Episode 030 - Common Writer Wisdom: Is It Right for You with Becca Syme
June 9, 2020
"I loved this episode! So insightful and I feel so validated after listening to it. I DON'T have to force myself to fit into a mold. I can't wait to check out Becca's books." --Podcast listener Dana Mason
Becca Syme discusses common advice writers receive--like "you can't edit a blank page"--and shares advice on how to decide if it's right for you. She explores the importance of questioning the premise, and provides guidance on how you can best match your abilities and preferences to the approach you take to your creative work.
Becca Syme is the creator and founder of the Better-Faster Academy and the author of the QuitBooks for Writers series, including Dear Writer, You Need to Quit; Dear Writer, Are You in Burnout; Dear Writer, You’re Doing It Wrong; and Dear Writer, Are You in Writer’s Block. After teaching the popular “Write Better-Faster” course for several years, Becca went back to Gallup and re-upped her Strengths certification and added “Strengths for Writers” course to her offerings.
"Question that belief, question that premise that you hold, because the reason things work for you is not because someone else had success with it."
Matty: Hello, and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast, today my guest is Becca Syme! Becca, how are you doing today?
[00:00:06] Becca: I'm awesome. I love Mondays. I don't know if this Arizona Monday, but we're recording on a Monday and I love Mondays. So I'm having a good day.
[00:00:15] Matty: Excellent. We may have to delve into why that is so you can share your tip for Monday with our listeners.
[00:00:20] Becca: Yeah. I mean, I would say for me, anytime I can make something into a positive it's like, we've got to do them anyway. Mondays are going to come every week. So why not like it?
[00:00:33] Matty: I think that is a great introduction to what we're going to be talking about. Before I get to that, I'm going to give a little background for our listeners.
[00:00:42] Becca Syme is the creator and founder of the Better- Faster Academy and the author of the Quit Books for Writers series, including Dear Writer. You Need to Quit; Dear Writer, Are You in Burnout?; Dear Writer, You're Doing It Wrong; and Dear Writer, Are You in Writer's Block? And after teaching the popular Write Better Faster course for several years, Becca went back to Gallup and re-upped her Strengths certification and added "Strengths for Writers" course to her offerings.
[00:01:09] The topic we're going to be talking about today is Common Writer Wisdom: Is It Right for You? Becca, before we dive into some examples and play through them to illustrate the point, just talk a little bit about all the research you've done and the experience you've had in terms of what is right for one person may not be right for another person.
[00:01:31] Becca: Yeah. I started off my academic career and when I was doing my master's degree, I was doing something called transformational leadership. And the big focus of that program was on alignment. It was is who you are and what you have to offer aligned with what you're doing. A lot of it was what we call self-leadership and that sort of arena, but it's really knowing who you are and knowing what you have to offer and figuring out how to best utilize those talents.
[00:02:06] I went to Gallup first in 2006 and I started off with a certification at that time. And what I was doing, studying people's habits and behaviors, was along the lines of what Gallup teaches, which I just love. It's how you are wired to be the most successful. So not just any random talent that you have, but what is the best about you and how can we take those things and make you spend more time on them and help you to utilize them better.
[00:02:37] I started writing fiction. I became a part-time fiction writer. And then I went full-time in 2012 and I was realizing that so many of the people that were my peers were struggling with how to take advice, because of course in the early days of indy, it kind of blew up. Everybody had their best practice and what system worked for them. And I kept going back to this systems alignment thing and thinking, "Well, but that's not going to work for ..." and then listing off all the people that it wouldn't work for.
[00:03:09] So I started doing some kind of informal coaching with my friends about it, and then I got asked to teach a class about it, and then the class sort of took off and it was how does who you are matter to how you'll be the most successful and, with writers, the most productive, and how do you write the best? And that's what I do.
[00:03:28] In the year since I started coaching with classes, I've done over 3,000 one-on-one coaching interviews with writers from brand new to six- and seven-figure, multi-award-winning people. And what we're looking for specifically is how does that wiring trend toward what works and what doesn't. So how can we save you the time of not having to experiment or of knowing why something doesn't work for you and then save you the time of having to do the leg work, to figure it out on your own.
[00:04:02] Matty: The whole area of advice writers get reminds me of diet advice, and they're the old chestnuts out there like you should never eat ice cream right out of the container, which I'm sure is great advice for a lot of people, because a lot of people would eat all the ice cream. But if all you really want is ice cream as a palate cleanser, and you only really want a spoonful or two, but you follow the advice to fill up the bowl instead of eating out of the container, then you're likely to be eating more ice cream.
[00:04:33] So I really liked that idea of intentionally thinking through what these things mean for you and your own preferences, as you're talking about. I thought what we could do is I'm going to start out with one of those old chestnuts for writers and talk through that. And I think that will lead us to others. Feel free to mention others that have come up a lot for you. And the one I want to start with is you can't edit a blank page.
[00:00:06] Becca: I'm awesome. I love Mondays. I don't know if this Arizona Monday, but we're recording on a Monday and I love Mondays. So I'm having a good day.
[00:00:15] Matty: Excellent. We may have to delve into why that is so you can share your tip for Monday with our listeners.
[00:00:20] Becca: Yeah. I mean, I would say for me, anytime I can make something into a positive it's like, we've got to do them anyway. Mondays are going to come every week. So why not like it?
[00:00:33] Matty: I think that is a great introduction to what we're going to be talking about. Before I get to that, I'm going to give a little background for our listeners.
[00:00:42] Becca Syme is the creator and founder of the Better- Faster Academy and the author of the Quit Books for Writers series, including Dear Writer. You Need to Quit; Dear Writer, Are You in Burnout?; Dear Writer, You're Doing It Wrong; and Dear Writer, Are You in Writer's Block? And after teaching the popular Write Better Faster course for several years, Becca went back to Gallup and re-upped her Strengths certification and added "Strengths for Writers" course to her offerings.
[00:01:09] The topic we're going to be talking about today is Common Writer Wisdom: Is It Right for You? Becca, before we dive into some examples and play through them to illustrate the point, just talk a little bit about all the research you've done and the experience you've had in terms of what is right for one person may not be right for another person.
