When to Start Saying No to Opportunities

Why does the publishing industry feel more chaotic than ever, and what can writers do about it? How do you know if you're truly burned out or just creatively empty? When should successful authors start saying no instead of yes to every opportunity? Becca Syme shares her hard-won wisdom about navigating burnout, embracing unpredictability, and knowing what to quit (and what not to quit) in your writing career.

In the intro, Frankfurt Book Fair AI and audio [Audible, Publishers Weekly]; Free Reads by BookBub; Halloween book sale; Writing Storybundle;

Today's show is sponsored by Bookfunnel, the essential tool for your author business. Whether it’s delivering your reader magnet, sending out advanced copies of your book, handing out ebooks at a conference, or fulfilling your digital sales to readers, BookFunnel does it all. Check it out at bookfunnel.com/thecreativepenn

This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn 

Becca Syme is an author, coach, and creator of the Better Faster Academy. She is a USA Today bestselling author of small town romance and cozy mystery, and also writes the Dear Writer series of non-fiction books. She's also the host of the QuitCast Podcast.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Identifying burnout vs. creative blocks. How long symptoms last and checking for biological/life transition causes first.
• The transition from saying yes to saying no. Learning when you've reached the point where selectivity becomes essential for sustainability
• “Loki is in charge.” Why publishing is unpredictable and when to stop analyzing what went wrong.
• Increased chaos or increased visibility. Whether publishing really has more unpredictability now or we're just seeing it more clearly.
• What to quit doing. Book signings as investments and judging other authors online, plus the dangers of social media dysregulation.
• What not to quit. Writing itself and maintaining hope for the future, regardless of industry changes.

You can find Becca at betterfasteracademy.com/links.

Transcript of Interview with Becca Syme

Joanna: Becca Syme is an author, coach, and creator of the Better Faster Academy. She is a USA Today bestselling author of small town romance and cozy mystery, and also writes the Dear Writer series of non-fiction books. She's also the host of the QuitCast Podcast. So welcome back to the show, Becca.

Becca: Thank you so much for having me again. I love being here.

Joanna: You were last on the show in March 2024, so I guess around 18 months now. Give us an update.

What has changed in your writing and your author business?

Becca: So I've started writing more fiction again. I think the last time I was here I was doing almost zero fiction writing, just because I was so busy. And I went through burnout, which is not going to surprise anyone. I think we've all been there.

One of the things I decided as a post-burnout goal was to try to write fiction every day. I don't every single day do it, but I do it often enough that it feels like I'm doing it every day. So I'm happy about that.

Joanna: That's interesting because you hear people saying, “Oh, I've got a block around writing fiction” or something. How do people know if they are in burnout versus they are just empty, or perhaps they have other reasons?

How do people tell where they are and the reason why they can't write?

Becca: How long it lasts is usually the biggest indicator for me. Because if you're empty and you try to fill again, right? Like, let's go reading, let's go watching, and it doesn't come back, then it's more likely to be burnout.

Burnout itself, like the kind of extreme burnout that we hear about where you can't get up off the bathroom floor, that kind of thing, will be real evident when you're in what we call “all systems burnout.”

Usually a burnout that is a creative burnout or a physical or emotional burnout can have other potential causes. So I would always go looking for things like, “Am I in perimenopause?” I joke with people, “Is it burnout or am I in perimenopause?” because it feels the same.

So I always want to check biological first, or if I'm in a life transition, that's often the reason why I'm more blocked. So I want to look outside at environmental first to see if there's a cause. If there is, then I want the cause to get dealt with. But it's usually time. How long is it lasting?

Joanna: How long does it last? I think that's so important.

It seems like people blame writing before anything else. I had a friend who had a death in the family and was like, “Oh, I just can't write.” And I'm like, “Give it six months.” Grieving is another reason.

There are lots of reasons why your whole self might be like, “Now's not the time to write a cozy mystery” or whatever.

Becca: I don't think we consider enough how different it is to be a creative person versus other things you might do for work. If I'm grieving, I can probably still show up to my Starbucks job and do a reasonable job of making coffee most of the time, right?

So I may not be as affected in my ability to go to the grocery store or my ability to paint houses or something. But all of our work comes from our brain, so anything that impacts our cognition, anything that impacts our processing time.

