How I Wrote Daily for 150 Days Outside of a Hectic Day Job

Stop limiting your writing only to when you’re “writing”

Mid-July is when I started to rekindle my love for writing and kicked off my journey with a blog and a few random articles and poems I felt like writing.

I was working from home so the time saved from the daily commute and the general newfound discipline meant that I could spend an hour or two every night putting my thoughts into words.

That’s when I also discovered this platform and decided to write here as well, and learn from all the great writers that pour their experiences and wisdom out for the readers to gain from them.

I was sure I’d continue with the “hobby” that writing was, but I didn’t expect myself to be as consistent as I’ve been so far. In a journey of about 150 days, I’ve managed to write 150 pieces of a mix of long-form, short-form, poetry, and a bunch of other things.

All this is alongside a rather hectic, full-time job in finance. Yet, I feel there were a few tricks that I learned over time that have made the consistency easier than you'd think.

#1 — Stop Chasing Perfection — It Doesn’t Exist

The problem with reading too much about how to write a piece that will appeal to the audience is that most of them really stress the fact that you need to edit, re-edit, and edit some more.

I say that’s not necessary at all. Most of the stories I publish are as good as first drafts or first drafts that have been read once after completion for fixing typos or errors.

The thing about “writing” or anything else that’s more of an art than a science, is that there is no perfection. There is no set formula and ingredients that you can use to get the “perfect” product.

The reality is — whatever you write, as long as it isn’t criminally full of grammatical errors and obvious “mistakes,” is your piece as it should be and it is perfect in its imperfection.

#2 — Learn to Write When You’re Not Writing

Wait, what? What does that even mean? How do you write when you’re not writing.

You can.

Not all of us have the liberty to write as a full-time job and so we aren’t pushing out article after article all day, or writing thousands of words of a novel everyday. Many of us, like me, have other day jobs and do this as a hobby or a side hustle.

So, all we have is a few minutes or an hour to actually sit down and write on a computer or a phone or wherever it is that you write. But, that doesn’t mean that’s when all your ideas come to you as well.

Stay “plugged in” all day in terms of your writer's brain. Think of your next idea while you’re idling away waiting for your next meeting, or when you're whipping that coffee. Don’t mindlessly scroll your phone when you’re taking a dump or walking to the departmental store — keep your mind at work by thinking of ideas.

If you have an idea, start to mentally structure your article, thinking of how you’d start, what should be in the meat of the body and what’s a good ending. Think of a title and what you want it to look like.

If you do all this when you’re NOT actually writing, the actual act of writing will take a lot less time than it usually does.

#3 — Learn to Treat First Drafts Better

Another common advice is that a first draft is just a first draft and it should be a vomit of all your thoughts and ideas into words so you can then edit it and structure it into a proper publish-worthy piece.

If you follow advice #2, you’d end up having first drafts that are much more than word-vomit. You’ll actually have near-finished products, saving you the painful act of editing and re-editing and in the process saving you a ton of time.

It doesn’t hurt to pay attention to how your words come out when they come out the first time.

Treat writing like talking — can you really take back, edit, and perfect your words after you’ve said them once? Nope. Then why treat writing any different?

#4 — Stop Trying to Master a Niche, Don’t Be Shy to Experiment

I’ve probably written across 50 different tags, and 30 different “topics” across all my pieces. I am a master of nothing, but probably a bit more than a jack of quite a few.

Don’t stress about finding a niche and building on it, until you do find it, and you’ll know it when you do. But the thing about “generalists” is they can offer a little bit about everything.

Think of yourself as a reader — do you always read the SAME kind of things every day? Not me. I like to think a lot of my readers are like me too. So experiment and try your hand at a variety of things and you never know what will work for you, and for your audience!

It also keeps things interesting and saves you from the monotony of writing about the same things every day and recycling all those same boring ideas, unless you’re a genius and can write about the same topic 100 times in unique ways, in which case you already have your niche!

#5 — Reverse-engineer How You Think of Ideas

Most of the time I have an idea I want to write about. But there are other times when I don’t. That’s when I start reading more, seeing what are the topics people are talking about.

Or go to Google / Twitter etc. and find “trends” and pick something that I think I can take a shot at.

Or I’ll look at publications, popular websites and see what topics they cover. Then, I target a topic and the type of articles that particularly work around it, try to understand my target audience, and start writing towards it.

It is almost like “templating” yet a bit different.

#6 — Let the Long-term Average Work in Your Favor

I’ll be honest, when I say I wrote 150 pieces over 150 days, it doesn’t necessarily mean I wrote one story EVERY day.

There were days when I had other things that meant I couldn’t write anything, or I was simply lacking motivation.

But then there were others that I had nothing to do, and so I didn’t limit myself with one story and may be published or wrote 2–3 a day.

But overall — it meant I had written an “average” of a piece a day — and that is a fairly good frequency by any standards.

#7 — Don’t Try to Chase Virality

Because you just can’t. I can challenge any amateur or professional writer to predict the success of their work, and I’ll bet I’ll win more often than not.

That’s the thing with anything related to art — you can’t really predict what the audience will feel about it. You can do certain things right to ensure your work has what it takes to be successful and go wildly viral, but you can’t be certain it will work every time.

I haven’t yet achieved wild success with any one particular work of mine, but I’ve had more surprises than “Oh I knew it” moments!

So focus on the quality of everything you write and hope for the stars to align someday for that elusive “virality” that everyone chases, whether it is with your blog, your article on a content platform, or your Amazon e-book!

I hope these little tips help you bring consistency and discipline into your writing without superhuman effort, because it isn’t really so hard to do, and it only gets easier with time. Happy writing!