Food for Thought: Gap vs. Gain? Reframing-1 ♦️

Writer Compass Advice and Opinion

I don’t know about you, but I’m not a resolutions gal. It feels so confining, leaving (in my opinion) not much room for personal or career growth or expansion, and, even worse, practically encourages you to beat yourself up for not meeting the expectations you set for yourself. And if you know any writers (that likely includes YOU, BTW…), one thing we excel at is self-flagellation—the one thing we don’t actually need to do more of.

So, instead of setting resolutions, we are encouraging you—nay, we’re giving you permission to—think about your past year, your career, your life, in a way that emphasizes gain over gap; to measure from the past, not from the future.

To do this, we’ll utilize a tool my therapist calls “reframing”. Finding a different perspective to consider something—an event, something that happened to you, something you did, etc.—in a new light; one that serves you. When considering “gain” over “gap”, you’ll frame your thoughts to focus on what you gained instead of the gap between what you wanted to achieve and what you did achieve.

If you’re not used to doing it, it can be tough to wrap your mind around, so let’s see it in action. Belinda Bestseller published 4 books in 2023 and had the same goal for 2024. But life happened, and Belinda only (in HER mind, it’s only) published 2 books in 2024. Belinda, like most authors, at first gravitates toward thinking about the gap or what she didn’t accomplish—the fact that she published 2 fewer books in 2024 than in 2023 and didn’t meet her goal. This makes those 2 books she did publish seem like a failure. But Belinda is learning to reframe, so she stops and considers: “As of the end of 2024, I have a total of 8 books published, including the 2 new books in 2024. And, even though I did publish 2 fewer books than the year before, my income didn’t drop!”

When Belinda Bestseller reframes her thoughts to focus on what she (and her career) has gained, the language becomes positive, and Belinda’s mindset begins to change. Maybe the next year life is even crazier, and she publishes 0 books. But she was able to concentrate on some other aspects of her career: “By the end of 2025, I tripled my newsletter subscribers, read 20 books in my genre, and learned how to do successful Amazon Ads.” See? Belinda’s getting good at this.

Finally, Rebecca Yarros (author of the Empyrean series, including Fourth Wing) had published 20-something books before Fourth Wing was published in 2023 and readers went bonkers for it. Should we consider those previous books failures because she wasn’t a knockout bestseller until then? Heck no!

This is also a good time to remind all the authors reading this that “overnight successes” are rarely exactly that.

So, tell us—is this a tool you might find useful? Have you tried it before? Has it helped? Just reply to this email or hit us up at: fourqueens@redreines.com. We’d love to cheer you on.

♦️

Resources:

https://gapandgainbook.com/