Story Magic

101 - Intuitive writing with Becca Syme

Share episode

Today, Emily & Rachel talk about Intuitive Writing with guest Becca Syme.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

  • What is intuitive writing 
  • Learning how to recognize your intuition
  • Building self-trust

Check out The Better-Faster Academy: https://betterfasteracademy.com/

Snag Becca's Free Resources: https://betterfasteracademy.com/links


Ready to make readers so in love with your characters they can’t stop biting their nails in anticipation?  Grab The Magic of Character Arcs free email course: https://www.goldenmayediting.com/arcsmagic

Join Tenacious Writing! With the perfect combo of craft, mindset, and community resources, you will build a writing life that feels sustainable, fulfilling, and fun—without any prescriptions or rules. Learn more: https://www.tenaciouswriting.com/

If you enjoyed Story Magic, please rate, review and follow on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to this podcast!

Follow us on social media!

Rachel: https://www.instagram.com/bookcoachrachel/

Emily: https://www.instagram.com/ebgoldenbooks/


Join us on June 5th, 2025 at 8pm ET for our FREE + live masterclass called The Structure of Change! Your character arcs exist within your story’s plot. You have to craft them together. In this FREE class, we’re going to show you exactly how. All you have to do is register to save your spot at https://www.tenaciouswriting.com/characterarcs! See you there!

Emily:

Hey, writers, welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.

Rachel:

I'm Rachel.

Emily:

And I'm Emily.

Rachel:

And today we are talking about intuitive writing with our very special guest, Becca Syme. Becca, thank you for joining us.

Emily:

Hi, Becca.

Becca Syme:

Yeah. Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Rachel:

This is awesome. We're going to have a really great conversation if listeners. If you are new to Becca, Becca has this whole range of writing craft books, which are incredible. I always hear your name come up basically all the time when we're talking about what resources we should look to. So I know I've kind of already snuck in, who are you? But, Becca, would you tell us a little bit about yourself and the work that you do?

Becca Syme:

Yeah, I do something called alignment coaching, which is sort of like. I guess the easy way to describe it is that there are easy ways to do things and hard ways to do them, and often we don't know which one is going to bring us success. And I think my goal is to understand enough about the process of success to understand, like, what is the way that you should make decisions. We talk a lot about choice architecture in my. In my coaching. And really, alignment is. There is a particular choice architecture for you as a person that is the best or easiest way for you to get what you want out of life. And so we make it our job to figure out what that is and try to help you figure out what that is and then get you more of what you want. I guess that's kind of what success coaching is. Yeah.

Rachel:

Yeah. So can you give me, like, an example of if I were to come, I'm. This is what I'm playing out in my head. If I were to come to you and I'm like, I really want to write a book, but I have these problems. How would you step in?

Becca Syme:

So the first thing we do is we ask a ton of questions just because everybody is so different and those differences really matter. So let me give you an example. Let's say that you have been told your whole life that you're supposed to write every day, but you're the kind of person who, like, you'll write for three or four days in a row, and then you need to take two days off to think, and you feel super guilty on those two days, and then you spend all of that time on those two days being. Being frustrated and trying to figure out how to make yourself right. And the reality is there are some people who are just wired to Be that way. And if you can understand that that wiring is beneficial and actually pretty helpful to get you what you want out of your career, like to get you more of what you want, then you let yourself make those choices without the guilt and frustration and really to save yourself the cortisol. Because I think people don't understand how much stress impacts our longevity in the career. And so much of why people get less stressed out later on is because they learn all of these things that they're like, well, I can't follow that rule. I can't follow that rule. I can't follow that rule. And they just let themselves be that way instead of trying to struggle against this thing that they think they're supposed to do. So we, we ask a ton of questions because we want to know, like, does this seem to fit for you? Does this fit for you? We do some personality assessments and then we'll say, like, does that sound right? Tell me how you feel about this particular thing. And then depending on what your problem is, we have so much experience with coaching people that it's almost like I can say, I can look at your strengths. Let's say your CliftonStrengths and say, okay, you have this problem, you have these strengths. Here's what you should do in probably like two minutes without needing to have a ton of information. And the, the patterns are just so predictable when they are. When. When they are really you. Right. Because of course, it has to really be the way that you are wired that it's almost like, well, that was easy. To just make that decision doesn't mean that the success is easy or that the outcome is easy, but it means that the decision making process can be a lot easier than we think it is.

Emily:

And that's like so much of the writing process. Like, so, so much of writing is just how, like, what decisions you're gonna make.

Becca Syme:

Yeah. Which rules are you gonna follow?