[00:01:31] Becca: Yeah. I started off my academic career and when I was doing my master's degree, I was doing something called transformational leadership. And the big focus of that program was on alignment. It was is who you are and what you have to offer aligned with what you're doing. A lot of it was what we call self-leadership and that sort of arena, but it's really knowing who you are and knowing what you have to offer and figuring out how to best utilize those talents.
[00:02:06] I went to Gallup first in 2006 and I started off with a certification at that time. And what I was doing, studying people's habits and behaviors, was along the lines of what Gallup teaches, which I just love. It's how you are wired to be the most successful. So not just any random talent that you have, but what is the best about you and how can we take those things and make you spend more time on them and help you to utilize them better.
[00:02:37] I started writing fiction. I became a part-time fiction writer. And then I went full-time in 2012 and I was realizing that so many of the people that were my peers were struggling with how to take advice, because of course in the early days of indy, it kind of blew up. Everybody had their best practice and what system worked for them. And I kept going back to this systems alignment thing and thinking, "Well, but that's not going to work for ..." and then listing off all the people that it wouldn't work for.
[00:03:09] So I started doing some kind of informal coaching with my friends about it, and then I got asked to teach a class about it, and then the class sort of took off and it was how does who you are matter to how you'll be the most successful and, with writers, the most productive, and how do you write the best? And that's what I do.
[00:03:28] In the year since I started coaching with classes, I've done over 3,000 one-on-one coaching interviews with writers from brand new to six- and seven-figure, multi-award-winning people. And what we're looking for specifically is how does that wiring trend toward what works and what doesn't. So how can we save you the time of not having to experiment or of knowing why something doesn't work for you and then save you the time of having to do the leg work, to figure it out on your own.
[00:04:02] Matty: The whole area of advice writers get reminds me of diet advice, and they're the old chestnuts out there like you should never eat ice cream right out of the container, which I'm sure is great advice for a lot of people, because a lot of people would eat all the ice cream. But if all you really want is ice cream as a palate cleanser, and you only really want a spoonful or two, but you follow the advice to fill up the bowl instead of eating out of the container, then you're likely to be eating more ice cream.
[00:04:33] So I really liked that idea of intentionally thinking through what these things mean for you and your own preferences, as you're talking about. I thought what we could do is I'm going to start out with one of those old chestnuts for writers and talk through that. And I think that will lead us to others. Feel free to mention others that have come up a lot for you. And the one I want to start with is you can't edit a blank page.
read more ...
[00:04:58] Becca: Yeah, this is a big one.
[00:04:59] Matty: Yeah, it is a big one. Talk about what you found in your discussions with your clients, your students, and you yourself about you can't edit a blank page.
[00:05:09] Becca: Like anything with personality-based stuff, it works for some people and it doesn't work for others. So why doesn't it work? That's the end of the QuitCast is, anyone could tell you what worked for them and they can say it might not work for you, but they can't tell you why. I can tell you why. That's the pitch. And the why behind this one is pretty fascinating because we all think of editing as being something that you do after the words are on the page, because that's what editors get paid for.
[00:05:41] The reason that we think of it as post writer's brain is because there's an actual job out there that you pay someone to do, where you finish putting the draft on the page, and then they edit. So naturally we think editing has to happen on the page, but when you have certain brain patterns that require that you process information to a full extent before you speak or before you write, then you're actually editing internally.
[00:06:13] And if you try to push those words out before they're really ready to come out, you actually have to do more editing on the page than you would if you let yourself process them and then put them on the page and then worry about it later. A lot of people who have these personality patterns, they literally edit in their head and then don't edit again a lot once they get it down.
[00:06:39] And so if you have someone telling them, you can't edit a blank page, they feel this pressure to get the words out. We've actually seen people who've gotten stalled for years on a manuscript because somebody told them to vomit the words out and it went against every instinct that they had about who they were.
[00:06:58] But somebody important said it to them. And they were like, "Okay, I guess I have to vomit," when they force themselves to do this. And it's so hard for them to go back and edit after the words are out of their head, because that's not how they're wired to edit. Does that make sense?
[00:07:17] Matty: It totally makes sense. And it's one of the things that really appealed to me because I feel like I'm one of those people, that I'm drafting, drafting, drafting in my head. And I have a fear sometimes about getting the words down on the page, because I feel like once they're on the page, they're locked in, in a way that they're not while I'm still noodling over it in my head.
[00:07:38] And so, like you're saying, by the time I get it down on the page, it's fairly clean. And I find that most of the editing I do on my books is more plot-related because I don't do that as much in my head, I have to do that on the page, but the composition of the sentences, I do more in my head.
[00:07:57] Becca: Yeah, we call this being a bread machine writer, where you have an internal bread maker that you put all the ingredients into, and then you hit the button to start the process and it starts making the bread. And once the bread is finished, then you can pull it out and make a sandwich with it.
[00:08:16] But if you try to open the bread machine too early in the process, the stuff you pull out, you can't make a sandwich with. You literally have to take a heat source and apply it and imagine how long it would take to bake a loaf of bread with a hairdryer. That's basically what this you can't edit a blank page people, when they're not wired to be that way, that's how it happens for them.
[00:08:43] It takes them too long and they're going to have to think anyway, and that's the other piece. Would you rather think first and let it take the time it's going to take or push it out when you know that it's not ready and then take the chance that it's going to take you two, three, four, five times as long to do the editing once you have that raw bread dough on the plate, which one would you rather do?
[00:09:09] And you'll know if this is you. If, this isn't you, it won't resonate. But if this is you, you'll be like, "Oh, I've always wanted to edit in my head. And I heard someone say you can't. So I don't." And then, boom, they take off like a rocket ship. Not that they write 10,000 words a day, that's not the point, but they're faster than they were. And their draft times are shorter than they were and they're better than they were.
[00:09:33] Matty: I love all these food and sustenance-related analogies we're coming up with, because the outcome is probably not only that they're writing faster, but it's a much more creatively nourishing process for them because they're not trying to bake the bread for the hairdryer.
[00:09:49] Becca: It's a funny metaphor, but it's so true. If you're a bread machine writer, it's almost as painful to edit on the page as it would be to try to bake bread with a hairdryer. It hurts.
[00:09:59] Matty: What are some of the other types of writers? There's the bread machine. And then what would be the opposite or a counter to that?
