Because of how heavy this newsletter topic is going to be, I'm not going to sell anything at the front of this one, or try to hype us up about anything upcoming. If you're opening this email, you're either curious about why someone would want to quit, or you're thinking about it yourself. So I want to say, up front, if you need us, we are here. There's a link at the bottom for the Patreon, where our coaches are housed for one-on-ones or microcoaching, or you can reply to this email with questions.

Those of you who are just curious, I hope you're able to have some empathy for why people feel this way, instead of being judgmental. Disruptions and disappointments are rough, even if they happen for reasons you might enjoy or want (and especially rough when they're happening for reasons you don't enjoy or want). Endings are hard.

So let's have some collective empathy for people who are in this spot. Empathy makes us better people. And it would be a better industry if more people had empathy for others--not the Strength, just basic human kindness.

Dear Becca,​
​Is this The End?
I don't think I'm in burnout. I'm a #1 Achiever, so I have a size 10 plate on the regular. I can't pinpoint any single thing as a plate-toppling trigger, but the bottom line is—I'm not writing.
The QTP is...Do I even want to anymore?
Sure, this has been my "career" for nearly a decade now, so there's still the little whisper in the back of my brain that says, "You should be writing."
It doesn't cause me the levels of high anxiety that it did in the past though whenever I would go through a natural phoenix/ashes cycle. I've also never had a low phoenix cycle last this long either.
I've learned to listen to my intuition, to my specific brain wiring and to stay calm, accept my phoenix tendencies, and let the cycle progress as it typically does.
I've done business work that needs to be done instead of creative work. Things like updating the website, re-doing the newsletter welcome automation, re-formatting the backlist of books to reflect the most current published list, etc.
I've shifted gears into physical fitness and gardening. Bonus—I'm down twenty pounds and two pants sizes, and I sleep so much better at night. I'm also swimming in zucchini and tomatoes.
I've tried filling the well by reading and consuming content instead of creating it. I may get really excited with sparkly, new ideas while reading a great book, but those ideas float gently away without much time or feeling of loss.
Heck, I even basically left social media to test whether the abounding negativity and inescapable competition was affecting my ability to create. (That wasn't really a hardship for me. For years, it's been a thorn in my side but something I felt I had to do as a "professional author.")
I've not opened any manuscript for over two months.
I've opened a single manuscript every morning for a month. The only thing I allow myself to do first is my personal journaling. I can write thousands of words there, no problem.
When I open the manuscript though...that's a different ballgame. It's not even that I can't see a way forward. It's that I just...don't care enough to work through the existential pain of creating something out of nothing.
I feel like the writing is on the wall here. (pun absolutely intended) I'm happier, more peaceful, and more relaxed than I've been in years. Sure, I'm not getting paid to do any of the things I've been doing with my time, but I wasn't getting paid much as a full-time author anyway.
So, maybe the real question isn't..."Is this the end?"
Maybe the real question is, "How do I walk away from this in a healthy way?"
There's so much info out there on how to stay in author world. How to build a sustainable career over the long haul that won't suck us dry mentally and emotionally.
There's virtually nothing available on how to mourn the loss of a major piece of our lives and not feel like a failure, or that we've just given up. The people who've "recovered" from being authors aren't around to ask how they did it. More importantly, we have no idea how they're doing now.
Is this just something to continue to wait out and see what happens?
My Achiever/Competition doesn't really jive with such a nebulous statement.
I'm out of busy work to do.
I still don't want to write anything.

- Anonymous

Dear Writer,

First, thank you for writing this. I know it took some vulnerability to put this out in the world, especially as a #1 Achiever, and even if no one knows who you are (and even I don't know who this is), all of us know this feeling. Or some version of it.

Some of us feel it when we're ten years into Phase One and nothing seems to be working.

Some of us feel it when we're starting a new thing and it really feels like it won't work. Or the market shifts on us, and we see the possibilities floating away like little chunks of ice in cold water.

Some of us feel it when our royalties go down, as almost everyone has seen happen in the last eight months.

But there's a special kind of mourning that has to happen when you genuinely lose the desire to write. So let me say a few things, quickly, before I get into "how to mourn."

1. Check your hormone levels, just to make sure you're not in perimenopause or menopause, if you're anywhere near that age and if you've got a uterus or used to have one. The level of despondency we can feel from fluctuations in hormones is pretty significant. And it can sometimes last.
2. Consider booking a call with me. Sometimes, there are #1 Achiever and Competition questions that need to get asked, because there's something else tripping them up.
3. Consider booking a call with Claire Taylor. There's often Enneagram stuff going on, as well, that can make realized fears feel like dying. And when the disappointment is that great, it might be a core motivation thing. (The thing that's driving you feels out of reach.)
4. It's possible it's biological, but not hormonal. I would still see a doctor, if you're having burnout symptoms, just in case.

