{"id":347,"date":"2019-06-09T02:58:59","date_gmt":"2019-06-09T02:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/books\/?p=347"},"modified":"2019-06-09T03:06:02","modified_gmt":"2019-06-09T03:06:02","slug":"the-meaning-of-it-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/books\/2019\/06\/the-meaning-of-it-all\/","title":{"rendered":"The meaning of it all"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As I sit here and contemplate my goals as a writer (something I do on a near daily basis), I come back to this thought: I could not have done it without your support. I\u2019ve thought about pursuing traditional publication but every time it feels like the wrong path for me, one where I have to be far more prolific than I am, and perhaps compromise my ideals. I sometimes fret that maybe I\u2019ll only write a handful of books because it takes me so long, but then I remember that I enjoy the whole process, and I\u2019m not under any pressure to produce other than by the deadlines I<\/em> set. I may not ever be known or remembered outside a limited sphere but but is that really the important bit? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve spoken with enough writers who entered this even later in life than I have, ones that worked their entire careers only to retire and then approach it full force. I\u2019ve spoken with writers than were fortunate enough to author dozens of books \u2014 but you probably don\u2019t know who they are\u2026 writers that have written and taught for decades but still only self-publish. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The truth is, there isn\u2019t just one end goal for writing and\/or illustrating. It\u2019s kind of amazing how easy it is to forget that. The pressure to be one of those writers who manages to do it for a living is omnipresent and insidious, and while there are definitely many who achieve that, it\u2019s not the only way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I constantly have to remind myself that it\u2019s enough to simply write, draw and do it at my own pace. I\u2019ve had to make many adjustments to my time in order to achieve that. I constantly have to remind myself to stop minimizing what I have<\/em> accomplished; it\u2019s frightening easy to forget that as well. Could I be more prolific? Maybe. Would that make me happier? I don\u2019t necessarily think so. Like many things it\u2019s not so simple. Merely having more books under my belt isn\u2019t what I\u2019m after. More likes, more followers\u2026 I get it and yet I don\u2019t get it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll tell you what makes me keep going: Not the money, or widespread notoriety. All that would be grand, I suppose \u2014\u00a0easy to dismiss it when I don\u2019t have it \u2014 but I\u2019ve been just trying to get back to loving the process. I played piano for almost 20 years, and then suddenly realized I don\u2019t want to perform. But that didn\u2019t take away my desire to want to play like the six-year old that sat and got lost in the joy of figuring out music I heard or making up music of my own. The idea of making it a career of any destroyed that joy. I don’t regret any of those years of study and competition , however, because they made me the player that I am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The good news is that I\u2019ve sat down at the piano in recent months and felt a calmness that I vaguely remember. The fact that perhaps I could have made more out of it no longer really bothers me. I’m happy to sit and learn Beethoven Sonatas for no one but myself, playing them at whatever tempo makes music. I’ll play old corny jazz standards like Autumn leaves alone or with any group of players who just want to jam. There is no pressure to compete, or perform, or play at the tempo that the one playing in the next room is playing (which was, of course, really fast<\/em>) The irony is, when that anxiety is gone, I find I can actually play better and faster than I think. It\u2019s all that mental distraction that has gotten in my way, and I\u2019ve begun to reclaim my serenity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this path of writing and illustrating, the temptation to turn it into a career or side hustle is palpable. I keep coming back to the thought that I don\u2019t want any of that, I don\u2019t want it to take away my joy again. I want to sit at the keyboard, or have my pen in hand and just enjoy what I\u2019m doing, and really be internally proud of what I make\u00a0\u2014 not seek out the mostly empty likes and follows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, when I\u2019m don here on this earth, none of that is going to matter to me. What will<\/em> matter is whether or not I laid down my pen or stopped playing the piano, or never wrote that book simply because I couldn\u2019t deal with the external pressures. Whether I end up writing 2 books or 100, I\u2019ll be happy that I simply did them all, not whether I sold a million copies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n


Are those two things mutually exclusive? of course not. But I don\u2019t pretend that the latter comes easy. And maybe it is<\/em> as simple as I\u2019m not willing to make the sacrifices or compromises necessary to achieve those kinds of goals. But what does happen as a result is that I enjoy what I\u2019m doing, don\u2019t have to worry about outside opinions too much, and produce something I\u2019m truly proud of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is never lost on me that I couldn\u2019t have done that without everyone who believed in what I was making. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What are my goals as a writer? Continue reading The meaning of it all<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-347","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paUyBu-5B","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.iantm.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}