[00:10:06] Becca: The opposite of a bread machine, we call it, be a trucker, where you get the value out of the pace. Because you can push the words out more quickly and you don't need to cook them, you're always pushing the gas pedal and wanting to move quicker. And if you listen underneath of you can't edit a blank page, what they're after is speed. They want the pace to be quick. They want to get words on the page. That's what motivates them to be successful. When you are that type of person, then it makes total sense that you would tell yourself you can't edit a blank page, just get the words out, because it's all about the speed.
[00:10:52] But when you're a bread machine, it's not that you need to go slow. It's that however long it takes, it's going to take that long. You can't change the amount of time just because you want to go faster. In fact, the only thing that generally makes bread machine people faster is accepting or embracing the fact that this is how my brain works and I'm going to let it work that way. And I'm not going to allow people to call me slow or stupid or lazy. I'm not going to call myself those things either. And that's a really big deal. As far as getting the bread machine style people to move quicker through their process is to not expect that it should be evaluated based on its speed.
[00:11:38] Matty: Is there a correlation also with how successful people are with dictating?
[00:11:49] Becca: Interestingly, the dictating thing is less easy to predict. There are several factors that tend to make dictating harder just because of how the words get produced. So you have the two extremes: the super internal processors, the bread machine writers, would fall into that, and then the super external processors who they say things out loud and they don't even know if they're true yet until they say them out loud. It's an experiment in meaning making.
[00:12:18] And both of those extremes have a really hard time with dictating. On the super, super internals, it's because they have such a hard time putting thoughts into words, that it doesn't make them a lot faster to dictate than it would if they just typed. And then for the external processors, they have the opposite problem, the super, super extreme externals, they don't know what the words are that they want to say sometimes until you force them to slow down enough to put them through their fingers. So sometimes when they're talking, they'll actually not talk in their narrative voice, or they'll not talk in coherent storytelling because they story tell verbally differently than they story tell typing. And in the middle, then, you have all the people that doesn't impact them with dictation. But on those two extremes, you have a lot harder time getting dictating done.
[00:13:19] Matty: Another one of these pieces of advice that I've always struggled with, this is one of Robert Heinlein's Rules for Writers, and I'm not sure if this is a writing rule or a marketing rule, but it is refrain from rewriting, unless to editorial order. Do you think of that more as a business or a creative piece of advice?
[00:13:42] Becca: There are some people who need to rewrite when they're writing, and I mean need to in terms of it will derail their forward progress if what's behind them isn't correct. And this isn't necessarily something they can control about themselves.
[00:13:57] And I think a lot of the advice that's given about this, when people say don't rewrite or don't edit as you go, what they're trying to get again is a pace. They want to get people through things quickly, but not everyone benefits from quick. Some people need that artisanal time, that deliberate time. And so when you have the advice that's given like that, I always look at why it's given, because if it's given because the rewriting is pointless in terms of for the person they don't actually need to rewrite in order to continue their rewriting out of fear. It's like, I'm afraid of making a mistake and getting called out on it, so I'm going to spend a ton of time trying to make this as perfect as I can. That's a fear-based thing, and then we want to do different work with that. But when it's, I can't figure out how the story progresses unless what's behind me is correct, that's actually a success pattern.
[00:14:57] And so that kind of super linearness, that really linear thinking, then you need to rewrite as you go, because if you don't have it right, you won't be able to continue writing. Eventually you'll reach a forward progress point where you'll have to stop anyway. And so it makes sense to just go ahead and rewrite as you go, if you're this person.
[00:15:21] And again, I have to say the reason that advice gets tossed around is similar to the bread machine and the truckers, it's the pace is the most important, pace is the most important, but is it? Because if it isn't for you, then it isn't.
[00:15:38] Matty: Is pace ever translatable into the book as opposed to the writer. Are there certain practices that lend themselves more to a thriller with a fast pace versus a memoir with a slower pace, even though I recognize that that's a different kind of pace than the one I think you've been talking about so far.
[00:15:58] Becca: Yeah, like internal pacing. There are definitely some personality patterns that match up with wanting to write things that are faster paced in terms of the internal book pacing, but it's not predictive.
[00:16:13] So with the Strengths Finder, there are 34 different themes and there are two of them that trend really well towards things like thriller writing or action adventure writing or the action urban fantasy-type writing, which tend to be sparse details, quicker moving, more action, that kind of stuff. But it's not predictive.
[00:16:34] One of them is called activator. And I can't just say everyone with activator should be writing thriller, for instance. But when you see someone who has high activator, who is writing fast-paced books and who is also in thriller, they tend to do better. They tend to meet the audience expectations more because their natural personality trends toward something that the audience also rewards with buying more, which is how audiences reward us. And conversely you have a deliberative strength or an intellection strength, which are all about that sort of deliberate pace and slower pace, more cognition. And they would get rewarded more in genres where a slower, more intellectual pace is rewarded by the audience.
[00:17:28] Matty: We had been talking earlier about editing and there is a whole set of advice about how to go about cleaning up a manuscript, one of which is print it out so that you're working on it in a different format. I found that this was one of the ones that didn't work for me, because what I would do is I would print out all however many hundreds of pages and I would sit down and I'd find something on the first page. I'd mark it up. And then it was sort of untidy, so I'd reprint the first page. And then, because it was edited, the first page didn't end where the original first page did. Then I had this desire to reprint the whole thing so I had a clean slate. And that was a very, very inefficient way of using paper and ink and my time.
[00:18:12] But I did like some of the advice about, for example, changing the font or reading it out loud. Do you find that there are patterns in that, tips people can follow that meet their own preferences in terms of cleaning up material once they do have it on the page?
[00:18:30] Becca: In Write Better Faster, we go through every part of your writing system, so the point is, let's find the thing that fits you the best. One of the first questions we always ask in class is where have you had success before? If you were to explain to me, what was the best experience you had writing--editing plotting, creating, all of those things-- and then describe that to me. And then as coaches, we watch the descriptions for different patterns of like, "Oh, that's predictable because you have this personality pattern." We're watching for that stuff in their discussions. My big tip, I think in things like this, is always to look backwards at what has been the most successful. It's the most common for us to naturally choose things that are better for our personality, because we have learned how to make decisions that yield more success.
[00:19:30] So much of what we do, and I cannot tell you how many times I've heard this story, probably thousands, "I started off doing it this way and then I realized that there were classes out there. So I took a class on how to plot, edit, write, revise, whatever. And then I started doing it that way. And now I can't do whatever it is."
