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    Dear Writer, Are You In Burnout?: QuitBooks for Writers, #2
    Dear Writer, Are You In Burnout?: QuitBooks for Writers, #2
    Dear Writer, Are You In Burnout?: QuitBooks for Writers, #2
    Ebook165 pages2 hours

    Dear Writer, Are You In Burnout?: QuitBooks for Writers, #2

    By Becca Syme

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    About this ebook

    Chances are good, if this title caught your eye, you already know you need this book, so I'm not going to attempt to convince you.

     

    The unprecedented burnout we're collectively experiencing in the writing world today means two things.

    1. We need to know the signs of burning out.
    2. We need to know how to avoid that burnout pit.

    Oh, and there's a third reason, too… because if we need to recover from burnout, we need support, encouragement, and camaraderie. That's why this book exists.

     

    I've coached thousands of writers. Six- and seven-figure authors, major award winners, midlisters, and new authors alike. And there are patterns to what writers think and feel about our careers and our books. Those patterns are why I'm here, writing to you.

     

    If you are overwhelmed, tired, frustrated with your career or your sales... if you're stuck or stalled... come and join me inside these pages, and we'll talk about why.

     

    Why is key.

     

    We've got this. Let's get you out of this pit.

     

    - Becca

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHummingbird Books
    Release dateSep 17, 2019
    ISBN9781386948681
    Dear Writer, Are You In Burnout?: QuitBooks for Writers, #2

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    • 5/5
      As someone who just realized they're "in the pit" for a second time, this book was invaluable. There are great resources on burnout to be found, but I love that Becca has written one specifically for authors and our unique experiences and needs. A quick, easy-to-understand read with great metaphors, step-by-step solutions, loving support, and lots of much-needed reality checks! Thanks, Becca!

    Book preview

    Dear Writer, Are You In Burnout? - Becca Syme

    Introduction

    I was recently at a major national writing conference. More than 2,000 writers gathered in New York City to learn about writing. I had one-on-one coaching appointments lined up for most of the conference, and one after another, I met with authors who were in burnout.

    This was abnormal. I’d been getting more and more clients and students coming to me because they were burned out, in active burnout, or in recovery, but it wasn’t everyone. I knew it was a pattern; I’d been warning everyone that this was coming, trying to preach a message of self-care and recharging. Encouraging people to stay off social media and to be with their own thoughts more.

    But I’d never seen anything quite like this. So I started paying attention in workshops, in the elevators, in the restaurants and coffee shops.

    Everyone just seemed on edge.

    Not about big picture stuff—we honestly only have so much energy to expend, personally, on worrying about big-picture stuff. No one was worried about the state of the industry. Everyone was worried about their own problems.

    But it was the proliferation of individual worries that seemed to be hitting a fever pitch. Will I publish, will I sell, will I fail, will I get another contract, will I ever write another book, will my fans turn on me, will I be able to slow down. All of those conversations came up again and again.

    And this isn’t even mentioning all of the individual issues that seemed to be cropping up. People in crisis at home. People having a hard time, financially. People uncertain of their personal future or their family’s future. This level of uncertainty has a quality. A texture in the air.

    At this conference, the air was saturated with it.

    People are scared.

    Not for their lives—not most of them, anyway—but scared of the existential disappointment that happens when you put all of your hopes and dreams into something, and get crushed. Sure, some people were scared for their lives or their financial futures. But it was a rare person to come across who didn’t have some kind of aura of anxiety around them.

    There were highly introverted and empathetic writers who literally spent the entire conference in their rooms; they couldn’t handle the emotion. I met with a few of them and we talked about it, just so I could be clear about what I was feeling (because I’m not as empathetic or introverted as they are), and it was consistent.

    Everyone is afraid of losing what they have or not getting what they want. And that fear is causing a mushroom cloud of other fears, which are leading us to make decisions that are not good for us, and for sure not good for the industry. I had already been doing a series of videos on my YouTube channel about the topic of burnout, just because there had been so many requests for it. And then, out of that came requests for even more information.

    Thus, this book was born.

    I hadn’t planned to write a book on burnout because I’ve always felt like it was such a personal process, and really needed either coaching or (in most cases) therapy to handle the issues that come up.

    So, this book is not intended to be a diagnostic tool. It is not intended to take the place of medical advice, or to give medical advice. You should not consider me to be a medical doctor or listen to me the way you would listen to a medical doctor. In fact, if you are afraid you’re in burnout, stop reading this introduction, and go see a medical doctor or a therapist.

    But if you are not sure, or you’re just looking for more information or solidarity, please keep turning pages. It’s my hope to shed a little light on this process I’ve been through and seen other people through so many times.

    It’s not a pretty process. I hope you’ll never see the inside of it. But it’s necessary for us, as an industry right now.

    We need to understand what it looks like to burn out. And I hope that by the end of this book, you’ll be able to answer the question this book title asks.

    Dear Writer, Are You In Burnout?

