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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Becca Syme
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March 18 - May 19, 2020
We accept every premise that’s thrown at us, because we are so entrenched in the way we look at life, we’ve forgotten that we can question anything.
“Then what would happen if you didn’t click on that icon first? What if you did something else?” She snort-laughed. “It can’t possibly be that easy.” I tilted my head and leaned back, aiming for sarcasm, and my voice went really high and squeaky, “But can’t it?” That’s what I call the QTP Voice. A touch of sarcasm, a hint of incredulity. No judgment. But some logic underneath. Why can’t it be that easy? Question the premise.
For the love of everything holy, STOP CHANGING ALL THE THINGS. All of you. Now.
Yet he was convinced that he could somehow magically make all this time appear and make his system completely change alignment in a matter of a one-month class and a one-hour conversation. While I appreciated the confidence in my abilities as a teacher and a coach, I knew I was going to disappoint him. (But this is the Quit book, right? And I’m the Quit coach, apparently, so I resolved to work him through the process of evaluating what he needed to quit.)
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. The expectation that you can change everything is one of them. So, deal with that monster first. Second, once you’ve accepted, then prioritize. What’s most important? This kind of alignment is what I do in every coaching call. Narrow the focus. Look for the one thing that will make the biggest impact on the system. Find the keystone.
Third—and this is hard, I know—but 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. Willpower is a resource, just like our energy. It’s not unlimited. And one of the reasons that “change all the things” doesn’t work is because we’re spending our willpower in tiny increments in too many places, and then it runs out.
Are there strategies and tactics that can consistently work? Yes. If you’re the right kind of person. If you’re not the right kind of person, then no, those same strategies and tactics that yielded great success with someone else will not work for you.
there were two camps of people who wanted productivity classes. People who wanted to write twelve books a year who could. And… People who wanted to write twelve books a year who couldn’t. That sounds harsh, I know, but there are just some people (even people who want to) who aren’t going to be able to write twelve books a year, no matter whose productivity system they try to adopt. Why? Because some people innately value things other than speed, and they can’t convince themselves they don’t. Because writing a “good” book means different things to different people.
What she didn’t recognize in herself was that she had a particular need for emotional stability that overwhelmed everything else about her personality. No matter what she tried, any time she was in the middle of transition or instability, her writing would freeze. She would look at these friends of hers (who were doing things like writing chapters in the hospital while a spouse had cancer screenings, and who were going through divorce and still writing) and then at herself, and point the finger at her own capacity. [Side note: I can even hear those of you with higher driving personalities
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To the women in her friend group, it was pace—drive. To Joan, it was peace—stability.
But she wanted to write twelve books a year. So badly. It turned out, that was an expectation she needed to spank. It wasn’t going to happen. She had different priorities than her friends, and that’s okay. No one priority is the best. It’s the alignment that is the best. Because we are all so different. To assume that one set of goals is the best for everyone is to not understand the human brain. Alignment is key.
Smartypants Book Marketing Podcast. Because I think there’s more to productivity (and my mom thinks there’s more to marketing) than tips and tricks or my-system-magic.
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? It can be fun, absolutely. Sometimes, it will be fun, definitely. But it will also not be fun sometimes, because if you plan to do this professionally, it will become work. And work is work.
When you expect writing to be easy all the time, you will be frustrated, because reality will eventually prove you wrong. When it does, if you hold on to the unrealistic expectation (“this should always be fun”), you’re going to spiral into an emotional funk when you can’t make it fun. Or you’ll try everything you can think of to get the happy back, which will cause its own kind of stress when it doesn’t work (because you will have attempted to fix the problem and failed, which is worse than just having the problem in the first place).
Only, when you have a constant source of psychological essential pain (writing should be fun), and then it isn’t fun (reality—feel the ouch), we instinctively soothe the pain (pull away from the writing, go and look for ways to make writing fun… or worse, end up on Facebook or in our inboxes), but what we don’t do is take corrective action to change the unrealistic expectation.
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.
How many times have you closed a book and said, “I loved that. It had no weaknesses”? Or “that author was mediocre at every single part of the craft, and it was great”? No. That’s not what we say.
Yet, 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.
In order to stand out, you have to stand out. Which means that you have to be better than everyone else at something. Something. But not everything.
So, the concept of getting “better-faster” 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.
To quote a now-colloquial phrase: don’t should on yourself. This “quit ignoring the past” theme extends to more than just plotting and pantsing. It extends everywhere. Where have you had success in the past with being productive? Where have you had success with the writing being easy? What parts of that situation or environment can you replicate?
Both FOMO and internal drive can make you spend a lot of time and money trying to fix problems that just aren’t there.
when I come to any question with a client, one of the first things I do is to ask them what’s worked in the past, and where they’ve found success in this area. Because if there’s a way to use your past history as an “in” to your current problem, that’s what I want to do. And the big key here is letting the data tell the right story.
Why not align your process, your personality, your platform, and your potential? Because of fear. We are terrified that we are wrong. Or that what we think is somehow a deluded fantasy. But the key here is, you’ve got to take into consideration more than just other people’s opinions, or what “experts” say about the market/industry/best practice.4 You have to take into account who you are, and what you want, and what your contribution to the world will be. This can’t just be about chasing some elusive dream that may or may not be what you really want, deep down inside.