[00:19:51] And then we'll ask, "Why don't you go back to the way you were doing it before the classes?" And it's kind of like they don't think about that. Because they assume that there's a best practice out there. That that's why the classes exist is because there's the best practice.
[00:20:07] That's not why classes exist. The key for me is you show patterns in your history about how you have been successful at doing things that matter to how you'll be successful in the future. We're constantly looking at what has worked in the past for people.
[00:20:30] Matty: Do you have tips for how people can distinguish between a situation where if it's not broke, don't fix it versus they think it's not broke, but it could be better. They may be more or less satisfied with their editing process, but if they were to try something different, it would be even more effective or even more efficient.
[00:20:50] Becca: Yeah, that's a great question. Because I think there are some personalities of people who always think there's a better way out there. Knowing if you're one of those people where you're just never satisfied with good enough, you always want it to be better than it could be, or you want to level up all the time.
[00:21:08] So knowing that that's true, then it depends on how many books you've written in the past. Because some of this experimentation happens because we try things and they don't work, so you know that it doesn't work because you've tried it. And if you don't have a lot of history behind you to show you this is what's worked and this is what hasn't, then sometimes you have to go looking in other places.
[00:21:33] And what I would say is if the only reason that you want to take a class or read a book or whatever about this new method is because the person who invented it says that you need it, that's not a good reason to do it, because people who sell stuff for a living are really good at selling stuff. You always want to question the premise of the person who thinks that their method is the best.
[00:21:59] And I include myself in that, by the way, not just everybody else. But somebody who thinks their method is the best because they're making a living off of their method, you always want to question that premise first. And that's one of my big mantras: question the premise. We accept the premise all the time of everything, we accept the premise of somebody who's successful, knows why they're successful, and therefore, if I listen to them, I will have their success.
[00:22:28] That's not logically true. You have to question that belief, question that premise that you hold, because the reason things work for you is not because someone else had success with it. That's the big tip in that arena is if the only reason that you're questioning your own success, because somebody else is having more success, doing whatever method, then you always want to wait.
[00:22:57] And I would wait a week, two weeks before you go sign up for that class, before you go buy that book or take that workshop or go to that conference. I talk about this a little bit in my You're Doing It Wrong book. There's a process in our brains when someone creates a seed of doubt for us, about a method that we're using. And there's a process that happens where as soon as that doubt is created, we want to fix it. We want to soothe ourselves and make ourselves feel better. Like, "Oh, I'm wrong about this. Okay, let me fix this by signing up for this class right now."
[00:23:33] Instead, what I want us to do is to question the doubt that we feel. Does this only exist because I saw an advertisement? Does this only exist because somebody told me about something cool they'd heard? And if that's the case, then I want to wait and soothe myself in some other way. And I'm the person who will say, if you have to eat ice cream or chocolate, or if you have to buy something online in order to soothe yourself out of changing something that isn't broken, then do that. We can deal with that later.
[00:24:07] I'll just tell a quick story. There's a certain personality metric where you need to feel intelligent. Not just be intelligent, but you really need to feel intelligent. And when someone accuses you of being stupid, then you immediately need to fix that problem by proving that you're smart to yourself.
[00:24:29] And this is all internal stuff that's going on in our head. There's a very common tactic among advertisers of saying smart people do this. And if you don't do that thing, subconsciously you're telling yourself, "I'm a stupid person. And so if I was really smart, I would be doing this. And so I need to go and do this thing." And we need to know that that's a way that people get at our subconscious process to make decisions. And we need to question the premise. The big tip is always question the premise.
[00:25:06] Matty: For a writer who is just starting out, doesn't really have a track record to look back on to see what has been successful or unsuccessful, but they're really excited about writing and they think maybe taking classes is the way to go, how do you recommend they proceed? Do you recommend that they give it a go on their own for a little while first or dip their toe into the class concept? What would you recommend there?
[00:25:29] Becca: So the first thing I would settle for yourself is do you feel like you're the kind of person who wants to intuitively write a story or do you intuitively feel like you need structure and you need to figure out what goes where before you can start writing. And if you're intuitively feeling like you want to jump in and tell the story, then I would jump in and tell the story.
[00:25:52] And I wouldn't take a lot of classes to try to figure out how to plot or outline. And I would just do that. Just tell the story. And if you need to think while you're writing, think, and if you need to talk about it with other people, talk about it. Follow your instincts. If you're a person who needs to know things, like you want to know the whole story, then I would look at the structure-based programs first, sort of the high concept learning. If you're looking for character-driven stuff,
[00:26:24] Do something like the W plot or Wired for Story, which are very character-driven, motivation-driven things. If you feel like more of a plot-driven person, you want to do something that's plot-driven.
[00:26:36] So again, this is the, what drives me? What do I like? And then how do I find something that aligns with that instead of literally just taking everything that's out there. Because the danger in that is you lose time in experimenting. If you are very plot-driven and you like percentages and you want to know the acts and all that stuff, or you want to do The Story Grid method, the story questions, then that's more of a plot-driven outline style.
[00:27:08] But ask somebody who knows who's similar to how you're wired, if you know someone. And if you don't, then come ask us. We literally are available everywhere, we have free resources everywhere, because we want to help people to short circuit the questioning process, that you don't have to wonder about stuff. Our specialty is very much what do you need and how could we direct you somewhere that will get you more of what you need instead of what you don't.
[00:27:38] Matty: Would those resources help a person who is in the situation where they're just not feeling inspired? I mean, we're in such a strange time now, we're recording this in May 2020, so still under the influence of COVID, and it may be that their inability to create is not based on their creation approach. It's just based on circumstances. Is there a way that they can identify whether that's the case, so they don't spend a lot of time assessing their creative process when in fact it's just other circumstances that are affecting them?
[00:28:14] Becca: Yeah. I would assume right now if you are not able to write and there's not something wrong with your book, because of course if there's something wrong with the book, that's fixable by doing work to unstick the book. But if you are not able to write right now, I would assume that it's because you're in trauma and you'd need to give yourself some grace.