Emily:

Which rules are you gonna follow? When are you gonna show up? How are you gonna do it? Yeah.

Becca Syme:

Yep. You know? Yep.

Rachel:

Yeah. So you. So someone comes to you and then you give them this and you're like, okay, go. Go ahead and do. I mean, we, to be clear, like, we very much align with this ourselves because we believe every single person is so unique and the process looks different and like you're able to identify. I think this structure or this decision making paradigm would. Would be beneficial to you. And through that you can instill, like, some confidence and some just ability to, like, move forward.

Becca Syme:

Yeah. Like a huge part of what at least What I personally do is being able to say to people like, there are hugely successful authors out there who do it this way, who have this same strength. Like we, we did this whole series of videos in the very early days of my coaching writers. Cause I was coaching personality alignment, communications alignment, org alignment before I started with writers because I was a writer. But, but when we first started with writers, I did this series of videos where I would take a particular strength pattern, like a personality pattern, and I would go find people who had that and we would talk to them about like, what does this look like for you? And some people were really amazed to see some of the really thinky kind of strategic thinking, some of them slower, quote unquote, slower strengths showing up in people who are making seven figures. And it's like, right, but there isn't one way to be wired that's going to make you successful. There isn't one pattern of behavior that's going to make you successful. There are, I mean statistically 378,000 patterns of behavior that would make you successful. And you'll have one of those. And there are people who are successful, wildly successful in every field that exists with those different 34 patterns, right? Like the 34 primary strength patterns. And I think it, it shocks people a little bit sometimes when they first hear about that because they assume like, well, but I thought you had to like get up at 5 in the morning and you had to write every day and you had to, you know, treat this like a business and sort of like the way that everybody shoulds on each other all the time. And it's like, well, well, but the reason shoulds exist is because they do apply to a large segment of the population. But again, the statistics are it's never any more than 20% of the population. So like, and what people don't understand is even if you say the general pattern fits the median, if it's like the middle 50%, okay, so the 50%, then that it doesn't fit. What, what about them? Like, what decisions are they making? Does that just mean they're destined to not be successful? No, not at all. It just means they're successful in a different way. And because we don't always see all of those different paths to success represented, sometimes we can think like, well, I'm just wired to be dumb or wired to be not successful or lazy or whatever we call ourselves. And that's just never the case. Like, it's just we're all differently successful, right?

Emily:

That's such a, like it, like Flips. I feel like everybody's assumptions on their head, right? I feel like we go around with this idea that if I could just be different than who I am, then I'd be successful. And it's like, no, actually, if you just are yourself, accept who you are, then that's what's gonna lead you to success. And I feel like that is, that's really exciting. Now I'm like, what is my matrix? I need to know.

Becca Syme:

Well, I, I can give you a shortcut just because we are going to talk a little bit about intuition. The most common thing that happens is that people have an intuition about what they should be doing and they are just not listening to it because it's, it's conflicted advice externally. And the problem is that we, we don't understand the certainty and correctness scale. So like biologically, because we are wired for survival, it would be the most comfortable for us if certainty and correctness had an equal relationship where when certainty increases, correctness also increases. That's what would feel the most biologically comfortable for us. So we naturally want to believe and trust people who feel more certain about what they're saying, not who projects certainty. Because sometimes the projection can actually make them seem less certain. But if somebody really does know what they're talking about, quote unquote, they sound really certain, biologically want to trust them. The problem is certainty and correctness have an inverse x y axis relationship. You can be completely and totally certain and 100% incorrect and you can be totally and completely uncertain and 100% correct. And we don't know because again, like biologically it's not normal for us to understand this. We don't know that. Our intuition is often just telling us the way that our body actually needs us to be acting in a particular situation. Most people who are high in thinking strengths want to think. They want to not write every day. They want to act like bread machines with their novel, but they won't let themselves because they've heard they're not supposed to, but their intuition is telling them this is how you should be working. So if you don't want to spend the money to take the test, most of the time you can just start listening to your intuition and you're kind of naturally going to align with your strength patterns.

Rachel:

Yeah, I, I think of so much of the work that I do in my one on one coaching, especially with newer clients, is I don't tell them anything about what they do. I just ask them, what do you want to do? And then they're like, well, I really want to do this. And I'm like, cool, do that. And they're like, whoa, yeah. Oh, my God. I'm like, it's really not that more difficult than doing what feels right. I mean, like, to. To a certain degree.

