Crew, we love us some Becca Syme over here. We will listen to any podcast she’s on, sometimes twice. We (okay, me) watch her YouTube channel while we work out. We read her email newsletter religiously. Because she gets writers and writers. She gets that while we may all be trying to do what looks like the same thing, we all do that thing differently and what works for one of us doesn’t work for all of us.

So obviously we were super-excited to get to talk to her, and we’re delighted to re-share this very very inspirational interview with you as we head to the end of 2023.

Who wouldn’t want to write better and faster? I can’t even imagine. Our guest this week is Becca Syme, creator of the Better Faster Academy, author of Dear Writer You Need to Quit as well as other books in the Quit series and the author of the MatchBaker series of cozy mysteries (with such glorious titles as “Vangie Vale and the Murdered Macaron”). Her superpower is helping writers find what they do best—their strengths—and do more of that instead of worrying about trying to “fix” the things we aren’t naturally good at.

Links from the pod

The Clifton Strengths Test

The Ted Lasso blog post

Better Faster Academy

The Quitcast on YouTube

#AmReading

Becca:

Mandy M. Roth

Yasmine Galenorn

Rajani LaRocca

DEVS (TV show)

Sarina: Unguarded by Jay Hogan (part of Sarina’s World of True North)

KJ: The S**t No One Tells You About Writing (podcast)

Writers, KJ here. I’m sitting with my new Muse Machine, a deck of 150 open-ended, creative prompt cards designed to spark inspiration across various tasks, from writing to painting from one of my very favorite idea-sparkers and kick-in-the-pantsers, Gretchen Rubin. I don’t like writing prompts (because I hate the idea of intentionally writing stuff I know I won’t use) but these are different. They’re meant to get you thinking in a different way, which means you might get “take a nap” or “can it be bigger on the inside than it is on the outside?” Whatever it is will set your mind spinning. (And they would make a fun gift for the other creatives in your life, too!) Get 10% off until 12/31 with code MUSEPARTNER10. Learn more here.

Are you looking to kick your 9-to-5, and work for yourself? How about if you could set your own rates and read books all day? Author Accelerator might just be able to help you out!

By now, you’ve probably heard us talk about book coaching, an exciting career where you can help writers bring their dreams to life through support, feedback, project management, and accountability at each step of the writing and publishing process. It’s like being a literary personal trainer for writers! Through Author Accelerator’s Book Coach Certification program, you’ll learn the key editorial, project management, organizational, and people skills needed to launch your own thriving book coaching business.

To find out if book coaching is the right career for you, Author Accelerator is offering a 5-day challenge to help you envision your new chapter. In their $99 One-Page Book Coaching Business Plan, you’ll narrow down your business idea, ideal client, ideal service, and more. Interested? Visit bookcoaches.com/podcast to learn more.

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