Becca Syme’s book helped me know what I knew and to do it.
For the last month I have studied Becca Syme’s seminal book Dear Writer, You Need to Quit. This book is now on my tight little shelf with the other essential works for writers I keep at my desk. Each chapter showed me–and in many cases confirmed for me–what I needed to quit in my writing life.
This book is not about whether or not one should quit writing (though it opens the reader to that option). It is more of a list of concepts and mentalities that hold writers and other creatives back from succeeding at their art. Reading through it I found myself nodding along at ideas like how I need to stop comparing myself to others or how I need to acknowledge the importance of my life and livelihood outside of writing.
Each writer needs to quit
I love this book’s explicit statement that we each have our process in creating and marketing our stories. It is okay to do things differently from big names who sell how-to-succeed books along with their fiction.
This book buttresses my belief that there is no “right path” as a writer. Each must forge their own way through the wilderness of publishing. Friends and peers can help. You can model your actions on successful authors you respect, but in the end, we must each find a path that suits us.
And that’s okay. Each writer needs to quit in their own way.