Becca Syme:

Right. Of course there are boundaries, like, everything, right? But, like, in situations where there is no healthy, unhealthy boundary or, like, moral, immoral boundary, the like, whether you write every day or not, there's nothing righteous about writing every day. There's nothing unrighteous about writing every day. It just is a thing that can happen. But we've attached a righteousness scale to it because we feel like, well, if I can just make myself think that it's correct, then I'll do it. And it's like, oh, most people don't work that way, though. Like, most people cannot make themselves do something just because it's the right thing to do. If that was the case.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Becca Syme:

Sorry.

Rachel:

So, okay.

Emily:

So I find the idea of intuition just to kind of dive into the topic. This is back to everybody. So I find the concept of intuition in writing so fascinating because I feel like our stories, the stories that we want to tell are really coming right from our subconscious. They're coming from, like, something that something within us is wanting to share with the world wants to say, right? And oftentimes we're just not aware of what that is. So I think it's very important to be following our intuition to figure out what that story is. But also, you know, like, you're talking about with process to get the story out on the page, because the more that we fight against our own natures, the less success we're going to have in getting the story out on the page. But I do feel like there's so much. And I think a lot of this has to do with hustle culture and toxic productivity and things like that. Right? But we don't trust ourselves. And I know. I feel like I'm finally getting to a point where I have enough, like, evidence of what doesn't, does what has and hasn't led me to success before that I can start to trust that intuition. But when I first started working, I was working with a coach named Tiffany Clark Harrison, who's fantastic, and she does a lot of intuition work. And when I first started working with her, it was like, I don't know. Like, there's so many voices in my. There are so many shoulds, right? So many should voices in my head that I don't even know which one is mine, like, which one is real? And so I would like come up with all these narratives for what I, you know, it's like, okay, well, hustle culture says I should do this, which means I should do the opposite, right? Or and it was just like this argument in my head of like, what do I actually want? What do I actually believe? What, like, what is my intuition telling me? And so I'm curious, like, what. How do we know what our intuition is? Like, what tips and tricks do you have for. How do we start. How we start to identify it amongst all of the other feelings that surface? Because there's so many feelings with writing.

Becca Syme:

Yeah, it really is. Like, okay, so if we assume that you have some experience behind you, right? Like even just like one, one attempt at a book or you know, like that you're not coming to the page completely new. You have some history to look at of, like what has and hasn't worked for me in the past. And so often we don't take seriously what it means when something hasn't worked in the past. Right? It's like, well, like I was literally just listening to somebody today who was talking about the, their relationship with food and they were like, well, every single time I've done this in the past, it's gone this way. And I was like, why are you still doing it, doing that then like, why have you not found a different thing to do? Because your history is literally telling you it's not working. It's not working, it's not working. And I think what often happens is there are things we don't understand about ourselves and there are things we don't understand about the world that we live in that make it really difficult for us to make different decisions. Right? So like, we don't understand just as one, for instance, we don't understand the way that our biology creates decision making patterns that we have no access to. So we don't understand that the colors on my phone, literally the colors make me addicted to it. Because we don't understand that the biology system that helps me to stay alive so that when I do not have food and I'm in the wilderness, that I can find berries on the bush and identify berries. So I don't understand that. Like, that biological system has been co opted by a technology company who wants me to spend more time on its app. And so I trust my initial response in that moment because I'm like, oh, but I just want to really quick check Instagram or TikTok and it's like, whoa, though Real quick is a lie. And really quick as a lie lie that your brain tells you because it thinks that TikTok is going to save your life. It thinks you are going to die if you do not open Instagram, but if you don't.

Rachel:

But I am though, right?

Becca Syme:

And this is what. What's so funny? I just saw your face, right? I'm like, wait a minute though. But I can't not open tik. I can't not open Instagram, right? But that's because the biological system has told you that's where the berries are. And if you don't have those berries, you're going to die, physically die. And we don't understand that. Anytime you feel a level of urgency like that, where I have to do this thing or else, and the or else is a big question mark. We never know what or else is because or else is die. Like, that is literally the question mark, right? If I open this email, it's going to kill me. So I. But, but we, we laugh, right? Because we're like, oh, no, we would never think that.

Rachel:

But that's actually live in my email.

Becca Syme:

Bears, right? Bears are in the inbox.

Rachel:

It's dangerous to go in that danger zone.