[00:28:38] One of the things we've talked about in the past with both Writer's Block and with Burnout is when you have a need for environmental stability and that stability is not currently being met, you need to attack the instability in terms of do what you can to make yourself feel as stable as you can in the time periods when you feel like you need to be creative. And if you don't need to be creative right now and you can't be, then don't do it. If it's not literally your job to put books out and you can't write right now, give yourself the trauma space. Because a lot of us are in trauma response with all of this that's going on, and we can't expect ourselves to be creative. If that's you, then all of the stuff you hear about, "Oh, use this time when you're in quarantine," that doesn't work for everybody. That's not the advice that I would give people who are feeling unstable.
[00:29:39] In the Writer's Block book I talk about Maslow's hierarchy, where you have the very bottom two levels that are about physical provision and safety. And if you are not feeling like you have physical provision and safety, it does not matter how much time you have. You're not going to be able to access those higher levels of creativity. Until you feel really safe, It's going to be a struggle.
[00:30:06] And so there are ways to promote that safety. News diets is a big one. And I mean big. Don't reach for your phone first thing in the morning, don't go on social media first thing. Don't watch the news or read the newspaper first thing.
[00:30:21] Matty: I just did an interview that I think will come out the week before yours with Zach Bohannon on his year of digital minimalism.
[00:30:29] Becca: Oh, nice.
[00:30:30] Matty: And I believe that it was either Zach or his co-host on The Career Author podcast, J. Thorn, who said that if you had to look at the news, pick one reputable local news source and one reputable worldwide news source, check them once in the morning and then put it aside. I thought that that was great advice.
[00:30:49] Becca: Yeah. And I would actually say if that doesn't work for you, if the checking in the morning leads to more checking and more checking and more checking, I would say don't check at all, until you can't not check. In this particular personality metric, there's people who are data-controlling and people who are data-responsive.
[00:31:08] So when data comes at you, can you make a decision not to engage it? Or do you feel like you have to make a decision about every piece of data that comes across your vision? If you are data-responsive, you likely should not be checking anything first thing in the morning, because it will only lead you to more and more and more and more throughout the day. People who are like that, I would say, when you find that you can't stop your response, then you can only control the data.
[00:31:43] If you're a data-controlling person, you can check your email one time in the morning and never check it again, or the news or social media and never check it again and be fine. If you're that person then absolutely do that. And if you can't, then you have to control the source of what's coming at you because it's the only way to keep yourself from just responding to literally everything and then needing to respond to more and needing to respond to more.
[00:32:10] Matty: I like the general theme of both the responding in the current circumstances, but also the caution not to respond to every piece of writer advice that people see, and I think that could be really freeing for people.
[00:32:24] Becca: Yeah.
[00:32:24] Matty: Quitting the bad stuff.
[00:32:26] Becca: Yes. It's so funny because of course my first book was Dear Writer, You Need to Quit and the YouTube channel is the QuitCast So I'm the quit person. In fact, they call me the Quit Coach. I don't want people to quit writing. I mean, they can if they want to, we certainly have had people who have quit writing for a time period because it was necessary for them to do. But the goal is to quit the things that you don't need to be doing. So many of us are doing things that we don't really need to do because someone else has told us something that they don't know doesn't work for us.
[00:33:01] All of the advice-givers out there doing their best to be helpful and give good advice, but we have to be better decision makers. As responders to data and responders to advice. We have to take the control of who gets to decide whether that advice is for me or not. It's not the person who's giving it because they don't know my brain and they don't know how I would be the most productive or how I would be the most successful. Only I know that. The person giving the advice definitely doesn't know that. They know how they were successful. You have to know for yourself, should I listen to that or not?
[00:33:41] Matty: Well, just to continue our bread and ice cream theme, that is great food for thought. I think you've given people a lot of great topics to think about where can people go online to find out more about you and your work?
[00:33:55] Becca: The easiest place is to check out the YouTube channel because we have a lot of episodes there and it's all free. In fact, we're right in the middle of doing some regular videos as a sort of productivity challenge on our Facebook page, which is the Better-Faster Academy at Betterfasteracademy.com. But we're doing some work on the Facebook page and we do some regular live coaching on the Facebook page. If you have a question that you feel like you can't answer on your own and you want one of our alignment coaches to talk about it, we offer those for free to the public on our Facebook page.
[00:34:37] Matty: Great. Well, thank you so much, Becca. This was so useful.
[00:34:41] Becca: Thanks a lot for having me. This was a lot of fun.
[00:04:59] Matty: Yeah, it is a big one. Talk about what you found in your discussions with your clients, your students, and you yourself about you can't edit a blank page.
[00:05:09] Becca: Like anything with personality-based stuff, it works for some people and it doesn't work for others. So why doesn't it work? That's the end of the QuitCast is, anyone could tell you what worked for them and they can say it might not work for you, but they can't tell you why. I can tell you why. That's the pitch. And the why behind this one is pretty fascinating because we all think of editing as being something that you do after the words are on the page, because that's what editors get paid for.
[00:05:41] The reason that we think of it as post writer's brain is because there's an actual job out there that you pay someone to do, where you finish putting the draft on the page, and then they edit. So naturally we think editing has to happen on the page, but when you have certain brain patterns that require that you process information to a full extent before you speak or before you write, then you're actually editing internally.
[00:06:13] And if you try to push those words out before they're really ready to come out, you actually have to do more editing on the page than you would if you let yourself process them and then put them on the page and then worry about it later. A lot of people who have these personality patterns, they literally edit in their head and then don't edit again a lot once they get it down.
[00:06:39] And so if you have someone telling them, you can't edit a blank page, they feel this pressure to get the words out. We've actually seen people who've gotten stalled for years on a manuscript because somebody told them to vomit the words out and it went against every instinct that they had about who they were.
[00:06:58] But somebody important said it to them. And they were like, "Okay, I guess I have to vomit," when they force themselves to do this. And it's so hard for them to go back and edit after the words are out of their head, because that's not how they're wired to edit. Does that make sense?
[00:07:17] Matty: It totally makes sense. And it's one of the things that really appealed to me because I feel like I'm one of those people, that I'm drafting, drafting, drafting in my head. And I have a fear sometimes about getting the words down on the page, because I feel like once they're on the page, they're locked in, in a way that they're not while I'm still noodling over it in my head.
[00:07:38] And so, like you're saying, by the time I get it down on the page, it's fairly clean. And I find that most of the editing I do on my books is more plot-related because I don't do that as much in my head, I have to do that on the page, but the composition of the sentences, I do more in my head.
