Aristotle? Plots existed before we knew how to name and codify them.) But there’s no such thing as a writer who doesn’t have a plot of some kind.

what will fix it. Or you’ll spend all your time looking for answers in the next Facebook post or the next email loop chain.