Becca Syme:

But we don't understand that about ourselves. And so then we can't trust all intuition. That's why I said, like, we don't understand the difference between certain urges that we have versus like, trauma responses, which are also, quote, unquote, intuitive responses. On some level, they are precognitive and subconscious. So then when trauma responses also don't get me what I want, because they're not supposed to, they are only supposed to keep you alive. That's what trauma response is for biological responses to keep you alive. But my brain doesn't know that. So then I have a hard time trusting my story intuition when I don't want to go on Instagram in the morning, but I do, because my body thinks I'm going to die and I don't want to eat the sugar in the cupboard, but I do, because my body thinks I'm going to die. So then when I get into my book and I'm like, well, should I make this a set in New York or in la? I don't know. My intuition is saying one. But I can't trust myself because I don't understand the difference between all of those voices. So I think a huge part of where I start off for myself is if you really want to understand intuition, you have to know the difference between the internal stuff you can't trust that. You need to just not listen to. There is some of that inside, and we instinctively know that. So what we do is you do you say, hey, Rachel, what do you think I should do? And then Rachel is like, well, clearly New York, of course New York is the best city. And you're like, nope, wrong, it's la. You knew that, but you needed Rachel to say New York is the best before you could learn how to parse between those voices internally. So some of what we encourage people to do is to talk to other people about what you're thinking and feeling so that you can test what it is that is the response and how quickly you believe it when you hear it from yourself, or how quickly you disagree with someone. And just to get used to hearing that yes and no system first. And because you will, you will know when you're an intuitive person, you'll be like, nope, I always knew it was supposed to be la. I always knew. But you didn't know, consciously know two minutes ago. So, like, some of it is learning why we need to trust internal voices and what to listen to and whatnot. But by the way, real quick. Is always a lie every time you hear it.

Rachel:

Just real quick.

Emily:

I love, I love this reframing of the. The feedback relationship or like a form of feedback relationship. Right? Because oftentimes when we are sharing our work or sharing our ideas with someone, it's to, like, because we want their validation. We want them to give us the answers because we think there's a right answer. There isn't. The only right answer is what your intuition is telling you to do. Um, and so I love the idea of approaching, like, somebody and just being like, hey, these are my ideas. Can you just sort of tell me what you like about them or tell you. Tell me what you think I should do or don't or not do. Not with the intention of listening to them, but with the intention of listening to how you respond to them. I feel like that's really, really powerful and puts a lot more of the right, the agency and the control back in the author's hands. Because too often I think we just expect other people to give us the answers. They can't. They're not you. Yeah.

Becca Syme:

And. And if that is a consistent issue, right, like, if you're like, okay, I'm gonna go test my intuition, and you find that you always agree with whatever they say, that's probably a trauma response. Like, and. And in that case, I would say that is, we need to do some work. Like Some reparenting work, some healing work around that. Not with me, we don't do that. But like, we. We send you to somebody else. But that is definitely a. I am so incapable of listening to my own intuition. Like, it isn't even safe inside myself to have intuition. I think this is the other piece that's really dangerous when we start talking about intuitive, et cetera, is that there are a lot of us out there. And by the way, not everyone who. I'm saying trauma response has. Like, I was in a bomb or like, I was assaulted, right? Some trauma response is like a humiliation, fear. And then I was on stage a lot as a kid, and I just got humiliated over and over and over again. Like, it wouldn't seem like a huge deal to maybe somebody on the outside, but to me, it's caused these immediate responses where any level of attention is bad for me. So somebody tells me to go and just start posting videos on TikTok, and I immediately, nope, out. Because that trauma response is so huge. And it's like, well, no, that's there for a reason. Like, we need to. We. But. But again, the response of the way that we respond to things, to other people telling us can almost always indicate if all you're doing is agreeing with somebody else. Either you're talking to the same person and they know you really well, so they're just like, I know exactly what you want, which would be really handy. Or it is. There might be some coding there that you need to unpack with somebody.

Rachel:

I'm hearing, like. I mean, as. As we're talking about this, I'm hearing a connection between this and the inner critic voices with, like, perfectionism and imposter syndrome and all these. That side, which we talk a lot about on our podcast, is having these types of responses that you can't control. But that voice is still there of like, no, it has to be perfect or else. And. Or else I will die. Like, you know, it has to be perfect or else. Or else I'll be thrown out of society and. And I'll be rejected, and then I'll die. So do you see in your work, like, a connection between. I mean, I guess my. What I'm really getting at is how do we. Or where does intuition play into these inner critic voices? Are we doing the same thing to be like, where is this coming from? We've talked a lot about, like, reparenting, talking to your inner child, questioning, you know, where is this coming from? Why? And I think absolutely, sometimes it's a trauma response Is it always a trauma response? Is it sometimes just like I know I heard a should and I adopted that and now I'm not having a trauma response, but I still believe this should be perfect.

