I never had a mentor, the way some writers do. I never had someone look me over, look my work over, or look my career over, and give me advice on what I should do.

I didn’t hold writing sacred then, the way I do now. I didn’t put so much pressure on myself that I blocked up even before I’d written a word. I just wrote. Maybe that’s the curse of my generation. Or the blessing. I didn’t have to look at magazines and newspapers, read those widely published writers and wonder if I could ever be good enough. No, I read the Internet. And knew for a fact that I was definitely good enough.

It wasn’t until much later that I started doubting myself. But I was already making a living at it by then.

I always wonder about the pressure writers face when they come to writing as a dream, as something they’ve always thought of doing. I worry about people who quit their jobs before they’ve written a single article or book. What if they find that they like having written, but not the actual process? What if they find that it was tougher than they imagined, harder than it looked from the outside? What if they find, on sitting down in front of the blank page, that they’re really no good at all?

My goals initially were simple. I had failed college and had a year of nothingness ahead of me. If I could make a bit of money on the side, I’d be happy. So I did. By the time the year was over, I was hooked, and my ambitions had grown. Now, I was looking at this as a full-time career. I knew that I could no longer become an engineer and writing seemed to be my only ticket out. By the time I graduated college, I was making a living with my words.

It’s because I had no mentor, no guidance, and no real ambitions initially, that I’ve learned everything step by step, and built my career by working for the online publications and the small publications. Anyone who’d publish me, really. And that they did, was enough. I didn’t aspire to write for Time or The New Yorker. I’d be happy if that small e-zine for writers would publish me.

Now, things have changed. And I look back at that writer I once was and am glad that there was no one telling her to aim for The New York Times. She might have gotten rejected. And she might have taken that as a sign that she wasn’t good enough.