Honestly, if the stakes go up even just a little bit in our real life, there's a likelihood that it's going to impact our creativity to a point where sometimes, “I'm afraid I might lose my job,” then all of a sudden the creativity dries up and goes away.

Or “I'm afraid of what might happen if…” and then insert a million things here that can be making me feel afraid. Creativity can just go away because, again, it's Maslow's hierarchy, right?

I know it's not 100% one layer at a time all the time, but if your base level foundation is being attacked, if you don't know for sure how you're going to make your mortgage next month, it's going to be real hard to reach creative freedom if you're worried about stuff.

Joanna: Thinking about ourselves as whole people rather than like you can just turn on the writing even if everything else is kind of crazy.

I've got to ask you, Becca, since you are a coach, you're a very wise person, you've been on this show lots, and you've helped me, helped many people that you coach, and you've talked about avoiding burnout before—

How on earth did you end up in burnout?

Becca: So some of it is high stakes, right? It's not uncommon for people when they see a lot of success in their business to be overwhelmed by all the things that there are to do, to have a hard time delegating.

It's kind of in the phases of a business and the way businesses grow. There's a phase that is like massive growth. Infrastructure causes massive growth.

Then if you don't adapt to that easily or quickly by either offloading things off your plate or lowering the financial stakes, a lot of people will get burned out when they have to make all of these decisions about money. Money stresses them out.

So you have high stakes, that means the stress goes up, which means it costs me more energy to do things that I would have done previously with less energy. It can kind of sneak up on you if you're not conscious about it all the time.

Then, of course, you have to quit stuff. You would think being the quit coach, I would be really great at that, but it's really hard to quit something that has been good or beneficial, even if it is having a high cost.

Joanna: I mean, obviously being a coach, you give a lot of yourself to other people. I just can't imagine how hard that is. I mean, one of the reasons I do this podcast is I hope to help people through the show, but it's not the intensity that coaches like yourself do.

How did you then manage to adapt and change things so that now you are out of burnout again?

Becca: I'm probably doing more similar things to what you've been doing, which is trying to create more what I would call large scale, right? Like doing more podcast episodes. I'm trying to travel less and be really intentional about the places I travel being worth it for my energy and time.

Then I'm also doing more volume. So I'm trying to do more books, more posts, more social media time, things that don't cost me one-on-one. For a long time and probably the last time I was here, I was at maybe not the height, but pretty close to the height. I was coaching eight to ten hours a day, every day sometimes.

Joanna: Oh my goodness.

Becca: Yes, so I was doing super high volume coaching and then also traveling a lot at the same time. I would travel two times a month for conference speaking sometimes, and every single month of the year. I never really had a break from it, but that was again, my own choice. Nobody forced me to do it.

So I had to quit saying yes to everything, which was very difficult. Then I had to quit saying yes to all coaching. I had to do things like raise my coaching prices, but then I also have to create the value in other places.

So go back to making the QuitCast again, start producing more non-fiction books, doing more high volume courses like small free courses and stuff like that. So I'm doing similar high volume things, but it is a transition for me who's used to being accessible and reachable and able to help people one-on-one a lot. It's been a challenge.

Joanna: I get that. I guess for people listening, I mean, there's a point in your career, whatever that is, where you do have to say yes a lot. Then there's a point where you have to start saying no more.

How do people figure out when the hell that is? Is it like you say, at the point of overwhelm, you are almost forced into it?

Are there ways people can tell when they need to start saying no rather than forcing themselves to say yes?

Becca: So usually you learn by the sort of everything crashes down, right? Like you have a burnout, you miss a big important deadline, you let somebody down. So that's usually where most of us get our awareness or our learning curve of like, “Oh, I need to quit these things.”

It is possible to see the patterns coming and sort of strategize for yourself about how to be more intentional with your time, especially as you see growth happening.

Once you get into a place with your author career where there's demand for what you're doing, there's going to only be increasing demand because demand is so unusual, like high levels of demand. So once you see that coming, if you want to not get into a burnout place, you want to be more strategic about it.

You can say no earlier, but you have to be willing to pay the price for it. I think that's what a lot of us aren't capable of doing, that we're so afraid of what happens if we say no, that we get that FOMO, right? The fear of missing out and we're not able to say no.

So we sort of have to teach ourselves that JOMO concept, the joy of missing out, by being forced to say no by life or energy or just circumstances. So most of us have to learn by falling face first into it.