[00:07:57] Becca: Yeah, we call this being a bread machine writer, where you have an internal bread maker that you put all the ingredients into, and then you hit the button to start the process and it starts making the bread. And once the bread is finished, then you can pull it out and make a sandwich with it.
[00:08:16] But if you try to open the bread machine too early in the process, the stuff you pull out, you can't make a sandwich with. You literally have to take a heat source and apply it and imagine how long it would take to bake a loaf of bread with a hairdryer. That's basically what this you can't edit a blank page people, when they're not wired to be that way, that's how it happens for them.
[00:08:43] It takes them too long and they're going to have to think anyway, and that's the other piece. Would you rather think first and let it take the time it's going to take or push it out when you know that it's not ready and then take the chance that it's going to take you two, three, four, five times as long to do the editing once you have that raw bread dough on the plate, which one would you rather do?
[00:09:09] And you'll know if this is you. If, this isn't you, it won't resonate. But if this is you, you'll be like, "Oh, I've always wanted to edit in my head. And I heard someone say you can't. So I don't." And then, boom, they take off like a rocket ship. Not that they write 10,000 words a day, that's not the point, but they're faster than they were. And their draft times are shorter than they were and they're better than they were.
[00:09:33] Matty: I love all these food and sustenance-related analogies we're coming up with, because the outcome is probably not only that they're writing faster, but it's a much more creatively nourishing process for them because they're not trying to bake the bread for the hairdryer.
[00:09:49] Becca: It's a funny metaphor, but it's so true. If you're a bread machine writer, it's almost as painful to edit on the page as it would be to try to bake bread with a hairdryer. It hurts.
[00:09:59] Matty: What are some of the other types of writers? There's the bread machine. And then what would be the opposite or a counter to that?
[00:10:06] Becca: The opposite of a bread machine, we call it, be a trucker, where you get the value out of the pace. Because you can push the words out more quickly and you don't need to cook them, you're always pushing the gas pedal and wanting to move quicker. And if you listen underneath of you can't edit a blank page, what they're after is speed. They want the pace to be quick. They want to get words on the page. That's what motivates them to be successful. When you are that type of person, then it makes total sense that you would tell yourself you can't edit a blank page, just get the words out, because it's all about the speed.
[00:10:52] But when you're a bread machine, it's not that you need to go slow. It's that however long it takes, it's going to take that long. You can't change the amount of time just because you want to go faster. In fact, the only thing that generally makes bread machine people faster is accepting or embracing the fact that this is how my brain works and I'm going to let it work that way. And I'm not going to allow people to call me slow or stupid or lazy. I'm not going to call myself those things either. And that's a really big deal. As far as getting the bread machine style people to move quicker through their process is to not expect that it should be evaluated based on its speed.
[00:11:38] Matty: Is there a correlation also with how successful people are with dictating?
[00:11:49] Becca: Interestingly, the dictating thing is less easy to predict. There are several factors that tend to make dictating harder just because of how the words get produced. So you have the two extremes: the super internal processors, the bread machine writers, would fall into that, and then the super external processors who they say things out loud and they don't even know if they're true yet until they say them out loud. It's an experiment in meaning making.
[00:12:18] And both of those extremes have a really hard time with dictating. On the super, super internals, it's because they have such a hard time putting thoughts into words, that it doesn't make them a lot faster to dictate than it would if they just typed. And then for the external processors, they have the opposite problem, the super, super extreme externals, they don't know what the words are that they want to say sometimes until you force them to slow down enough to put them through their fingers. So sometimes when they're talking, they'll actually not talk in their narrative voice, or they'll not talk in coherent storytelling because they story tell verbally differently than they story tell typing. And in the middle, then, you have all the people that doesn't impact them with dictation. But on those two extremes, you have a lot harder time getting dictating done.
[00:13:19] Matty: Another one of these pieces of advice that I've always struggled with, this is one of Robert Heinlein's Rules for Writers, and I'm not sure if this is a writing rule or a marketing rule, but it is refrain from rewriting, unless to editorial order. Do you think of that more as a business or a creative piece of advice?
[00:13:42] Becca: There are some people who need to rewrite when they're writing, and I mean need to in terms of it will derail their forward progress if what's behind them isn't correct. And this isn't necessarily something they can control about themselves.
[00:13:57] And I think a lot of the advice that's given about this, when people say don't rewrite or don't edit as you go, what they're trying to get again is a pace. They want to get people through things quickly, but not everyone benefits from quick. Some people need that artisanal time, that deliberate time. And so when you have the advice that's given like that, I always look at why it's given, because if it's given because the rewriting is pointless in terms of for the person they don't actually need to rewrite in order to continue their rewriting out of fear. It's like, I'm afraid of making a mistake and getting called out on it, so I'm going to spend a ton of time trying to make this as perfect as I can. That's a fear-based thing, and then we want to do different work with that. But when it's, I can't figure out how the story progresses unless what's behind me is correct, that's actually a success pattern.
[00:14:57] And so that kind of super linearness, that really linear thinking, then you need to rewrite as you go, because if you don't have it right, you won't be able to continue writing. Eventually you'll reach a forward progress point where you'll have to stop anyway. And so it makes sense to just go ahead and rewrite as you go, if you're this person.
[00:15:21] And again, I have to say the reason that advice gets tossed around is similar to the bread machine and the truckers, it's the pace is the most important, pace is the most important, but is it? Because if it isn't for you, then it isn't.
[00:15:38] Matty: Is pace ever translatable into the book as opposed to the writer. Are there certain practices that lend themselves more to a thriller with a fast pace versus a memoir with a slower pace, even though I recognize that that's a different kind of pace than the one I think you've been talking about so far.
[00:15:58] Becca: Yeah, like internal pacing. There are definitely some personality patterns that match up with wanting to write things that are faster paced in terms of the internal book pacing, but it's not predictive.
[00:16:13] So with the Strengths Finder, there are 34 different themes and there are two of them that trend really well towards things like thriller writing or action adventure writing or the action urban fantasy-type writing, which tend to be sparse details, quicker moving, more action, that kind of stuff. But it's not predictive.