That's all assuming, of course, that you don't actually want to quit in your heart of hearts, but there's something making you feel like you want to quit. So I had to say those first. Since you've already left social media (which would be #1 in my suggestions when you're feeling this way), that's not the problem. But comparison is often at the root of these issues, so I wanted to start there.

And just in case it helps, I do talk to people who have quit and I know how they're doing.

They're doing great.

In fact, I feel like I've been doing more coaching of people who have left (gone back to day jobs to pay the bills, and left most of the industry behind, if not all) who are happier than ever before, which tells me something. (If you're one of those people, reply to this email and say hi.)

Some of them miss it, and some of them don't. Some of them miss people or experiences they've had and some of them don't. Some of them move on to other things, and some of them "retire" in a manner of speaking.

It is the hardest for Achiever and for Competition, and grief is the right word.

But to your Achiever and Competition, I would say: everything that has a beginning has an end. If this is really the end for you, and you are really done with it, then make it a great end. Celebrate the great divorce from the publishing industry. This thing you thought was going to bring you all the joy you'd been seeking is actually draining the life from you. So it's a win for you, when you decide to leave.

It doesn't mean you can't come back at some point, if you feel the urge to write again. But it might mean that you have to go through the grief process of ending something (similar to how we grieve death or divorce). Something we thought would last forever has ceased to last.

This is the life cycle, of everything. And as much as we might not like it, part of life is ending things.

I know I'm on the verge of spiritual topics here, but this is also why I think a lot of people turn to me when things like this happen to them or they're feeling these things. It's a spiritual grief. Not just an emotional grief. Not just a resource grief.

And I'm more interested in your spirit and its health and joy than I am interested in anyone's ambition. Or anyone's success.

When success or ambition makes a plump, healthy spirit, then I'm all for it. But when the ambition is draining you, it's time to re-align. Point it toward something else.

There's a book called From Strength to Strength that a #1 Achiever in the middle of career grief recommended to me once, and I've never forgotten the impact of it. It's about the transition of successful people from an all-consuming career where they were at the top of their game into retirement. And while it isn't a 1-to-1 correlation for what many of us are experiencing with this industry,

I'm just going to say the quiet part out loud.

Many of us had expectations about how this author life "should" work because we were sold a hope in something that was a false hope. We were told, "anyone and everyone" and we assumed that meant, "if you're a hard worker, you'll have the success you want," or "if you're good enough, you'll have the success you want," or "if you do everything right, success will happen." And that's just not true. Luck still has to strike, even when you do everything else right.

Loki is still in charge of this industry. There are people with no talent for writing who are very good at convincing people to buy their books. There are people with lots of talent who struggle to sell because publishers don't know "how to market" them. There are people who've written great books that don't sell. And yes, there are even people who've written not-great books that do sell. (I would argue with some of that last statement... readers aren't idiots; they're not buying books over and over that they don't actually like, but what one writer considers "good" is not what another person considers "good" and in that way, the statement is true.)

So if it doesn't energize you to want to try and beat Loki, and you're not excited about the prospect of buying lottery tickets over and over, or if you don't love writing more than anything else and can't imagine not doing it... then it might be time for grief.

I do still think there are ways to get Competition excited about trying to beat Loki, because most of the time, when we're demotivated by Loki, we're often demotivated because we expect that we should be having success because we're doing everything right. But there's a mindset shift between "I'm failing at this" or "I failed at this," and "I just haven't beat Loki yet."

The hard part is, of course, you have to get excited by losing. And that's not something Competition loves. But it's the way forward.

My best suggestion, if none of the suggestions I gave on the list above are working, is to read From Strength to Strength. And maybe that's the book I'll read on the Substack for the book club this month. Just to make sure we cover the bases with people who need that information.

I know there are a lot of people who want to make sure you don't quit. And this letter is going to make some Enneagram 3s go to their own social medias or newsletters and try to convince everyone not to quit. (Talk of quitting makes Threes really nervous, because of the fear of failure. So we have grace for that... it's an intense fear.)

But when it's your time to quit, it's your time. Everything that has a beginning has an end.

Sometimes the end is the beginning of a new version of your love of writing (it has been for me). And sometimes, the end is the beginning of something completely different. There's about a ten year cycle for most people. Reckoning comes for us. And when it's really time to quit, it's really time.

Please do consider booking a session with me. You can reply to this email to do so. Or join the quarterly program and get into a regular cycle of meeting with me if you need it. But this is quite literally what I'm here for. If it's time to quit, it will be inevitable, and we can work through that together--I don't know that I'd suggest doing it alone. And if it's not yet, let's find a way forward that will get you what you want out of this industry.

<3 Becca <3

PS. Please do reply to this email. I wasn't kidding. If you need to talk, and it's more than one reply can suffice, I might say, "here's a list of the coaches, and this sounds like a great topic for a one-on-one," but it's also possible there's a Quitcast episode I can refer you to, or some other book I've read that will help. So please do reply if you're here and considering it.

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