So how do you make sure it’s your voice in your book? There are two frames we recommend authors take: VOICE FRAME #1: CONVERSATION WITH A FRIEND This is the most common mental frame that our authors use. When they sit down to write, they envision themselves talking to a friend. This is literally the frame I used to write this section—I pretended to explain this to a friend of mine. Getting in that state of mind does several things: • It relieves any anxiety, because this is just a conversation with friends. • It helps keep my focus on the listener, because they’re a friend and I want to be attentive to them. • It helps me stay centered on providing value to the listener, because in a teaching-style conversation, I am only thinking about what the other person is learning and taking in. • It helps me keep momentum and motivation, because I want to make sure I am always helpful to my friend. John Steinbeck says it best: Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, face- less audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person — a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one. VOICE FRAME #2: HELP A STRANGER HEAL THE SAME PAIN YOU HAD This is very similar to the “conversation with a friend” frame, but it is also different in a few ways. If you envision yourself helping a stranger solve a painful problem, you do these things: hOW TO WriTE yOUr firST DrAfT (ThE vOMiT METhOD) · 143