Joanna: Which happened to you. It's so interesting because literally just before we got on the phone, I had an email about a speaking opportunity and part of me was like, “Oh, that would be really good networking.” So this was not a money thing, this was more a networking thing, and I was like, “Maybe I should say yes.”

Then I remembered that I keep an email template for precisely this time, which basically says reasons why I'm not doing this kind of thing. So I copy and paste that email and then make a few adjustments to it. I did send that email, and I didn't think about it too long, and I've kind of reached that point now.

Having the email template helps me a lot because—

As people pleasers, you have to be able to say no in a graceful manner.

I mean, you don't, but I feel like I do.

Becca: I think a lot of people pleasers do though, and there's a fair number of us in the artistic industry, right? The way that we got here is often because we like to make people happy.

So you need to know that whatever consequence you're afraid of paying is either not as bad as you think it's going to be. So me saying no, I think that stakes are very high for that, but it turns out they're not as high as I am afraid that they are.

So just knowing with practice that it does actually get easier to say no if I will allow myself to practice it. The problem is we don't understand what's going on in our brain, right? So with a lot of us, we actually have life and death stakes attached to the idea of saying no at all.

I think somehow it's going to be this nebulous outcome. So anytime I think, “Well, what happens if I say no?” and I get a fear that is so nebulous, I can't tell you what it is that I'm actually afraid of.

That's something we can just not listen to because that's a fear response. That's not helpful. A lot of us need to learn how to say no by doing. We can't just have a magical feeling that we're waiting for. “I'll say no when it feels okay to say no.” Well, it's never going to feel okay to say no.

You've got to do it. Then it feels better each time you do it because it turns out that it didn't kill me to say no, and that's what I'm afraid of.

Joanna: As you said, it's not hard to say no to things you hate. It's hard to say no to things that are good and would be good for your business or would be good connections or whatever. But if you say no, then you have more energy for the things that you want to do. So I think that's so important.

Okay, I wanted to ask you about something. I've heard you say this a couple of times, and on your Facebook page just last week, you had a post saying “Loki is in charge.” So I wanted to ask you what do you mean by that? It's fascinating, but—

Just explain who Loki is, just in case people don't know.

Becca: Yes, the God of chaos, right? So Loki is the God of mischief or the God of chaos and the things that are unpredictable. So I'll use the Marvel version because it's easy to kind of contrast Loki with Captain America inside of Marvel.

I mean, Loki is like the commonly known God of chaos or God of mischief. But inside of the Marvel universe, Captain America is the sort of logical… everything is logical, everything's predictable, everything that's good is good, everything that's bad is bad.

The consequences seem to follow logically that if you do good, good things happen. If you do bad, bad things happen. That's kind of the template that we have in our head about how we think the world should work.

So a lot of writers think, “Well, if I do the work, I'll get the outcome. If I run these ads, I'll sell books. If I do this thing, I'll sell…” The logical follow of doing work is that it will naturally be the consequence of something sort of like one plus one equals two.

We think that that math is in charge of the publishing industry, that somehow good books will sell, or if I write more books, I will sell, or if I write to market, I will sell.

Captain America is not in charge of the publishing industry. Loki is in charge.

So sometimes the things that you do have no impact whatsoever, and sometimes they have all the impact. Sometimes you change covers and it makes the book sell, and sometimes you change covers and it doesn't.

I think part of what I'm trying to say in this “Loki is in charge” is not about the future, right? It's not to say, “Well, we should all be very afraid because Loki's in charge and Loki's in charge of the future.” No, no, no.

The question is if I am looking backwards and I'm trying to evaluate what I have done and I have come to the end of my evaluation and can't find a reason why it's not happening.

So I'm three months past a launch and the books didn't sell the way I wanted them to sell, and my tendency internally is to say, “Well, the rules of the publishing industry are logical and therefore there must be a logical reason, a logical cause for why this didn't happen that I could find and change, and then next time I will sell better.”

Sometimes the answer is literally “Loki's in charge.” We don't know what happened. It's not worth trying to figure it out is essentially what I'm saying, right?

Like, yes, there's a reason somewhere, but it's not worth spending your time trying to figure it out or trying to iterate when the highest level of chance that you have at better results is starting a new thing. Right? So like writing a new book, starting a new launch, doing a new series.