    ONE

    The Good News

    There’s a trope in old Western movies, where the love interest is tied up on the railroad tracks while an out-of-control train barrels toward her. The hero is doing his best to rescue her before the train inevitably crushes her.

    Of course, he always rescues her, because it’s fiction, and because we all want to see love prevail over circumstances.

    I’m fairly certain that if you’ve picked up this book, you’re worried about burning out, or someone you love is worried that you’re burning out. So you already know the bad news: burnout is a real, live runaway train.

    Typically, I start my books (and classes and talks) with the bad news, because I believe that you know the bad news already, and that’s why you’re here. Life sucks, get a helmet.

    You’re hoping this book is the helmet.

    I hope it is, too.

    I’ve coached thousands of authors (from six- and seven-figure earners all the way down to the newbie author, from traditional to indie to hybrid, from major award winners to the first word on the page), and I can tell you from first-hand experience, everyone knows the bad news is coming, even if it’s only a subconscious fear crawling up the back of your neck as you try to keep up, try to make more, try to do more.

    But for now, we’ve had enough bad news. We need some good news. So, we’re going to start there.

    If you are headed for burnout, you can stop it.

    If you are in burnout, you can recover.

    If you are through burnout, you can keep it from happening again.

    But in order to do this, you have to understand some really important truths about our brains and bodies and why burnout happens. If you can understand the why, you can understand how to fix it and prevent it.

    That is the fundamental truth of my coaching approach. It’s why I wrote my first book (Dear Writer, You Need to Quit). It’s why I’m writing my next book (Dear Writer, You’re Doing It Wrong). It’s why this book is the hiatus between those two. Because WHY matters.

    Not the proverbial why, which is what coaches and fellow writers are trying to help you discover in order to motivate you. Not the why do I write kind of why. But the why is this happening to me kind of why. The existential why matters, much more than we think.

    What I want to do in the following pages is to give you some metaphors to explain the very complicated process of energy production and creative (or physical or emotional or spiritual or existential or relational) burnout. Why burnout happens, why you are prone to it, why we don’t see it coming. These truisms apply to all kinds of burnout processes, but they are the most important for writers in the creative burnout arena.

    Why?

    I’ll give you the short version here, but for the longer version, go read Dear Writer, You Need to Quit.

    The short why is that the industry is moving at the pace of that Old Western train. It has tied you up on the tracks, and you don’t even know it. You think you’re in control of all your actions. You think, subconsciously, that you have an unlimited store of energy that will allow you to keep doing what you’re doing forever. The train (which has a mustache and a black hat) is laughing and twirling the end of its wispy mustache, and pushing down the gas pedal.

    You are going to be the roadkill.

    I want you not to be the roadkill.

    There’s a common saying going around right now that says, no one cares about your platform as much as you do. I argue with that statement all the time. Because sometimes, what we really care about isn’t the platform at all. It’s something else. It’s money or prestige or growth or achievement. It’s not sustainability (which, if you want a long career in this business, should be among your goals). I’m going to argue that, in this moment, no one cares about your survival more than I do. It’s not because I know you, it’s because whether or not you survive and thrive has long-reaching and lasting effect on the entire industry.

    What you do (all of you) affects me. It affects us all. The more we normalize working ourselves into sickness, failure, and death, the more dangerous we are for the long-term health and growth of this industry.

    Too many bricks and walls falling down makes the whole thing crumble, in other words. By trying to help writers not burn out, I am trying to keep the whole industry from killing all of us. We have to live in a more conscious, more aware way, if we want to survive and thrive as a community.

    I’m writing this book because of a popular YouTube series I did on creative burnout. The most consistent request from people was to have an easy guide they could carry around with them. This is that guide.

    My goal in these pages is to give you the energy production metaphors (energy pennies and plate size), the burnout process metaphors (Slide, Pit, Ladder), and to talk you through the steps of Recovery Road.

    I write this book to give a more thorough attention to the precise explanations of the metaphors, to give more specific advice about how to recognize the symptoms, and to give some actionable recovery steps. If you’ve already seen those videos, the metaphors will not be new, but most of the information will be. My intention was that the two would complement each other. There’s a playlist link at the end of this book if you get to the end and want to see the videos. (Or you can search out Quitcast Burnout on YouTube if you want to watch now. I’ll wait…)

    I share these resources (inside the book and in other places) to make this industry an easier place for all of us to live in. I’ve been coaching writers for years, and have spent thousands of hours coaching everyone from the newest writers to the most successful. I’m fully aware that there are a lot of people talking to writers right now, and I always hesitate to be just another voice in the crowd. But given my experience, I feel like I have something important to say on this topic, so without further ado, let’s get into the meat of this book.

    TWO

    Energy Pennies

    Dear Becca, you were right.

    Those are the hardest letters for me to receive. They often come one or two years after I first met the writer in question, and they are almost always accompanied by some kind of request for me to add a new pen name (or someone’s real name)

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