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

by Becca Syme

If there was “one” guiding principle for transformation that works, it would be: alignment2. Alignment is symmetry between your self and your systems. Between your purpose, your personality, your platform, your capacity, and your goals.

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.

keystone habits are little tweaks that bring a broken or malfunctioning

system into alignment and allow it to bear weight again.

Keystone habits are not systems themselves. They are small and often unobtrusive things th...

As a writer, you don’t get stuck in a book because you’re stupid. You get stuck in a book because there’s something off in your system.

You checked your phone first thing in the morning. The story hasn’t cooked enough in your brain for you to start writing yet.

Their alignment is magic. The way their system lines up with their brain, their goals, and their capacity is the magic thing.

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.

Alignment. Is. Magic.

Because resistance is conflict, which causes tension, strife, frustration, consternation. We see it in our books all the time. 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.

Accepting that the pain is unavoidable will help your brain move through it. Welcoming pain takes away some of its power. And over time, the more acceptance you practice, the easier it will get to move past the “writing isn’t fun” moments.

“This should be easy” becomes “this isn’t easy, but being easy isn’t the most important thing. I still love X about my book, and I know it’s going to be worth writing.” “This is hard” becomes “this is challenging, and ‘challenging’ can be a very good thing for the book. Many of the best things in the world are challenging, and they’re worth the payoff. My book will be better for it.”

Because her strengths are more important than her weaknesses.

In order to stand out, you have to stand out. Which means that you have to be better than everyone else at something.

you’ll spend more time in your aligned place, and focus your development on getting better and better-faster in that

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)

Bottom line: developing Strengths® should be easier than trying to fix weaknesses. Because you have natural capacity in the areas where you’re strong already, there should be less resistance, but that doesn’t mean there will be none.

Because she’d been convinced to ignore the past. And here’s the really big problem. She let a fear of missing out on some kind of publishing gold rob her of the real publishing gold she’d already created. She had an amazing, deep, thoughtful process. She didn’t need to make career money. She could afford to honor her alignment and do what she wanted to do with her process.

First of all, not being a full-time writer DOES NOT equal failure.

And it isn’t just the presence or absence of the particular Strengths® or values. It’s a combination of factors. You need to understand every place where you might be losing productivity. Environment, motivation, capacity, system, history, platform, personality. Everything.

One: If you set an expectation of one book a month, that’s what your readers expect (minus the Amazon algorithms for a second—which is a different conversation all together). There’s every possibility (and I’ve seen it happen with more than just Allison and Michelle) that you’ll need to keep that up in order to keep up your income level.

Two: If your system starts to push back on you, there’s nothing you can do about it. Your system is too big and too complicated, and the factors are probably going to be hard for you to isolate. You can’t just keep going and expect your system to adjust when it isn’t adjusting. If you don’t adapt, you will burn out. Three: Remember at the beginning of this chapter, where you asked if I’d ever coached someone who had listened to me before they burned out? Well, Allison did. She slowed down, she adjusted, and it cost her. Some of you may be tempted to take away something from that lesson that I don’t intend.

You have to stop setting expectations you can’t sustain. You

But be cautious of the expectations you set. You’re creating a pattern that will be with you awhile.

Pants-ing vs. plotting. First of all, cue the QTP voice for me for a second: why do you automatically accept that you should be one or the other of these things? Because writers throw this around a lot? Because it seems to be reasonable? Because you identify with one more than the other?

If you are wired to be a great plan-ahead plotter, then stop trying to be a discovery writer. If you are wired to be a great discovery writer, then quit assuming that plot-ahead planning will fix all your problems.

The danger is, when you’re not conscious of that attraction, and you get a pang of loneliness or boredom or distraction, you’re going back to those apps and getting more and more addicted.

Please, by all means, talk to your friends. But if it resonates for you, in the way you’re wired, consider writing first. Before you get on social media. Before you open email. Just

The internet is the place where productivity goes to die.

Are you expecting yourself to sell well because you think you’re a good writer? Then, do you falsely believe the converse is true (i.e. if you don’t sell well, that means you’re a bad writer, or a bad marketer or a bad person)? Because it isn’t true.

Because those are the four elements it takes to succeed. Talent, work, timing, and luck.

It’s the process of doing the work. Odysseus knows what’s going to happen. (Step one: knowledge.) He’s sought out the help he needs when he sees he can’t do it on his own. (Step two: support and communication.) He knows what is coming, and he has a plan for how to address each of the potential pitfalls. (Step three: be prepared and have a plan.) And then, he does the work. (Step four: work the plan.) This process is one that coaches, therapists, parents, pastors, teachers, mentors, managers, and leaders use the world around. Some of it is instinctive for good leaders. Some of it is learned.

“One-star reviews legitimize books.”

Step one: knowledge. Step two: support and communication. Step three: be prepared and have a plan. Step four: work the plan.

You have to be willing to endure the essential pain (the boredom, the fear, the frustration, the discomfort), or you will never grow in your resilience, and the work will always be hard. You’re doing some of that endurance just by reading this book (not only is it a trial to read my books, y’all, but you are facing some pretty big discomfort in yourself through this process, I’m sure). Build your endurance a little every day.

Most people say they want to change, but they don’t actually want to do the work to change.

You make instinctive choices to protect comfort in the moment and are unaware of how the circuitry patterning of those long-term little choices makes you stay stuck and unchanged.

The good news is, if you quit the things in this book, and commit to doing the work that it takes, you’ll get through your black moment and be one of the 3-5% of people who actually assimilate your adult behavioral change.

if you do the work, the work works.