STORYTELLING | WRITING | CONTENT CREATION

FIFTY Days of Publishing Stories in ILLUMINATION

A look back at lessons learned and what lies ahead

Fifty days ago, I challenged myself to write and publish every day in the month of May and see what happened. What happened was I kept going. Now fifty days later, it seems like a good time to look back.

I’ve written consistently since I joined ILLUMINATION but I have not written every day. I knew whether I stopped or kept writing would not affect anyone else. But I would know!

Below are 5 lessons I learned about myself during this writing period. I submit them to you in the form of an acronym story, FIFTY.

FUN

Over these past fifty days, I’ve discovered how much fun writing is for me. There were times I would laugh out loud as a story came together. I called these my Stories in Meme.

At other times, I realized I was tapping into my inner child and writing became play. Those ideas are shared in this story.

IINTENSE

This might sound like a contradiction to the previous point but it’s not. While writing every day has been fun, there were some late nights. One night my internet connection dropped as I was writing that day’s story. Ugh!!!

To lessen the intensity, I learned to trust the process. I love to write in acronyms. As my deadline approached, I remember laying the acronym out as a draft. Then I sat back in my chair and said, “tell me what to write.”

Sound crazy? Maybe, but before you decide that, read about my system.

FREEDOM

I chose the word freedom because, during this personal challenge, I gave myself permission to be MESSY. This freed me to experiment in my own personal laboratory.

Why is MESSY capitalized? It’s because I turned MESSY into an acronym story. You can read about it here.

I learned you’re going to hit more singles than home runs. But you won’t hit any home runs or singles unless you’re willing to take a swing.

This story was a home run. Thank you, Henery X (long) for prompting me.

TOPICS

Over these past fifty days, I’ve discovered which topics resonated with my readers and which topics I enjoyed writing about. Mindset was at the top of the list. This story about the Cages of Our Minds was well received.

As was this series on gratitude.

YIELD

Raised in rural Indiana, I’m used to hearing farmers talk about the yield of their crops. In other words, how many bushels will this field of corn produce?

There are a lot of factors that determine how well a crop will produce, some like the weather is out of the farmer’s control, but a field will NEVER produce if nothing is sown in it.

The same holds true for writers. If you write but never publish, in essence, you have left the seed in the barn.

I can look back over these fifty days, and see fifty stories. The exciting thing is these stories will continue to produce as I do more things with them. Stay Tuned!

Daily Doable: I’ll end with a quote by Napoleon Hill. I’ve taken this to heart and have many thoughts jotted down waiting to be developed into stories.

Jot down the thoughts which come to you from everything you read. Take these thoughts and build stories around them: “human interest” stories that will serve as attention-getters. There is practical value in all of this. ~Napoleon Hill

A special thank you to Dr Mehmet Yildiz and all of the wonderful writers in ILLUMINATION. I appreciate your support in claps, shares, comments, and private messages. I hesitate to name all of you here for fear I would leave someone out. I will leave you with my personal mantra to inspire you. #DoWhatYouCanNow

This Inspire Point and Daily Doable were brought to you by Tim Maudlin. Please allow me to introduce myself.