Becca Syme - Dear Writer, Youre Doing It Right

I thought I was handling 2020 so well. Oh, my sweet summer child Right?

Over the year, Id seen each one of my friends have a bit of a 2020-breakdown. That moment where they couldnt take it anymore and either got really angry or quiet or sad. One of them said, everyone will have a moment like this and I sort of laughed internally. Not Becca. Nope.

And then the roofers came.

It was like they made manifest the things that had been happening to me (and to us all) throughout the last calendar year.

Because I live in a condo, my homeowners association makes our external home care decisionswhen the roof needs to be replaced, who to hire, what they doand this time, they decided all the roofs in the whole association would be replaced at one time. What this means is, a huge team (I think Ive seen twelve different guys now) executes the same stage of the roofing on each of the houses in the association (there are twelve of us spread over two blocks). So instead of having one or two days with a small crew and then theyre gone, I have been in two weeks of intermittent roofing.

Heres what that feels like.

Randomly, throughout the day, there will be relentless noise above meand I did not see this coming. Id missed the last HOA meeting when they warned everyone about the project, so I woke up one morning to a Port-a-Potty on my front lawn and a forklift blocking my garage.

I was trapped in my house. I had no control over thisI couldnt just tell them to go awayand I had no idea how long it would last.

Then, as if all that wasnt shocking enough, I would be swarmed with constant noise. I never knew when it was coming. There was nowhere in my house I could go to get away from it (they were on every part of my roof), and I couldnt leave the house. So I was trapped in this constant interruption. I couldnt concentrate. It was hard to get work done. I had to move a preorder.

I always work well to deadline.

Not today, Becca.

Id be working in silence and then, suddenly, my focus was gone because I realized Id heard a creak and I was tensing for the racket that no amount of noise-cancelling headphones would block out.

And then it didnt come, but that didnt matter. I was already feeling the stress in my body. My nerves. My spirit.

I kept seeing this video on TikTok that said, drop your tongue from the roof of your mouth, relax your shoulders, un-tense your jaw, and as I did each of those things, I could feel my body relaxing. It was coiled. Stressed.

The first day, I assumed it would be over at the end of the daysince there were so many people in the crew. The second day, I was confused why it was still happening. The third day, there was more silence and I thought its done now. Were now on day nine and the roof is still not finished.

My friends keep asking me, how are they not done yet? and the only answer I can come up with is that there are so many houses to finish, and they are still in process on all of them.

I dont know when theyre going to be done. Every day theyre not yet finished, Im internally begging for them to be done.

In so many ways, this two-week period has been a microcosm of the last calendar year. Sometimes trapped inside and sometimes not. Sometimes surprised by the banging interference of news or turmoil. Sometimes embracing that it needs to happen and sometimes wishing it would all go away. Not knowing who to be mad at. Not having an outlet for frustration.

Or, worse, taking out my frustration on people who didnt cause any of it, but who happen to be easy targets. Name calling. Disgust. It was awful.

No wonder we all have these outburst breakdowns or these moments where we have to cancel preorders or move deadlines or cancel projects. Stress. This is stress.

For some of us, its trauma, and we are having trauma responses.

But this book is not about how to get through a 2020 experience. Its about something much bigger.

Some of us have been experiencing a 2020 moment in our lives or writing careers without knowing it. (Granted, some of us are fully aware that our lives or careers have been a source of stress, but were not sure what to do about it.) This has been coming for awhile.

We coach thousands of authors and what that means is: we see patterns pretty quickly. This is a pattern thats been replicating and building for awhile and its part of why we do the work we do (trying to find the right systems to help authors find success). But thats also only a part of why Im writing this book.

Ever since the gold rush of publishing began, there have been those whove had success and those who havent. Thats normal.

Now, were starting to see a huge influx of people who have been promised success, but arent seeing it. Theyre confused and frustrated, and in a lot of ways, theyre experiencing the swarm roofing effect, in their own publishing world.

They feel trapped by their circumstances or by the decisions theyve made (in good faith, sometimes). They see others living The Good Life and when theyre not, they wonder whats wrong. There is constant news (on FB/Tw/IG/SC/TT/etc.) of some authors wild success and it only serves to remind them that success hasnt happened the way they thought it would.

Its like a banging in their head. Intermittent. Unpredictable. Relentless.