Up until a couple of years ago, when someone asked me what I did, I would tell them I was a writer and a life/book/manifestation coach (whichever applied at the time).
I never told them I was an author.
I don’t think I really even saw myself as one. Even though I had more than a dozen books published at that time.
I had so many old BS limiting beliefs about what it meant to be an author, especially a self-published one. And the noise in my head was louder than my truth.
Until I decided to claim that truth for real—that I am an author, and had been since I wrote my first book when I was 13 years old. I may not have become a published author until I was 26, but I have technically been an author for most of my life.
Yet I never fully claimed it until a couple of years ago. Before then, I wasn’t really acting like the author I knew I was either.
I didn’t have a consistent writing habit. I started book projects and didn’t always finish them. I didn’t believe in myself or my ideas or books enough.
It used to feel super uncomfortable to even say the words “I’m an author.”
It’s not the typical career choice, and it definitely doesn’t equate to a typical lifestyle. And there’s a lot of potential judgment that comes with it.
Most especially, I wasn’t writing the books I knew I wanted to be writing and was meant to be.
And then I realized… it was time to pull the plug on my comfort zone. It was time to go all in on being the author I wanted to be and writing the books I wanted to write.
Now that I am, I’m proud to call myself an author. I love saying the words, I’m an author. I love seeing the look of surprise on people’s faces when they ask me what I do and I tell them I’m an author.
Becoming the author I always dreamed of being was an outer AND inner journey. Both work together.
Without the inner, you’ll play small, work so much harder than you have to, and burn out in the process. Without the outer, you’ll sit around thinking about your book ideas but not actually writing and publishing them.
You need both.
📷 The book (a novel) I wrote when I was 13, with notes from my editor. It was 63 pages. I wrote concisely even then 😆