Becca Syme:

Yeah, it depends on the person a lot because basically so internally there are like different layers. I, I think of it as almost a Venn diagram, right. Of like what potentially causes and, and I, I use the word trigger not as like a trigger of a PTSD way, but trigger in terms of an activation of a behavior. Right. So there's a core motivation behind every single behavior that happens. And it's either an environmental cue, a biological cue or a psychological cue. There are no other options. So everything we do has a cue in one of those three places. And I think a big part for me as a coach is trying to listen for the indicators of which one is at play. So if it's an environmental cue, it will only happen in certain situations. So like I will be in a. This is what happens where people who use planners at work, they only use planners at work. They're not able to use them anywhere else because when someone forces them to use a planner, they can be great at the pressure promptedness, but they're not going to use it on their own. Right. It's not going to create pressure for them. That would be environmental, biological. We talked about a little bit. And then psychological is. There is something that I hold very dear or very true that motivates all of my behavior. And so every one of the strengths has a slightly different motivation. And that would be one overlapping, you know, because those are success behaviors, they're slightly less hardwired than your core and deep desire motivations. And the metric that we often use people to refer to that is the Enneagram. And so when you can understand the difference between the way an inner critic might show up in a one right. Especially like an SP one, a self preservation one, versus if somebody is a like let's say an inner critic who's a five. Right. Like a social five. The two. The difference between those two inner critics is extremely different. And the way that they show up is very different. And how you solve each of those is very different because the thing that you desire at the core is different. So like from a personal perspective, I, on my own journey with Enneagram, I have two different Enneagram coaches. And on my own journey, it's trying to understand the situations where this level of stuff, the personality stuff, is not as active the success architecture, but this is a fight or flight response for Me. And this is. Then that usually is more of like an Enneagram thing. So just as a for instance, if I have an inner critic who's primarily driven by morality, where if I believe something is evil and something is good, I'm gonna hold that much tighter. And then it's a lot easier to have no trauma response required, right? Like, it could just be. I believe I see everything in terms of good and evil, black and white, you know, right and wrong. So every should that I agree with becomes law. And then that is just. I have. I have internalized that good people are perfectionists, right? And then that becomes. You can't just talk your way out of that. You have to. You have to be able to reframe and address that kind of core motivation versus somebody like me who is primarily a people pleaser. So when I'm a perfectionist, it's because I fear not being wanted or loved, right? So if I fear that, then I know how to solve the problem that I'm having, because my perfectionism, being perfect is not actually going to take my fear away, because my fear of not being wanted or loved needs to be sated in its own way, rather than me trying to act my way into sating that action. And so Claire Taylor, who is one of my Enneagram coaches, has a couple of books on this, and I highly recommend them because I think they're huge game changers for people when they're trying to deal with things that are knocking up against some of those really extreme desires. That there's no training that's gonna help me when I think I'm gonna die if somebody is unhappy with me, right? And then the only way to kind of heal that is to learn that I'm not gonna die if somebody is disappointed in me, right?

Rachel:

So if we're framing this back to, like, the process of intuitive writing, we. We've talked about how that, you know, step one or part of this, a beginning step, is to identify the intuition within us. And we're separating out these other things. We're asking these questions of, like, where is this coming from and what's the fear? I feel like we ask this a lot with our clients. When. When you're dealing with that inner critic voices, what's the worst that could happen? Like, what are you really afraid of? What are you. What are you looking for? And that is a process that can help us identify, you know, what is the real intuition that you're feeling here and from there, what do we. What do we do next? I mean, we know at that point we can start listening. Can we, like, take that now that we know this is. This voice is not from me. It's from something else. And now we have our intuition and we feel more aligned with that, we can start acting on that. And, like, knowing these. This is the behavior pattern that I have, and I can trust myself enough to listen.

Becca Syme:

Yeah. Sometimes even just hearing from other intuitive people that it's safe to trust my intuition can be really helpful. Like, even just having these kinds of conversations where people are like, oh, I might know what should happen in my book. Right. Like, that kind of thing can be really helpful, I think. Additionally. So there is no silver bullet, and we all want the silver bullet, but there is no silver bullet. You have to practice trusting your intuition, which is going to be scary. And I think this is the whole concept of, like, what is fear there to tell us? So fear is there to tell us that there's a possibility we might die. If I logically have assessed that I'm not going to die because I write the wrong thing in my book, then I should make myself write that thing in my book as a way of practicing. Because this is where I come from. From a perspective of, like, if you want to get better at something, you're going to have to do some really hard work to get better at it. And so many of us want the process to be so easy. So as soon as it becomes difficult, then we stop progressing because we haven't learned how to do harder things. And trusting your intuition is gonna be really hard because there are some. Some of us who just haven't practiced it enough. We don't have enough musculature around those skills to be able to execute on them. And then that means I'm gonna constantly stop myself from moving forward every time I feel that resistance. Cause the resistance feel a stop sign, but the resistance is a green light. And I don't think we understand the difference between those two because, again, we're so used to listening to fear, but we don't understand that most of the fear we feel is actually a lie that it's not necessary to listen to. And people are like, no, no, no, but it is dangerous. And I'm like, right. It is. Absolutely. There could be consequences to listening to your intuition, but those consequences are not going to kill you. That is what the fear's there for. It's there to say, this might kill you. And then you say, no, it won't, though that email won't kill me. That choice won't Kill me. That bad release won't kill me. That one star review won't kill me. That failed release, that loss of money, that restarting my career, none of that is actually going to kill me. So it's safe to take the chance and train myself how to do harder and harder things. Yeah.

Rachel:

Yeah. I think there's, like, such a. I feel like when I see my clients learn to, like, embrace the discomfort of any part of the process. I mean, learning craft writing, like, actually putting words on the page, it's. It's all painful. But as soon as you can be like, all right, let's do it anyway, then it starts to become less painful. I mean, it's. You know what I mean? Like, as soon as you learn to embrace the discomfort and push forward through the discomfort, suddenly the discomfort kind of lessens over time.

Becca Syme:

Yeah. That is important, I think, too, for people to hear. Just because on the front side of it, right when the threshold is still there, it feels like it's going to be impossible to accomplish. It's like, oh, I'll never get past this. And it's like. Right. That's just the fear talking, though, because I feel like people don't understand that fear is not cowering under the bed.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Becca Syme:

Like, you're. You're not looking at the blank page and then going and hiding under the covers because there's like a ghost there or something. Like, legitimately, fear is just discomfort. It's. It's pause. It's right. Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn. Doesn't look like. It doesn't look big. Sometimes fight can honestly be like, you can't tell me that you can't do that. That's a fear response. And people are like, I don't feel afraid. And I'm like, your body says you feel afraid right now. Like, your actions say you feel afraid. And if you can understand and just stop being afraid of the fear, like the. The dear writer, you need to quit was the first book that I wrote, and I have this chapter that is don't let fear drive the motorcycle. Put it in the sidecar, because you don't want to just try to disintegrate it. You don't want to say, like, all fear is bad. Some fear we really need to listen to. But you want to start parsing between it by testing. Because you cannot move forward in a process. If you always stop and let fear drive the motorcycle, you always have to put it in the sidecar and say, I'm very grateful that you're here. I trust that there's something that I need to pay attention to. But you are not going to decide my choices. I'm going to do hard things. And I'm sure you do this in your coaching because I feel like anybody who's been around coaching long enough does this where you talk back to things, right? It's like you can't just sit there and let the fear decide what the noise in your head is. You have to take some charge of that and talk back to that fear. So you say, and I just repeat things over and over again. I'll say fear's not the boss of me. Or I'll say like, real quick is a lie or real quick, whatever it is that I'm going to repeat, trying to remind myself I don't have to listen to that, but it's going to take the repetition for me to stop listening to it.

Rachel:

Oh, yeah, yeah. The, the. Go ahead. I feel like the like now. So I'm writing my third book currently and I last night was writing the All Is Lost. I've been working on the All Is Lost. Maybe, I don't know, this whole draft has been an exercise in self trust. But that's what I'm getting at is like I was writing this scene and I thought the All Is Lost was supposed to happen in like two or three scenes from now. And I started to write that scene being like, this is the All Is Lost. And I just kept hitting like this, this block, this barrier of like, there's not enough that this is. There's not enough. Like, I kept coming up with like, no, it's not right, it's not right, it's not right. And like, probably the me of three or four years ago would have been like, completely thrown off, derailed. I don't know what I'm doing. I have no idea where I'm going. Oh, my God. But I did have a little like, moment where I feel like I kind of had this argument with myself of this draft needs to be done before I'll know. So I believe that I have that full belief. And so attached to that comes the belief of you've just got to write it to see what happens. And then I kept writing it and then I was like, this is wrong. Stop, stop. So I stopped and I started to write a different scene. And that is now the scene that I'm working on. And again had this thing of like, there's something. Not like there's something wrong. But I think after what I feel like I was able to like, piece this out, like Parse this out. Because sometimes I feel like my advice would have been to a writer, just. Just write it. Just keep going. But I chose, like, not to. And I had to have that little argument with myself of, like, what's the right way to proceed? But then ultimately we were like, just. You just gotta trust. And like, what. What's going on? There's something that's not lining up in my head, which is why I did not like that scene. Not that I've liked any of these scenes, but, like, it was different. Just felt like different in that. In that moment. Yeah. So I started writing this other all is lost scene. And it's fine now. And then I was writing it earlier and cried. So it's really good now. Very emotional. But I felt like, you know, I had that crisis of like, ah, what do I do?