[00:16:34] One of them is called activator. And I can't just say everyone with activator should be writing thriller, for instance. But when you see someone who has high activator, who is writing fast-paced books and who is also in thriller, they tend to do better. They tend to meet the audience expectations more because their natural personality trends toward something that the audience also rewards with buying more, which is how audiences reward us. And conversely you have a deliberative strength or an intellection strength, which are all about that sort of deliberate pace and slower pace, more cognition. And they would get rewarded more in genres where a slower, more intellectual pace is rewarded by the audience.
[00:17:28] Matty: We had been talking earlier about editing and there is a whole set of advice about how to go about cleaning up a manuscript, one of which is print it out so that you're working on it in a different format. I found that this was one of the ones that didn't work for me, because what I would do is I would print out all however many hundreds of pages and I would sit down and I'd find something on the first page. I'd mark it up. And then it was sort of untidy, so I'd reprint the first page. And then, because it was edited, the first page didn't end where the original first page did. Then I had this desire to reprint the whole thing so I had a clean slate. And that was a very, very inefficient way of using paper and ink and my time.
[00:18:12] But I did like some of the advice about, for example, changing the font or reading it out loud. Do you find that there are patterns in that, tips people can follow that meet their own preferences in terms of cleaning up material once they do have it on the page?
[00:18:30] Becca: In Write Better Faster, we go through every part of your writing system, so the point is, let's find the thing that fits you the best. One of the first questions we always ask in class is where have you had success before? If you were to explain to me, what was the best experience you had writing--editing plotting, creating, all of those things-- and then describe that to me. And then as coaches, we watch the descriptions for different patterns of like, "Oh, that's predictable because you have this personality pattern." We're watching for that stuff in their discussions. My big tip, I think in things like this, is always to look backwards at what has been the most successful. It's the most common for us to naturally choose things that are better for our personality, because we have learned how to make decisions that yield more success.
[00:19:30] So much of what we do, and I cannot tell you how many times I've heard this story, probably thousands, "I started off doing it this way and then I realized that there were classes out there. So I took a class on how to plot, edit, write, revise, whatever. And then I started doing it that way. And now I can't do whatever it is."
[00:19:51] And then we'll ask, "Why don't you go back to the way you were doing it before the classes?" And it's kind of like they don't think about that. Because they assume that there's a best practice out there. That that's why the classes exist is because there's the best practice.
[00:20:07] That's not why classes exist. The key for me is you show patterns in your history about how you have been successful at doing things that matter to how you'll be successful in the future. We're constantly looking at what has worked in the past for people.
[00:20:30] Matty: Do you have tips for how people can distinguish between a situation where if it's not broke, don't fix it versus they think it's not broke, but it could be better. They may be more or less satisfied with their editing process, but if they were to try something different, it would be even more effective or even more efficient.
[00:20:50] Becca: Yeah, that's a great question. Because I think there are some personalities of people who always think there's a better way out there. Knowing if you're one of those people where you're just never satisfied with good enough, you always want it to be better than it could be, or you want to level up all the time.
[00:21:08] So knowing that that's true, then it depends on how many books you've written in the past. Because some of this experimentation happens because we try things and they don't work, so you know that it doesn't work because you've tried it. And if you don't have a lot of history behind you to show you this is what's worked and this is what hasn't, then sometimes you have to go looking in other places.
[00:21:33] And what I would say is if the only reason that you want to take a class or read a book or whatever about this new method is because the person who invented it says that you need it, that's not a good reason to do it, because people who sell stuff for a living are really good at selling stuff. You always want to question the premise of the person who thinks that their method is the best.
[00:21:59] And I include myself in that, by the way, not just everybody else. But somebody who thinks their method is the best because they're making a living off of their method, you always want to question that premise first. And that's one of my big mantras: question the premise. We accept the premise all the time of everything, we accept the premise of somebody who's successful, knows why they're successful, and therefore, if I listen to them, I will have their success.
[00:22:28] That's not logically true. You have to question that belief, question that premise that you hold, because the reason things work for you is not because someone else had success with it. That's the big tip in that arena is if the only reason that you're questioning your own success, because somebody else is having more success, doing whatever method, then you always want to wait.
[00:22:57] And I would wait a week, two weeks before you go sign up for that class, before you go buy that book or take that workshop or go to that conference. I talk about this a little bit in my You're Doing It Wrong book. There's a process in our brains when someone creates a seed of doubt for us, about a method that we're using. And there's a process that happens where as soon as that doubt is created, we want to fix it. We want to soothe ourselves and make ourselves feel better. Like, "Oh, I'm wrong about this. Okay, let me fix this by signing up for this class right now."
[00:23:33] Instead, what I want us to do is to question the doubt that we feel. Does this only exist because I saw an advertisement? Does this only exist because somebody told me about something cool they'd heard? And if that's the case, then I want to wait and soothe myself in some other way. And I'm the person who will say, if you have to eat ice cream or chocolate, or if you have to buy something online in order to soothe yourself out of changing something that isn't broken, then do that. We can deal with that later.
[00:24:07] I'll just tell a quick story. There's a certain personality metric where you need to feel intelligent. Not just be intelligent, but you really need to feel intelligent. And when someone accuses you of being stupid, then you immediately need to fix that problem by proving that you're smart to yourself.
[00:24:29] And this is all internal stuff that's going on in our head. There's a very common tactic among advertisers of saying smart people do this. And if you don't do that thing, subconsciously you're telling yourself, "I'm a stupid person. And so if I was really smart, I would be doing this. And so I need to go and do this thing." And we need to know that that's a way that people get at our subconscious process to make decisions. And we need to question the premise. The big tip is always question the premise.
[00:25:06] Matty: For a writer who is just starting out, doesn't really have a track record to look back on to see what has been successful or unsuccessful, but they're really excited about writing and they think maybe taking classes is the way to go, how do you recommend they proceed? Do you recommend that they give it a go on their own for a little while first or dip their toe into the class concept? What would you recommend there?
[00:25:29] Becca: So the first thing I would settle for yourself is do you feel like you're the kind of person who wants to intuitively write a story or do you intuitively feel like you need structure and you need to figure out what goes where before you can start writing. And if you're intuitively feeling like you want to jump in and tell the story, then I would jump in and tell the story.