The answer isn't always start a new series, but it might be do the next book in the series you're not enough books in. So many of us are trying to be so precious with each individual action that we take and figure out what it was that didn't work as though somehow there's this very easy to find causal reason, a one-to-one reason.

So often what I want people to do is just look backwards and be like, “Okay, well, sometimes the answer is Loki's in charge and I need to not worry too much about it because I'm wasting my time trying to find the reason.”

When sometimes the reason is there are too many people publishing that day or you didn't happen to take off on TikTok and that is not something you can control and do anything about. So a lot of it is just what's in our control and what's not, and trying to be more comfortable with things being out of our control.

So I use Loki because we all laugh when I say it, right? It's like “Loki's in charge. Oh, Loki. Stupid Loki,” right? Like whatever. It makes the cause be something that feels enough out of your control in a safe way instead of it feeling like, “No, I have to figure this out and fix it.” Right?

It's sort of meant to be a tongue-in-cheek way of being like, “Okay, let's just move on. You're going to be okay. Let's do the next one.”

Joanna: Who is this Kevin you keep talking to?

Becca: Kevin is like the John Doe, right? Like the sort of John Doe. I use George and Kevin and Carol sort of interchangeably when I'm talking to a random writer. Like trying to say, “All right, let's go. It's okay to move on.”

Joanna: I thought… and everyone, Becca does know my name. It's not Kevin. This is not Kevin.

So, well, I think this is interesting and I wonder whether you feel that there is more chaos right now? As in we've always had chaos in the publishing industry, but it does seem like there is a lot of transition right now. There are things that were working even kind of last month, and now people are like, “Oh no, this is bad.”

Do you think there is more chaos, or is it just the same as normal?

Becca: I sort of go back and forth on whether there is more. Usually in transition periods there is a little bit more, right?

Like if you think about when you live in your house on a normal day, there's very little unpredictable stuff that's probably going to happen. When you're moving, all of a sudden there's probably more unpredictable stuff that's going to happen, just because the added sort of transition causes more chaos.

So I do think it's possible that there's more chaos. What I think is happening is that the unpredictability is becoming more visible than it's ever been before, because in the past it feels sort of like the people who were getting the unpredictable results were either not being heard effectively.

Just speaking objectively as a coach, there's always been a high level of unpredictability in this industry. It's just that the people who are teaching are often the ones who are getting whatever result and then saying, “Oh, this is what should be happening when you do this.”

So the people who are at what I would call that kind of expert level often feel like there's a lot more predictability, ahat's not always the case anymore.

I think there's a lot of teachers and a lot of speakers and presenters who are feeling the unpredictability more than maybe they were in the past. So now we're seeing it a little bit more visibly.

I don't know that I believe there's any more unpredictability other than the typical transitional stuff of like, “Well, that used to work and now it doesn't work anymore.” But if you've been in this industry as long as I think some of us have who listen to this show, this happens every time there's a transition.

It happened in the transition between when Facebook ads slowed down in their effectiveness or changed in effectiveness. It happened when Instagram changed in its effectiveness. It's happened when KU first started, it happened in KU 2.0 launch. There's always some transition feeling.

I think there's additionally more transition globally and internationally and nationally than there has been in the past too. So less stability in other places makes it feel more unstable.

So I go back and forth about if there's actually less predictability or if we're just more conscious of it. But either way, we feel like there is more now, for sure.

Joanna: I was just reflecting as you were talking about the people who were teaching, but there's quite a few who've dropped away. I mean, if you think about Author Nation, the speakers are quite different and new voices come in and teach new things, and I'm not going to necessarily pivot into others.

So for example, TikTok is always my go-to example of, I am not going to. I did not pivot into TikTok. I'm not going to, that is just not my thing.

So there's lots of people who are starting now who I'm like, “No, no, you really maybe should try TikTok. Don't listen to me. You can't have my career in the same way.” People can't have your career. Lee Child always says you can't have my career. When you're starting out fresh, you almost need to look for different people to follow.

What do you think about voices to listen to in a transition?

Becca: Ultimately, and this is why I said I think it might feel like there's more chaos, is because we do get a lot of security out of people who are starting something new, right? Because they have a lot of brash excitement and they believe that things are possible.

It's almost like a wave that crests on the shore. In order for us to maintain that level of progress as an industry, we need new people to always be coming up over the old wave and coming up over the old wave. The old wave might go out and then come back again.

There may be that I need to retreat a little bit and kind of regroup and then come back with new enthusiasm.