But he’d bought into this expectation that he had to write a book a month, and it was about to burn him out. “What if you can’t?” I asked him. “Can’t what?” “Can’t cut out the thinking? Can’t write a book a month? What happens?” He stared at me like I was speaking in tongues. “I can’t be a full-time writer.” “And what happens if you can’t be a full-time writer?” Dead silence as I contemplated the failure of my brilliant but short career as a writing success coach. Finally, he said, “Then I have to go back to my day job.” “And what happens if you go back to your day job?” “Then I failed.”
But the questions remain: what if you can’t keep up? What if you’re not the person who can write a book a month? Plenty of people rave about it—have systems of writing built around it—and shout from the heavens that if they can do it, anyone can do it.
Get up, go to work, do a job. And the whole time, the world has no idea how hurt we are. Some people do, but to the outside, it looks like we've got everything together. Well, we don't. And basically, none of us do, even the ones who are “better off” than others. But yet, we expect ourselves to be this very high-functioning, always-happy, everything-handled person... even in the face of copious history pointing to the fact that we are not and never have been (except for spectacular discreet moments) that perfect person.
We still expect that we should be. That things should be easy. We should be happy. And we're dumbfounded when they aren't. When we get resistance, it surprises us every time.
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.
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.
but remember that when there’s this much money at stake, everyone wants some of it, and that creates a gold-rush mentality.
Some people wait for certain authors to chime in. It might be because they’re the one who owns the group, or because they’re a known millionaire or six-figure author. (We really can’t break ourselves of this fallacy that we “should” listen to those people more than we listen to anyone else… it’s genuinely hard to separate someone’s success from their ability to give good advice to us. It’s understandable.)
Consciously, you may not be thinking that Facebook (or any social media) is your friend, but subconsciously, that’s what is happening. Think about what happens when you see a friend’s face. You get a little dopamine hit. You want to talk to them. You are happy. Subconsciously, you are drawn to them.
Distraction loops can generate their own momentum. It’s also why one of the biggest changes I often suggest in that class is just to not reach for your phone in the morning.2 Because the initiation of the loop matters.
Just be aware that part of the reason you’re subconsciously attracted to the applications themselves is because your friends are there. You feel heard there. You feel respected and loved there.
The magic number seemed to be 20 minutes a day of actual platform work (read: interacting with fans, and engaging with potential sales, but not necessarily selling or author group use5; everything else is recreational use). After that, the returns diminished so significantly that it actually started stealing money from your platform (assuming that you would spend those minutes on manuscript creation in some form).
If there are 7 million titles in the Kindle store… almost all of those 7 million titles are not selling well. Even if we say that the top 100,000 is “selling well” (because you might still sell 50 copies a month ranked at 100,0002), that’s still not even the top 10% of the Kindle store. That’s 1.4%.
Remember the “faulty logic” I was warning you about? Well, here it comes. 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. Even good writers with good marketing advice don’t sell well. Especially not on every book. By the math. The marketplace is crowded.
So. We’ve established that most books sell poorly.
I can’t tell you the number of clients I have who’ve told me horror stories about publishers throwing big money behind their book launches, only to have the launches go poorly and the authors get no-more-contracts after that. Of course, that author feels like they failed their publisher, and of course, they feel like it was some fault in their book. Here’s the key: it wasn’t. Remember. Most books sell like shit. The publisher was taking a calculated risk and rolling the dice, hoping the book would hit. Because most books don’t. But it was a risk they were willing to take, to find the next Nora
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The reason the New York publishers survive is because they keep acquiring new authors, and there will always be new authors to acquire. But they are not in business to help any one particular author. They are in business to make money. They know that they make money by selling great books, and so they acquire a lot of great books. But most of the books don’t sell enough to pay the big cost of running a publishing conglomerate. So they keep acquiring until they find the next hit—and they will, just by the law of averages.
This isn’t a case of “don’t try”. It is a case of “don’t expect”.
They are talented, they work hard, and they had timing and luck on their side. Because those are the four elements it takes to succeed. Talent, work, timing, and luck.
If success was predictable, then every single person who works hard and has talent would hit. And they don’t.
What happens if the book is awful? You’ll fix it. What happens if the book is awful and you can’t fix it? Then you’ll write another one. Not writing this book isn’t going to keep it from being awful if it’s awful. But it will keep you from writing anything better and learning what you need to learn.
What if everyone hates me? See the above answer. Also, if you’re going to sell books, people are going to hate them. That is the actual fact of life as a writer. People are going to hate this book. A friend tells me consistently to welcome the hate. In fact, I talked to a very famous blogger once at a conference, and she said this quote I’ll never forget. “One-star reviews legitimize books.” They are a signal to readers that enough people read the books, they’re worth checking out. If no one hates your book, you’ve failed at writing it. I coach a writer who has two very popular series, but one
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The key is, you have to answer all of these rhetorical questions. You can’t let yourself boost the fear so much that it rules you. Unanswered questions are the catalyst of the fear spiral. Everything will be okay. You are resilient. You can do this.
Step one: knowledge. Step two: support and communication. Step three: be prepared and have a plan. Step four: work the plan.
That’s the most important part of step three. You expect fear to be there. You don’t wait for fear to go away before you act. You just put it into the side car.