[00:25:52] And I wouldn't take a lot of classes to try to figure out how to plot or outline. And I would just do that. Just tell the story. And if you need to think while you're writing, think, and if you need to talk about it with other people, talk about it. Follow your instincts. If you're a person who needs to know things, like you want to know the whole story, then I would look at the structure-based programs first, sort of the high concept learning. If you're looking for character-driven stuff,
[00:26:24] Do something like the W plot or Wired for Story, which are very character-driven, motivation-driven things. If you feel like more of a plot-driven person, you want to do something that's plot-driven.
[00:26:36] So again, this is the, what drives me? What do I like? And then how do I find something that aligns with that instead of literally just taking everything that's out there. Because the danger in that is you lose time in experimenting. If you are very plot-driven and you like percentages and you want to know the acts and all that stuff, or you want to do The Story Grid method, the story questions, then that's more of a plot-driven outline style.
[00:27:08] But ask somebody who knows who's similar to how you're wired, if you know someone. And if you don't, then come ask us. We literally are available everywhere, we have free resources everywhere, because we want to help people to short circuit the questioning process, that you don't have to wonder about stuff. Our specialty is very much what do you need and how could we direct you somewhere that will get you more of what you need instead of what you don't.
[00:27:38] Matty: Would those resources help a person who is in the situation where they're just not feeling inspired? I mean, we're in such a strange time now, we're recording this in May 2020, so still under the influence of COVID, and it may be that their inability to create is not based on their creation approach. It's just based on circumstances. Is there a way that they can identify whether that's the case, so they don't spend a lot of time assessing their creative process when in fact it's just other circumstances that are affecting them?
[00:28:14] Becca: Yeah. I would assume right now if you are not able to write and there's not something wrong with your book, because of course if there's something wrong with the book, that's fixable by doing work to unstick the book. But if you are not able to write right now, I would assume that it's because you're in trauma and you'd need to give yourself some grace.
[00:28:38] One of the things we've talked about in the past with both Writer's Block and with Burnout is when you have a need for environmental stability and that stability is not currently being met, you need to attack the instability in terms of do what you can to make yourself feel as stable as you can in the time periods when you feel like you need to be creative. And if you don't need to be creative right now and you can't be, then don't do it. If it's not literally your job to put books out and you can't write right now, give yourself the trauma space. Because a lot of us are in trauma response with all of this that's going on, and we can't expect ourselves to be creative. If that's you, then all of the stuff you hear about, "Oh, use this time when you're in quarantine," that doesn't work for everybody. That's not the advice that I would give people who are feeling unstable.
[00:29:39] In the Writer's Block book I talk about Maslow's hierarchy, where you have the very bottom two levels that are about physical provision and safety. And if you are not feeling like you have physical provision and safety, it does not matter how much time you have. You're not going to be able to access those higher levels of creativity. Until you feel really safe, It's going to be a struggle.
[00:30:06] And so there are ways to promote that safety. News diets is a big one. And I mean big. Don't reach for your phone first thing in the morning, don't go on social media first thing. Don't watch the news or read the newspaper first thing.
[00:30:21] Matty: I just did an interview that I think will come out the week before yours with Zach Bohannon on his year of digital minimalism.
[00:30:29] Becca: Oh, nice.
[00:30:30] Matty: And I believe that it was either Zach or his co-host on The Career Author podcast, J. Thorn, who said that if you had to look at the news, pick one reputable local news source and one reputable worldwide news source, check them once in the morning and then put it aside. I thought that that was great advice.
[00:30:49] Becca: Yeah. And I would actually say if that doesn't work for you, if the checking in the morning leads to more checking and more checking and more checking, I would say don't check at all, until you can't not check. In this particular personality metric, there's people who are data-controlling and people who are data-responsive.
[00:31:08] So when data comes at you, can you make a decision not to engage it? Or do you feel like you have to make a decision about every piece of data that comes across your vision? If you are data-responsive, you likely should not be checking anything first thing in the morning, because it will only lead you to more and more and more and more throughout the day. People who are like that, I would say, when you find that you can't stop your response, then you can only control the data.
[00:31:43] If you're a data-controlling person, you can check your email one time in the morning and never check it again, or the news or social media and never check it again and be fine. If you're that person then absolutely do that. And if you can't, then you have to control the source of what's coming at you because it's the only way to keep yourself from just responding to literally everything and then needing to respond to more and needing to respond to more.
[00:32:10] Matty: I like the general theme of both the responding in the current circumstances, but also the caution not to respond to every piece of writer advice that people see, and I think that could be really freeing for people.
[00:32:24] Becca: Yeah.
[00:32:24] Matty: Quitting the bad stuff.
[00:32:26] Becca: Yes. It's so funny because of course my first book was Dear Writer, You Need to Quit and the YouTube channel is the QuitCast So I'm the quit person. In fact, they call me the Quit Coach. I don't want people to quit writing. I mean, they can if they want to, we certainly have had people who have quit writing for a time period because it was necessary for them to do. But the goal is to quit the things that you don't need to be doing. So many of us are doing things that we don't really need to do because someone else has told us something that they don't know doesn't work for us.
[00:33:01] All of the advice-givers out there doing their best to be helpful and give good advice, but we have to be better decision makers. As responders to data and responders to advice. We have to take the control of who gets to decide whether that advice is for me or not. It's not the person who's giving it because they don't know my brain and they don't know how I would be the most productive or how I would be the most successful. Only I know that. The person giving the advice definitely doesn't know that. They know how they were successful. You have to know for yourself, should I listen to that or not?
[00:33:41] Matty: Well, just to continue our bread and ice cream theme, that is great food for thought. I think you've given people a lot of great topics to think about where can people go online to find out more about you and your work?
[00:33:55] Becca: The easiest place is to check out the YouTube channel because we have a lot of episodes there and it's all free. In fact, we're right in the middle of doing some regular videos as a sort of productivity challenge on our Facebook page, which is the Better-Faster Academy at Betterfasteracademy.com. But we're doing some work on the Facebook page and we do some regular live coaching on the Facebook page. If you have a question that you feel like you can't answer on your own and you want one of our alignment coaches to talk about it, we offer those for free to the public on our Facebook page.
[00:34:37] Matty: Great. Well, thank you so much, Becca. This was so useful.
[00:34:41] Becca: Thanks a lot for having me. This was a lot of fun.
Links
Wired for Story by Lisa Cron
The Story Grid Method by Shawn Coyne
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