Sure, but in a creative industry, because so much of creativity happens when I am more secure, what we always need is to listen to people who make us feel like there is a security about what could be happening, like what could be possible.

The reality of the industry on just a one-to-one basis is not something that most of us need to be worried about because it is so unpredictable. Who will and who won't? What will take off and what won't? What will work and what won't?

It's so unpredictable. All you need to do is just have the resilience to keep going, and I think we need that new wave to come up every once in a while to remind us all and fill us all with this renewed hope of like, “Oh my gosh, think about what might happen if…” et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Whenever I hear that there's new people teaching new stuff, I get excited about it because I think authors need to have that excitement and enthusiasm and “this is what's possible.”

Then they learn something new and it opens their mind, it helps them get through transitions, it creates more stability. We get more engaged, we have more fun. Like ultimately that is the way we thrive long term, that we have a sustainable career.

Joanna: I guess, obviously as you said, we're both learners and there are things that we both have changed our businesses. Although I've been selling direct since I started in 2008, I only adopted Kickstarter a couple of years ago and now I love it. I absolutely love it.

It's a really important part of my business financially, but also creatively. Like the things I create in my Kickstarters are so important to me in so many ways.

You are doing a Kickstarter. So tell us a bit more about that and why you are doing that. You've done them before too, haven't you?

Why is it important to you to do Kickstarters?

Becca: So, I love being able to bring a new book to people and like, I usually do a book and a tool, right? Like some kind of workshop or card deck or like, something that I will do in addition to the non-fiction book.

There's something that happens around when we infuse new learning into a community, and specifically my community is very learner focused in the sort of the Better Faster, QuitCast kind of arena.

So my first book that I sort of took off with was called Dear Writer, You Need to Quit. And I've become the QuitCast and quit books and quit coach and all those things. So the new book is called Dear Writer, You Still Need to Quit.

It is basically the same sort of structure as the first book in terms of one essay will be aimed at this group and the next essay will be aimed at a different group. I think I had 18 or 19 chapters in the first book, and this one has 40 so far.

Joanna: Love it.

Becca: There are probably more coming apart from that. What I'm trying to do with this book is sort of give us this… almost like these aren't the droids you're looking for moment, right? Like it's okay to just let that go. It's okay to not worry about that.

It's okay to look away, and try to remind people like what is it that's really important about maintaining forward motion in your career? And what are the rules that you actually need to live by? And what are the forms and functions you actually need to live by and what can you release and just stop worrying about?

So much of what I want to get across to authors is like we worry about so much that is just, you can't know any of these things. Like you can't know whether a book is going to take off until after you've released it.

So the more we worry that it won't happen, instead of encouraging ourselves to practice the resilience that will allow us to see incremental growth as beneficial and also prepare us for larger growth when it happens. And to know that incremental growth doesn't preclude you from having larger growth in the future.

So sort of things like, here's how we might misunderstand what a career trajectory looks like, and we worry so much about following a particular pattern, not realizing that there are 300 other patterns that can also lead to the success that we want.

So I think a lot of what I'm trying to do is just remind us like, these aren't the droids you're looking for. It's fine to ignore this stuff. Let's refocus on what's really, really important.

Joanna: It's interesting that you said about we don't know whether a book will take off. I just got to be realistic. I mean, I've written like nearly 50 books and I've never had a book like take off in the sense of like traditional media going, “Wow, this is amazing,” or number one on Amazon.

So just to encourage people, you can have a career just selling some books every month.

Becca: A fulfilling career, and not just a fulfilling career, but it doesn't mean that you're not successful.

I think we all look at these sort of success patterns of like, “Okay, this person went from selling 10 books a month to selling 10,000 books a month,” and now we're like, “Well if I don't hit that trajectory that somehow there's something wrong with me.”

As opposed to, “Well, okay, but that's just one story.” Joanna is a great example. You build over time or you get a little bit more each release and then you have a thing where you have a slump where you don't sell as much.

Sometimes when people go into those slumps, they're like, “Oh, well my career is over. I stopped growing. So clearly there's a problem now.” Where I would say, “But if you look from a big picture at it, this is probably just a downturn that needs a creative upturn, rather than this is the end. I'm never going to be able to do this again.”

We just make so many pronouncements about things, or we're afraid of those pronouncements in our heads because we don't actually know what it is that could be happening.

