Don’t Let Money Ruin Your Love for Writing

How not to kill your passion

I think we’ve all heard the phrase “Do what you love, and you’ll never have to work another day in your life again.” Everyone’s dream is to work on what they love and be able to live on it; if you have the blessing to be passionate about what you do, that’s a success.

I love to write. I always did it as a therapy to let my feelings out and create connections with people around me. So I did it two or three times a month and publish those posts on a personal non-profit blog. I didn’t care what I could do with it, I just did it because I liked to write and not for a specific business purpose.

Then I discovered that I could monetize what I wrote. The idea of doing something that I liked and making money with it seemed incredible, but I was wrong. The problem with joining your passion with your work is that you stop doing it because you like it, and you start doing it out of obligation to meet a metric.

Money can ruin your passion for writing — but only if you let that be the reason you do it. Here are the tips on how to write for love while making money with it without it being an obligation.

Forget About Stats

I know it sounds simple and obvious, but the reason so many people stop writing is that they think of numbers first and then their story. Instead of thinking which story can give you many views, think about what story you would like to write and then worry about the stats.

Stats are important, but only when you already have the story. If you start worrying about how much views a story can make without even writing it, you will not be able to write anything.

When I started writing for money, I stopped worrying about conveying my feelings and saying my opinion. I only focused on one thing: numbers. Instead of writing about what I liked, I started writing to satisfy a specific blog or to get accepted by a publication.

This meant that I could not write every day, because I did not have enough ideas to meet the requirements of belonging to a blog and generating money. When the reality is that we must write first, and then think of a place where our thoughts fit correctly.

Writing to meet specific numbers makes us stop seeing our articles well; we look for a perfection that does not exist to fit in a space. We become obsessed with the idea that if you don’t get the specific views we are bad writers. When we write to fulfill a need, we do not include the feelings or personal touch that makes an article unique.

After a week without being able to write anything at all because I had no idea what to write, I realized that I was not writing because I liked doing it or because I wanted to convey some thought, I was doing it to fulfill a requirement.

Write for Yourself, but Always Consider Your Audience

I know that’s a controversial topic. While some people say that followers are important because they are the ones who read you and give you the encouragement you need to keep writing, others say that followers are not important because it is your passion; you should do it for free and without thinking about anybody.

For me, readers are important. They are the reason why we do what we do. The issue is when we look for followers first and then start writing for them. In this case, you will write to please an audience, which may not be the perfect one for you.

This happens a lot when we do the “follow for follow” useless method. We are looking for an audience that may not be interested in what we are passionate about writing, to grow a number that does not make sense if they do not read our content. So to try to gain more views, we began to write about things we do not want to about, for those fake followers to read.

When we start writing for ourselves, and not to please a group, we start to have real followers. Readers that will care about what we think. In this case, it will be easier to write more, because we know that what we want to write is really what the followers want to hear.

I’ll admit, when I first started blogging, I wrote whatever was on my mind. In fact, my first post was “the destinations I want to visit in my life.” Even though a lot of people don’t care about the destinations of my dreams, I found people who also shared an interest in travel and began to ask me for advice on the trips I had taken. And then I started to improve my post — instead of something personal about my travels, to how to help others to travel.

Those are the audience you have to consider, the ones who also like what you wrote and follow your same passion, not followers that don’t care what you think and only follow you because you write some commercial tips.

You Don’t Have to Write Every Day

Many people lose the love of writing because they feel that it is like going to school and doing homework: something they have to do to get a grade (or in this case, money). When we start doing something because we “have to do it” and not because we “want to”, we lose the passion and excitement we have in doing it.

But yes, my plan is to write every day. In an ideal world, that would be possible, but if I don’t feel like it, I don’t push myself. The days that I feel more inspired, I try to take advantage of it with more than one post, while the days that I do not feel up to it, I try to read from others and learn new things.

When we do something because we want to do it, we do it with great enthusiasm and create something of quality; if we push ourselves to do it, we may not have the expected result, because we do not have the courage it takes to be inspired correctly.

Remember the times when you like to write: at night before sleeping, in the morning when you remembered an idea, or when you read the news in the newspaper. If you want to write every day, do it in the moments that you know you want to do them, and if you can’t at that moment, leave it for the other day.

Earn Money Is Good, but It’s Not the Main Thing

Writing for money or writing because it’s your passion? The good thing about this question is you don’t have to choose. You should choose both as long as you do it because you like it. If you like to do something, don’t wait until it’s too late to do it — life is short. And if you have a way to monetize what you like, then take advantage of that.

The truth is that you are not going to make money suddenly, no matter how much you like what you do, but it is easier to have patience when it comes to chasing what you are passionate about. Do not think that because you like something, you will be successful from the beginning with it. If you learn to enjoy the process, the money is just going to be a reward for following your dream.

And that is why people say that “if you like what you do, you will not have to work a day in your life.” Because if you like to write, you will be happy doing it even without the money. But if you only think how much money you can make with this, you will ruin the principal thing why you start in the beginning: because you love to write.

There is a myth that says that if you do what you love, the money will follow you. There is a lot of effort and dedication in making money, and it doesn’t just mean doing what you love. So instead of focusing on how you can make money doing what you love, start thinking that doing what you love makes money seem less important.

Keep working on your passion, and little by little, you will be able to achieve what you want to do, as long as your main focus is on what you started: your love for writing.