It’s all in how you frame things.

Sometimes it’s important to just make things, share them and not think too much about it. Remove labels, expectations, future plans. I just make things. This results in either the smartest or dumbest things I do. And I’m willing to take a chance on the latter every time.

I wrote a vegan cookbook a few years ago without knowing anything about cooking (I’ve not been formally trained and never spent any time in a professional kitchen). I had also never written a book or anything past a blog post. I didn’t take writing or even English in school (hell, I didn’t even finish school). I never thought of myself as a writer, and I still don’t (I’m just someone who writes things).

I think the way I’ve framed the way I think about the things I do is important because it releases the pressure from there having to be goals or successes or anything else. I do things because I genuinely enjoy doing them.

If I live in the present with what I create (or try to) and don’t worry about what’ll happen once I’ve released them into the world. A few marketing/sales people I know asked what my sales goals were for my first book, and I had to answer that I didn’t have any because it didn’t matter. I had no goals past finishing the book. Sure, I wanted others to get the book, but that’s not why I wrote it and I didn’t worry about that until after the book was written. I wrote it because I wanted to and because I enjoyed the process. I taught myself something valuable (self-publishing). I’ve taken what I learned and used it to make more books and have even helped others with their books.

In the beginning, if I had thought too hard about wanting to become a “writer”, I’m not sure I would have followed through. That sounds like a lot of pressure, to be something with such a big label. I’m not sure I could have held up the weight of that idea. It would have made me think too much about the future and about what I needed to do to get to being a “writer” (instead of just focusing on, well… writing). I would then had to continue to measure myself up against, “is this what a writer would do?” or “is this good enough for something a writer would write?”.

Now that I’ve sold enough books to make a bit of a living off of words, I still don’t think of myself as a real “writer”. That’d put stress and pressure on me to preform on what I write next and I can’t see how it’d be helpful. I write because I like writing and sharing it with others.

If I can keep my focus on the present (writing more) and not bother with what comes after that, I feel like my writing can stay true to my initial intentions and be more valuable than something written for fame, money, glory or retweets.