We're too ready to be afraid that it's all going to be over, as opposed to, “You know what, I can weather this. So if I have to get a second job for a while so that I can continue to write, I don't see that as a failure. I see that as resilience and progress and me being creative and still being able to write. Like I just want to never stop writing.”

We have these templates in our head that we get so attached to, and I just want us to remember that resilience is important and there's more that could be possible than you would ever think because of what we're afraid might happen.

That fear keeps us really narrowed and tight and stressed, and the hope really makes us more expansive and feel better in our skin.

Joanna: Well, I'm looking forward to all the 45-plus different things I need to quit. Obviously we're not going to go through everything now, but just maybe—

Give us one thing that is a really common thing that we haven't talked about that we should be quitting.

Becca: Yes. Quit going to book signings. This is my little bit of a soapbox about this. By all means go to book signings if what you want is to network, like if your goal is networking or if your goal is like, “I'll take whatever new readers I can get and I'm not going to try to break even,” let's say on book signings.

Because I think book signings are something that went through a phase in like 2014, 15, 16 as well, where we had a similar fervor about like, “Let's start 55 book signings and everybody's going to do one, and this is going to be it for me. I'm investing $5,000 into this and so in order for me to get out what I need, I have to break even because this is a business expense.”

And I'm like, “No. If you are a mid-list or low-list author, book signings are either ways for you to connect with the fans that you already have.” So seeing it as an investment with the fans and trying to increase your longevity of your career by keeping those fans around. Or it's an opportunity for you to network with other authors.

Very rarely is it going to sell enough books at enough volume that it's going to be a good investment of your time and money. I think a lot of us see book signings as something that we have to do in order to grow, but we just don't understand that growth doesn't happen that way.

You can't create demand in that way unless demand is already visible in other places.

So what I'd rather see people do, if it was me, I'd rather see people have much lower price or free books if they're low and mid-list authors paperbacks at the book signings and see it as almost like a lead magnet sample promotional opportunity rather than trying to feel like I have to.

I think we treat it like an investment when that's not a great business decision for most of us.

I would rather see people do fewer signings or treat them like promotional opportunities and really invest in getting as broad of a reach as you can rather than trying to see it as an investment financially, like where I'm going to try to make all my money back, and then people price their books really high and they don't sell.

Joanna: It's interesting though because I've had quite a few people on recently who—I mean, I think you mean a different kind of thing—but people selling at fairs, people selling in person direct from a store.

Becca: Direct from a store? Like from a stall?

Joanna: Yes, like a market stall or a…

Becca: So I'm a fan of stuff like that if the person is going into it knowing that this is going to be a very high level of investment for one sale at a time, right? Or there are some people out there who adore hand selling.

Again, I think part of what happens when we look at other people's stories is we have to say, “Was there already a demand for their books that they're responding to?” Like, is there already a high level of demand for those books? And they're essentially filling a demand that already exists.

Or if I think about like a fair or a farmer's market or a craft fair or something where there is no one else selling books there, so they're taking advantage of the blue water.

That's a totally different thing for me from attending a book signing where there's 500 authors and I'm going there assuming that if I can somehow compete with those top sellers, that I'm going to be able to sell all of my books at full price.

I see people signing up for four and five and six and seven signings a year, and I'm like, we disrupt our travel, we spend more time. Again, unless you love it—because my caveat for things is always, if you love hand selling, please do it. If you love festivals, please do it. If you love signings, please do it.

If you're feeling pressured to do it because everybody's doing it, please question the premise. Not everyone has the same experience. Again, Loki's in charge, right? It doesn't react the same when everyone does it.

Joanna: Or it's just not your thing. I find it interesting talking to people who really enjoy hand selling because it's not at all what I enjoy. I have a bit of a soapbox too, and I thought I'd put this in.

Quit hating on other authors and judging other independent authors.

Particularly because as independent authors, we are responsible for our creative choices, our business choices. We are independent.

At the moment there just seems to be a lot more hating on other authors and judging other authors, because of the AI stuff in a major way. So what do you think about this?

Becca: I feel like anytime there is a level of judgment with other people, there's always a fear at the core of it, right? So if I find myself having really big responses to something, like I see people doing a certain thing online, whatever the thing is, and I get really up in my feelings about it, there are two options there.

One is I can do the work internally to try to figure out what that emotion is and walk away from the keyboard. I can let myself calm down first, and then come back and have a conversation that is less emotional about it.