Becca Syme:

You know, I think it's good to normalize those crises, though. Like, it's good to normalize the. That Overwhelm is not a bug, it's a feature. Like, that's part of how we interact with our. Our intuitive storytelling, you know, and it is always going to be subterranean. It's never going to reveal itself to us, and it shouldn't. We should let it be subterranean and just deal with the after effects of it instead of trying to understand it all the time. And I think that's one of the pieces is just like, as you get farther and farther and farther through, like, trusting your intuition and learning how to listen to it, you start to see that there are actually patterns. So, like, one of the questions I was thinking as you were talking to some, like, oh, I wonder what your strengths are. Because there are certain types of strengths that when they hit certain parts in their manuscript, they always have the same pattern over and over again. Right. Because that's just kind of how their storytelling brain processes stuff. And you'll see people who are like, you know, they come to talk about being stuck in a book, and I'll look at their strengths and I'll say, what percentage point are you at? And they'll say 75%. And I'll say, okay, great, go back and reread the book from the beginning. Because I know 100% that is what is gonna, you know, that there's something behind them that they need to discover. Because most of them won't just talk to somebody about it. And often that's the answer is similar to what we were talking about before. Right. Which is if you ask somebody what you should do and they tell you the answer, you'll know if you agree with them or not. But, like, there just are so many consistent patterns which you can learn about yourself if you just listen to your intuition and move forward. Like, you don't need someone else to tell you. But there is sort of, like, part of me also that the way my brain works, I'm like. But I like knowing, too, that it's not wrong for me to do it that way. Like, it's not wrong for me to, like, have to talk to someone about my books, because I can't write books without an audience. Like, I'm not a person who can just, like, lock myself away and write whatever I want and not think about it. And, you know, I have to talk to people about what I'm writing. I have to bounce things off of everyone. Right. So. Because most writers are not extroverts. I always thought that was a weird thing about me for a long time, and now I know it's just normal. It's part of my process. Right, but discovering your process is so much about just learning to listen to and trust your intuition.

Emily:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's funny, people. I feel like writers like us start out, and they're like, okay, well, if I just learn all the rules of writing craft, then I'll be able to write books, and everything will be fine. And it's like, nope, Actually, joke's on you. Writing a book is actually all about getting to know yourself.

Becca Syme:

Thousand.

Emily:

Welcome to the dark side.

Becca Syme:

Yep. A thousand percent.

Rachel:

You were talking earlier about the certainty skill, and I'm a personal believer that, like, a sign of maturity is that you become less certain about things in your life. And I don't know. I was watching the movie Conclave last night. Have you seen it? Have you seen it, Becca? You've seen.

Becca Syme:

No, but everybody's watching it now.

Rachel:

Everyone's watching it because of. Exactly. So I watched it last night. And certainty is a huge theme in. In the movie about, like, there are some pope candidates who are wildly certain about their beliefs, and there's some who aren't. And ultimately, I think the. The message of that particular theme, not necessarily the story itself, is that certainty. And remember, this is a book about. Or a movie about religion. Certainty is like the enemy of the church, because if you're so certain, you. There's no room for faith, and there's no room for. And if there's. You're so certain, there's no room for doubt. And if you don't have doubt, then you can't have faith. So it. It was like A really fantastic movie. But I was watching it being like, yeah, I feel like grown up people aren't certain about shit, you know, like, like I don't feel certain about. The only thing I'm certain about is that none of this matters. And like anybody can do whatever they want.

Emily:

Cool.

Rachel:

It's gonna be different for everybody. Like that's the only thing.

Becca Syme:

Yeah, I, that's such a good metaphor too. Even just for, like. Cause even just for learning how to trust your intuition. Right. Like, even when we talk about intuition, we talk about it like it's a thing that you could just have. So like in, in religion there's like systematic theology, right. Where there's like all these precepts that you agree to and then that's the system that you agree is true, et cetera and that, and that's where a lot of the certainty comes from. Right. Is that kind of systematics? But to, to that point, the, the space around all of that is kind of where the, the doubt and the faith exist. Right. So when you were talking about intuition, we want the list of the systematic rules of like, what is it? Just tell me what it is that I'm supposed to do. And I feel like so much of the process of embracing the reality of life is understanding that it is better when you discover it than when you are told it.

