The Author Stuck List

by Becca Syme

When you’re stuck, but you don’t know why… this book will help.

Throwing spaghetti at a wall. Sound familiar? That’s what being stuck feels like sometimes. “Why is this happening and how do I fix it?” This is only one of the questions we ask ourselves when we feel stuck and frustrated and can’t write.

The goal of The Author Stuck List is to help you create a customized tool that will aid in getting you regularly unstuck. This book will help you find a way to spend less time with your frustration and more time with your manuscript.

The Author Stuck List is broken up into six domains of stuck (the most common reasons authors get stuck) and is written by an author success coach who has coached almost 6,000 individual writers.

The Domains:

1. Clarity
2. Emotion
3. Environment
4. Progress
5. Resource
6. Surprise

Follow along with Becca through each domain and learn techniques to get unstuck today!

Find your patterns. Understand the stuck. Start writing again!

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction

308 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 4, 2023

About the author

Becca Syme holds a master’s degree in transformational leadership and has been a success coach (primarily utilizing the Gallup Strengthsfinder®) for almost fifteen years. She’s coached 4,700+ individual authors and creatives through her Write Better-Faster and Strengths for Writers classes & coaching cohorts: six- and seven-figure authors, major award winners, midlisters, and new authors alike. Becca is the host of the YouTube QuitCast channel and a mystery author. She lives in the mountains of Montana.

Reviews

[Crystal Caudill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Losts of great suggestions and tips for understanding yourself and getting unstuck. I hope to get the cards with the next Kickstarter, but the book is good enough on it's own.

[Sandy Williams · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was soooo good! Maybe the most useful of all Becca's books? Even though all her books are phenomenal.

I backed the kickstarter, so I'll be getting the Stuck Deck in the mail. I really need to use these strategies now!

I think the book is a must have for all authors. Except maybe you unicorns who never get stuck. lol

[Martha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe not interesting to the general public, but extremely helpful for a writer. Specific ways to help knock down writer's block, depending on the problem AND the writer's personal strengths and weaknesses. She even explains WHY the tactics work. Love it!

[sea ʚ♡ɞ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got both this book and the stuck list deck at a book event for free and am so grateful for the author's motivations of getting these resources out there! I really needed this and am excited to tell you guys about it for the instance that it will help you as well!

This book is all about finding what will help you individually and breaking out of the typical advice authors give that may be hindering you work by trying to get what works for someone else to work for you. I think it's easy for writers to feel like there is a set way of doing things because others say so and we feel like if we're not doing it that way, we are the ones who are failing. Instead, Syme shows us WHY these other methods may work better for us. She breaks down each method of getting unstuck into who it may work for and what it does for you. It's honestly really helpful for me to see things this way because I am someone who searches for reason in everything.

I will also say, that while I did get the deck and am curating my own small version of the deck to keep with me, I know for a fact that without this book explaining each part of it, I would not have utilized it. This book was so helpful and the deck as a companion is going to help me so much on the go. The author breaks her advice down to 6 sections: needing clarity, getting bored, inability to progress, emotional discord, environmental blocks, and a lack of information. All of these then break into the advice for each issue. I think I found something useful in each section though I'm sure some authors have more built in patterns of needing specifically one category.

I'm not technically an author yet but I write a lot and I do hope to be but I get stuck and then start something new instead of finishing what I'm currently on so I think this is going to be a great help in me getting to where I need to be. In fact, I know it will be because this morning I went to a story I was stuck on and wrote. For this one, I really needed the advice from Emotion 2 - a check in with your positive outlook. Advice that follows from the author include "Quit being on social media first thing in the morning". This allowed the first voice of the day to be my own, allowing me to clear my mind of all the distractions and get to writing. It seems obvious and obviously I shouldn't be going on social media first thing in the morning anyways but until she broke down why it's bad for me, I didn't quit understand how much it was hindering me!

I seriously recommend this book to any writers or authors out there! This was so helpful to me and I will be using their other resources available and buying more of this series!

[Julie]

I signed up for Becca’s kickstarter back in November 2022, and the digital book got distributed in December. I’m still waiting on the physical cards, but I had a chance to read through the digital book, which lists what all the cards are and gives more elaborate descriptions of when you might want to use them.

I really liked it! Not every card applies to me, but many of them do, and it’s good to have a resource that I can look at when I’m banging my head against the wall going “why isn’t this working?!” I mean, my first answer should always and forever be “just talk to someone already, damnit!” (Hello, yes, I am #1 Communication, why do you ask?) But after that, it’s nice to have a resource for other things. Last week, I pulled out the list of all the cards that really spoke to me, and then added about ten more personalized ones so I’d have a nice round number that I could use for a random-roll table, because I’m nothing if not a roleplaying geek. I’d certainly consider the cards + book combo to be worth the cost I paid on kickstarter. (I believe both of them will be available in Becca’s merch store… eventually.)

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a very gentle approach to unsticking yourself from hurdles in your path. I don't think of myself as getting writer's block, but I certainly get stuck from time to time. A couple of the suggestions are ones I already use to great effect, and several others seem worth a try. I particularly liked the section on surprises since I think a lot of the time I don't feel good about what's going on, I am in search of a twist. Great actionable tips!

[Wolf O'Rourc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Becca offers many creative way to get into your writing gear I never thought of. Like using a d20 Dungeons & Dragons dice to get a prompt. The book covers inspiration, systems, wellness issues among many others, in short, easy to digest chapters. I did find the organization confusing. Given that many methods fall into different categories, trying to organize them maybe futile. But you only need to pick out a handful of methods that work for you to improve your writing game.

[Britt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

This resonated really hard in multiple areas. I will definitely need to reread, and sit and take notes. But I read it straight through first, so I could devour it and then chew on it.

[Kate Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

So many great ideas

I know I’ll refer back to this book many times as I write my current and future books. A treasure of ideas to help me move forward constructively with the story. Recommended reading for any author feeling stuck or uncertain how to move their writing forward.

[JacQueline Vaughn Roe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly insightful and just the right amount of humor to help writers laugh at themselves. Loved the audio and listened twice so I could make my own stuck card deck. Already helped me get unstuck a couple of times! Can’t wait to recommend it to everyone!

[Shyla Colt]

This was a fantastic book that opened my mind to different ways to get deeper into my story, and get the words flowing freely. It's a wonderful reminder of the cogs that need to work together to keep things running smoothly.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Valuable tips for getting "unstuck" in writing your book.

[Clarissa Gosling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gives a good range of things to think about when writing is stuck.

[Melody Loomis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great book! Gave me a lot of ideas to use for when I'm stuck with my writing, and as I was listening to it, I got a few ideas for my next story. Yes!

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it! I’ll definitely be putting a lot of this into practice!

[Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

A REALLY amazing resource. I learned a lot about my writing style and why I sometimes stall at similar points in each manuscript.

[Jery Schober · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing collection of things to do when stuck in your manuscript.

[Melanie Pienaar · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Becca Syme's books, but this one felt like it could have been a bit shorter. Or maybe combined with the one on writer's block

[Kimberly Gasuras · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book and found it informative, but I have learned more of the things I needed from some of Becca's other books!

[A.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a Patreon supporter, and love all the things Becca and her group I doing. I bought the stuck cards in Kickstarter and this book tells you how to use them, not that you need the cards to do the things she suggests; it’s just the act of shuffling cards gives you another level of randomness.

With the Write Better Faster Academy there is a joke that is it #NotaCult but if it was, I’d be in. It just makes sense to me. When so much these days does not.

4 stars