I think the problem usually with people who are hating on other people online, like they're getting very up in their feelings, is that they're not pausing at all. When they feel frustrated or angry or judgmental, they're just going along with the dysregulation and they don't understand.

So if you think about Joanna and I in a room with 300 people, let's just say we're at Author Nation, we're all in a room with 300 people in that room. We're all listening to someone talk and we're all feeling very safe and secure and excited and we're having all these positive feelings.

Then there are people in the room who see danger somewhere, like let's say there's a bear in the back corner of the room. Most of the room can't see it, and there's like 10 people in the back of the room who can see it.

Then they can actually feel feelings that are big enough that they can dysregulate the rest of the room no matter what's happening from the front. We won't even realize that it's happening until we all turn and look at the bear and see it and then run away, right?

So we mass dysregulate each other. When we're online and we don't realize that the exact same thing is happening, that we all feel like, “Oh, there's this… I'm feeling a lot of fear or frustration and I'm going to the computer because I feel dysregulated. I want to express it.”

Usually we express emotion and then somehow we get regulated by that. But because when we dysregulate other people, they dysregulate us, it's like this big dysregulation fest that ends up happening. When we're all getting on, let's say, Threads and complaining about something, right?

The goal in complaining one person to one person is that somebody listens, somebody talks, and then we regulate each other by coming to a conclusion of how we can handle the situation. What we don't realize is if I feel really big feelings, the goal of me feeling those big feelings is to regulate the situation for me to feel secure again.

When we take it to the internet or we start complaining or yelling or getting frustrated or whatever, we're looking for that loop close of that validation of those feelings, but then we end up just mass dysregulating each other.

The problem is because we're not 300 people in a room, we are each in our own room with our own computer, there is no loop closed to that dysregulation pattern. It just keeps growing and growing and growing and getting worse and worse and worse and worse and worse.

There's no end to the dysregulation until we get so overwhelmed that we have to walk away from the computer.

The reason I say I would like us to walk away from the computer first and then come back and engage after we have gotten rid of that emotion, rather than communicating in the middle of it, is that you cannot mass regulate people.

So I can't say something, for instance, on Threads in a response to a comment chain that has gone sort of off the rails. Everybody that's reading it is dysregulated. I can't say something that will regulate all of those people because they want to be dysregulated in that moment, unless I specifically answer the one thing that they're saying.

So I will say the judgment also frustrates me, but for a different reason. It frustrates me because it's not helpful. Us all getting dysregulated together doesn't actually help solve any of the problems. All it does is make us spend more time on social media or make us spend more time on Threads or TikTok or YouTube or whatever.

It takes us away from the thing that could regulate us, which is people actually listening and talking and coming to a conclusion and having a conversation. I'd rather see us call a friend than comment on Threads, because then at least we could have a conversation that's relational and we could get somewhere productive.

I just wish people could understand, you cannot mass regulate people. You can only mass dysregulate them. So the computer and the phone are just an excuse for waiting to be dysregulated at some point. I wish more people would think about the fact that it's not helping the way we think it's helping.

Joanna: To engage with that.

Becca: Yes.

Joanna: So the answer is to walk away rather than…

Becca: I would rather have us walk away first. Yes.

Joanna: I mean, I do that. I just see so much misinformation, and you know how it is. I guess we started off by sort of saying no more. In general, I do just walk away. I really just take myself out of it rather than, as you say—

Trying to persuade people on social media of anything is just kind of pointless.

Becca: Yes.

Joanna: As you also mentioned, we are at a time in history where there's a lot, a lot going on, let's say. There's so much going on. So as you say, if you are head up around whatever you are, head up around politically or wars and all kinds of things to get angry about.

Then you see another comment about something in the author world, I suppose it's all just very triggering at the moment. So it would be good if we all walked away a lot more. It is hard. It is hard though, isn't it?

Is that maybe how it feels at the moment, that Loki is in charge of the world, not just publishing?

Becca: Yes, it does. It feels so unpredictable and chaotic, but so much of that again is because we are not all in a room together. We're each in our own rooms at the computer.

If you think about what benefits digital spaces is actually benefits all digital spaces for us to be dysregulated, not for us to be regulated. Because regulated people don't need to spend time on social media. They can be like, “Oh, look at this cool thing, and oh, puppy,” and then they go about their life.

