Dear Writer, Youre Doing It Wrong
Be Efficient, Be Effective, Be Better-Faster
Becca Syme
Copyright 2019 by Becca Syme. Published by Hummingbird Books in Bozeman, Montana.
All rights reserved.
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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment, nor is this book a diagnostic tool. This book is meant for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for therapy (psychological or physical). Please consult with a licensed physician or therapist for medical advice.
In many instances, the authors named inside are meant to represent conglomerate experience, except when named for a specific case study. Client names have been changed to protect anonymity, except when specific permission has been given by the author for use of their information in print.
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Contents
For my unicorns, who teach me every day. This book is happening because of you.
I got fired oncea legit bad fit situation. I had taken a job I wasnt good at in order to help out an organization I loved. We were about to do a giant capital campaign and switch some job responsibilities, and my coworkers all agreed: Becca can do this.
Turned out, I couldnt.
As luck would have itor FateI was actually awful at that job, even though I should have been good, on paper.
The process of getting fired was awful. Having a boss you respect sit across from you in your giant office and hand you a letter that says, you. are. wrong.
Of course, that wasnt exactly what the letter said. But it was the message underneath every single word on the page. This thing you thought you could do turns out you cant. And that means theres something wrong with you, because we all thought you could do this. It seemed like you could do it, but you failed.
And wow, did I fail .
I failed so spectacularly. I got fired by a boss who still liked me, with coworkers who thought I could do anything, from an organization I would practically have shed blood for.
But that letter. That letter was the worst. Now, to be fair, its not like others couldnt have seen this comingI had gotten a 30-day performance warning, so this was not out of the blue; there were warning clouds, funnel cloudsbut I genuinely thought I could make it work. I could do anything I put my mind to.
Turns out, thats also not true. There are some things we just cant change about our fundamental wiring. (But thats what the first Dear Writer book was about not this one.)
This book is about that letter.
About the fundamental message that what youre doing is wrong. Or that something about you is wrong. Its about understanding your subconscious response to that message and why its ruling decisions you make in your writing career.
I have started using the phrase the You. Are. Wrong . letter because it felt so big and heavy, and because capital letters and punctuation seem to be the only way to communicate that consistently without using all-caps. That seems too much. It was just a letter, after all. No one yelled at me.
Still, when I read that letter, I was convinced that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. Something that I should have seen coming. Something that I could change, if only I could figure out what it was.
After all, there were actually things I had done wrong. I had missed deadlines. I had failed to get projects done on time. I had participated in meetings where I offended volunteers. I even fell asleep at my desk without knowing it on a regular basis (which I didnt know at the time), which made my coworkers think I was lazy. (And if youve ever met me, you know thats the exact opposite word a person would use to describe me.)
In fact, my boss started out this You. Are. Wrong. meeting with the words, Becca, I dont know what happened here.
And he really didnt. I had been the best at what I did in my previous job. Id been headhunted. In my city, I have a reputation for being great at that job.
But, promote me into a new job, and suddenly, the shine was gone. I was young. If I had known more about alignment, I would have seen the bad-fit coming, but it was a learning experience for me. I regret many things about how I acted as I was not finding success, but I do not regret the experience of being fired. It was a pivotal moment in the kind of work I want to do with writers.
Since I got that You. Are. Wrong. letter, Ive realized that the true source of my failure was complex. It wasnt just about my performance. It was also about forces around me and outside me that I couldnt control. (Health, Wellness, Systems.) It was about bad alignment. (Expectations, Capacity, Ability, Personality.)
But the surprising important factor was my subconscious brain. Specifically, the quick-fire subconscious response that happens in my brain when I do things wrong. When I see Ive done something wrong, or another person who matters says theres something wrong with me.
Spoiler Alert: I didnt know any of that at the time. All I knew when I got that letter was, I had failed, and I needed to learn from this failure so I could do better.
Instead of assuming the job had expectations that were too high, I assumed that I was wrong because I couldnt fulfill them.
Instead of assuming that my lack of motivation was due to an underlying health problem I was unaware of, I assumed that I was wrong because I was lazy and clearly had no work ethic.
Instead of assuming that there were pieces of the job that were directly contradicting the way I am wired to succeed, I assumed that there was something wrong with me that I should clearly change so I could prove I could do that job.
Thank God I didnt get very far trying to fix these things, or I might have ended up in a new place in the same role, trying to prove that I could do it.
I will never be able to do that job.
Getting the You. Are. Wrong. Letter
When I received that letter, something important was happening inside me. It was something I didnt understand at the time, and had no words for, but it became one of the most important things Ive ever learned about the human brain. Inside our brain, we form expectations about how the world should be, or how we should actits not intentional, its more biological. Its also how we learn things like grammar rules, societal expectations, manners, group and interpersonal dynamics, and so much more. Its the subconscious process of feedback and behavior change.
Our brain learns from environmental cues and forms subconscious patterns to govern behavior. Different psychologists call this process different things. My favorite (because of the visual) is neural nets. If youve ever watched video of human brain synapses firing, they look like little nets of light. Little rivers of blinking electricity where our brain has learned to fire along the path of least resistance.