Rachel:

Yeah.

Becca Syme:

And I, I, it's one of the reasons that I hesitate to always make everything about personality because it's like, yes, I can provide certainty for you. Absolutely. About like being a bread machine writer, for instance. Right. Like there are people who are literally wired so that they don't write anything and they just think and research and take things in and put everything inside the bread. By the way, I have a bread machine right now that's going on in case you can hear it mixing. But there, there are people who are wired that way where they, that is how they create their best stories. They, they do no writing and no know writing and all the thinking and researching and then all of a sudden the story sort of pressures them to start writing it and then it comes out beautifully and they won't write the same level of amazing book if they force themselves to try to write every single day throughout that same time period. So I can tell you, and I have TikTok videos and YouTube channel videos that are like, yes, here's what a bread machine is. This is how this works. And if you trust me enough, you'll just learn how to trust yourself by trusting me. But you can get the same experience from just living your life. And because you will fail at doing it the other ways. That this is the piece that's so important. This is why I think everybody who talks about intuition talks about it like sort of jumping off the lion's head in the Indiana Jones movie. It's like at some point you just have to learn how to jump off the lion's head because, you know, there's a real like hard pathway there. It's because we've all learned that that's how this works. And you will learn it too, either the hard way by not trusting it and trying to do other things and being stressed out and failing and sometimes succeeding but not having that success mean anything. And then you'll do it the other way and then you'll feel right, you'll feel aligned in that way. So sometimes the actual best kind of knowledge you can get is the hard won, hard fought, you know, discovered knowledge. But either way you get it, it's going to lead you to the same place, which is that you already know. You already know what you want. You just don't know that you know it.

Emily:

That's so good. I think that's such a, you know, given what you do for people, which is, you know, the personality test and figure out like what kind of genuine all this stuff. Like, right. My, my little brain is like, oh, I want Becca to tell me all the ways that I should write. Right. And it's like, really? She's just gonna tell me, you know.

Becca Syme:

That what you're already doing.

Emily:

Yeah, yeah. And I think that that's, that's so powerful is that it's, it's really just a process of getting to know yourself and there are a lot of ways to do that. But on that note, how can people do that with you?

Becca Syme:

Yeah, the best way to find us is to go to betterfasteracademy.com links and it just has like the podcast link on it and it has some of the archetypes videos that like the bread machine and stuff like that. It has some of the archetypes videos. It also has a bunch of free resources, like there's a free copy of Dear writer, you need to quit on there. And we have a bunch of free courses that we do as well. So there's so much information of ours that's available for free that you could just consume all of that and learn all about yourself and never pay us ever. And I would be okay with that because it's all there and it exists for a reason. So I always send people There first, because I feel like if you get deep enough into the content that you like what we do, you'll eventually figure out how to come and pay us money if you want to. And if you don't want to, then don't. Great. I'm like, well, on your way. There are plenty of amazing writers who don't ever talk to me, but we do have a lot of resources if you want to look at them.

Rachel:

I love that. We'll put that link in our show notes as well.

Becca Syme:

Thank you.

Rachel:

Yeah, of course. And like, anecdotally, I know so many people that talk about your work all the time. I mean, plenty of writers that have used your resources and found found success, but, like, found that knowledge, you know, found that, that Right piece. Peace.

Becca Syme:

Honestly, if I'm. If I'm super honest about, like, what my goal is and what, what I want to see in the industry and really the reason we give stuff away all the time is I don't think people can understand the value of peace. Like, I just don't. When you just know you're okay, we're all okay, everything's okay, I'm doing it right, everything's good. The way that you can have what you want in that space is so much more exponentially better than you can ever imagine. And if we could just produce more peace in the world, just like one on one basis, more peace in the world, we would change the whole entire world. And I would rather see that happen just because I think the value of everyone being at peace would be so significant. Yes, it would change the world.

Emily:

That's beautiful.

Rachel:

I a thousand percent agree. I think that's a wonderful send off to wrap us up. Well, thank you so much for coming. That was so helpful. I can't wait for our listeners to listen.

Becca Syme:

Yeah. Thank you for having me.

Emily:

This is so good. I'm gonna go look up all my stuff. I'm so curious. Alrighty. If you want to build a successful, fulfilling and successful, sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.

Rachel:

Sign up now to get our free email course, the Magic of Character Arcs. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.

Emily:

Link in the show notes. We'll see you there. Thank you so much.

Rachel:

Bye.