When I'm dysregulated, I have to spend more time there because I'm trying to close whatever loop it is. So it's either the boredom loop that I'm trying to close that will never close because it keeps just opening more boredom loops, one after another. Or it's an anger loop, or a sadness loop, or a fear loop.

heT Internet's not going to close any of those for us. All it's going to do is keep them open because it benefits when our loops are open.

This is why I end all of my QuitCasts now with “shut the computer down, turn off the phone, go open the manuscript,” because that has a higher percentage of ability to regulate you than anything you're going to read on Facebook or Threads, or see on TikTok or whatever.

Including the positive stuff because the positive stuff is just anesthetic to keep you engaged until the negative stuff catches you and then it can suck you in.

So on some level, and I know I'm sounding very negative to social media, some of it's really fine and beneficial, but the number one difference in people who easily and quickly are productive versus the people who aren't, almost 2-to-1 is how much time they allow themselves to spend on social media.

It's whether or not they reach for their phone first thing in the morning or whether they don't. It's so hard sometimes to convince people that it's actually dangerous enough to be there, that we should really be avoiding it as much as possible.

Tt the same time, I understand we're all adults, we're going to make our own choices. Realistically, I think a lot of our productivity woes, our selling woes, et cetera, could be helped if we would just not reach for the phone first thing in the morning.

Joanna: I find going for a walk helps. Getting outside. Like, oh, there's a world out there. The world is not in the screen. The world is actually a lot bigger. I find that helps.

Joanna: Okay, so we are almost out of time, but obviously, so the campaign is “Dear Writer, You Still Need to Quit,” but—

What don't we need to quit? What can we keep doing?

Becca: So we do not need to quit writing.

Joanna: Yay.

Becca: That's the key for me. I think no matter what happens on any level, no matter how bad the predictions get about whatever's going to change, there is no need for us to quit writing or to believe that writing is going to be taken away from us.

Even if the capacity to sell in one way is taken away, there's always going to be other ways. I feel like we need to just remind ourselves almost like that kind of motto or catchphrase that you repeat to yourself every time it comes up. Like the jingles, right?

There's this “Save big money at Menards” thing that comes up a lot in the Midwest because we see Menards signs everywhere, and I always think “Save big money at Menards.” Like I sing it in my head.

I wish that people would sing in their head, “Open the manuscript, open the manuscript, open the manuscript” just over and over and over again.

So much of our fear can be combated by stopping ourselves from thinking about what might happen and just continuing to practice the opening of the manuscript and the disappearing into the writing and the enjoyment of the writing, as often as possible.

No matter how bad the predictions are, I still don't believe that there's a reason for us to stop hoping for writing and wanting to write more. On that note, I just don't believe there's a reason for us not to be hopeful about the future.

We might go through some hard stuff. We might have change, so learn how to be resilient, learn how to pivot, learn how to be flexible. There's an element of learning that no matter what you think is being taken away, there's always a possibility that we could switch back, that things could transition backwards, right?

I don't mean to come off saying don't be worried about. I'm not saying don't be worried about anything. I'm specifically talking about it in the publishing industry.

I think we think about what might happen and we get so closed off about the future and there's going to be so much fear and change and closing. So many of us don't realize that we will be good at change when it happens.

We're not going to be good at change now, but we can be more flexible and more hopeful about the future if we look for things to be flexible and hopeful about instead of focusing on the things that we're not.

So there's no reason for us to quit being hopeful about the future. There's no reason for us to quit writing, and if we can just focus on that, there's always some more interesting thing I could be writing, some manuscript that I could open, something that I could hope for.

There's always possibility in the future. There's always possibility of selling, there's always possibility of new readers. There's always going to be possibility. So if we can just focus on that, it's going to be a lot easier to get through the hard things if we don't lose our hope about the future.

Joanna: Absolutely. Brilliant.

So where can people find you and your books and the Kickstarter online?

Becca: betterfasteracademy.com/links will have everything. So all one word, all lowercase. That is the one-stop shop for Becca.

Joanna: Brilliant. Thanks so much for your time, Becca. That was great.

Becca: Thank you for having me.

---

This transcript has been edited for clarity and readability while maintaining the authentic voices and insights of both speakers.

The post Loki Is In Charge. How Authors Can Thrive In A Time Of Transition With Becca Syme first appeared on The Creative Penn.