How to Find Your Writing Path

Use my 4-phase process to become a full-time writer and set yourself free.

Writing and I fell in love when I was 7, but society’s expectations took over soon. Before getting two degrees under my belt, the most professional I’ve got with writing is being in my school editorial team, and that’s it.

With the pandemic in March 2020, I got more time to myself. And you know what the mind does when it’s idle, right? It thinks and thinks and makes you anxious. In this case, I’m glad it made me feel like shit.

I realised I liked nothing about my job. I mean, I was okay with the job, but I wanted more. Something was missing. I didn’t know what it was. So I thought about the obvious — money.

I then learned how to code because it's #trending and ranked as a highly paid job, only to suck at Python. I sucked at the easiest language one can learn!

I then stumbled upon random blogs about writing online and making some money. Fast forward 13 months from the time I read those blogs to writing this, I’m a full-time writer.

Well, to give you a glimpse, here’s what I do:

• Write articles on a platform
• Copywrite for businesses and executives
• Have a free ebook, and another one in the pipeline
• Have over 1200 newsletter subs + ebook downloads (each)
• Starting a cohort-based course on being a consistent writer in a week

Here’s exactly what I did to get here.

Phase 1: Side Hustling

I thought I’d start making $10,000/month in 3 months because I saw so many people earning five figures. I was far, far away from being practical, and it obviously didn’t happen.

Here’s what I did:

• Started writing on an online platform
• Made an Upwork profile

Here’s what happened:

• All my articles got rejected by editors
• Nobody wanted to hire me for over $5/1000 words

So I started researching more. I watched YouTube videos on making a perfect Upwork proposal and I invested a huge chunk of my salary into a writing course. I was sceptical about putting in the money, but I was hell-bent on changing my life. So I did what I had to.

Here’s what happened next.

Writing online

My articles became better and soon gained traction. I escalated my consistency from writing 2 articles a month to 4, then 10, and 12. My niche and my writing style kept changing. But I got approved by editors more often so I knew I was doing something right.

Client work

This YouTube video, by one of Upwork’s most successful freelancers, helped me create a proposal. I ended up doing short gigs to get a flavour of freelancing. These were varying from university SOPs to writing about pyjamas.

Friends

I also started networking with writers online. It helped me understand what they’re up to, learn from their journeys and get feedback on my articles. Once I had a fellow writer suggest me a headline and that ended up making a lot of money — this happened thrice.

Phase 2: Making Money

Making money sounds glorious when we writers tell you about how we earned a few hundred dollars for 1000 words, and it took a day to write. Trust me, it takes a long time to get there.

You need to show you’re worth it

See, to get paid well, you need to show your credibility. For that, you need existing work. And for that, you need to create kickass work. Now that takes a long time.

Zero to fifty articles are a journey, and from 50 onwards you see yourself developing depth in your articles.

See, I’ve been writing for 7 years for fun but when you get serious, you need to create a lot of prolificnesses in your work. You need to add solid value instead of surface-level information. People should want to read what you have to say.

In simple words — you need to be ridiculously interesting, all the time.

Create a system

Here’s what helped me make money:

• publishing often to make money off a writing platform
• writing more to get better, and show my credibility with a writing catalogue
• maintaining a good relationship with my clients so they can come back to me

Prepare before you quit

So my two sources of income thrived only because I kept writing. Now, I had a good safety net to quit my job:

• 6 months’ savings
• ongoing client work
• clients in the pipeline
• a great mentor to guide me

Soon, I scored a $15,000 ebook deal that gave me the security to quit my job. Only if I knew earlier that it only goes downhill from here…

Phase 3: Failing Miserably

I had my fair share of failures when I got rejected every time I wrote something. This was 9 months after, and the worst series of events came.

Failure 1

I told my boss I’ll quit in 2 weeks after I grab my bonus on April 01, 2021. A few days after telling her, my highest paying ghostwriting client ghosted me. There went my client work.

The client I was in talks with for 4 months was only willing to settle for $10/hr and when I refuted that offer, I got rejected over a single text. Months of calls and conversations and brainstorming vanished into thin air.

Failure 2 + Money drain

Another client who told me how excited she was to work with me kept stalling me. Funnily, she got back to me last week at a time I can’t take any more clients for long-form writing.

My 5-year-old Macbook kept acting funny, so there went a chunk of my savings too.

Personal loss

My grandfather passed away, and this got me at an all-time low and I isolated myself for a long time. That isolation led me to write more, which is when I started publishing 20 articles a month.

And that's when everything began to change.

Phase 4: Rising

At this point, my resilience muscle was strong. I already quit my job and was clear about a few things.

• What I did not want: a mundane corporate job, and a fixed salary.
• Why I wanted to write: to help people become healthier and happier.
• What I wanted out of writing: have a business (eventually) solve problems.
• What kind of client work I preferred: LinkedIn posts, landing pages, consultations for digital presence strategy.
• Who are my clients: Leaders and SMBs

This helped me narrow my focus.

Know your clientele

When you narrow your focus, you know who to approve and reject.

There are four choices you have:

1. high effort high value
2. low effort low value
3. high effort low value
4. low effort high value

Try your best to get clients in point 4. It doesn’t mean your work will be easy, but it’ll be comparatively easier amongst other things. Play to your strengths and what you enjoy.

Experiment

I released a free ebook on building a side hustle and making money online, where I got over 1200 downloads in 6 weeks (I expected 50).

Another win to encourage you how long can random experiments take you: I’m starting a cohort-based course to help writers become more consistent as that's a common obstacle.

I randomly tweeted around this and received over 130 comments and over 70 applications in 72h! We are starting on November 01, and if it goes well, who knows, it’ll be a course.

If I fail, well, I’ll do another random experiment.

Here Is How You Can Do It

Knowing why you want to take a particular path and the best way for you to travel that path will make it easier for you to reach your destination.

Rejections and disappointments are a part of the journey.

When the client who spoke to me for 4 months and ditched me over a text, I couldn’t get out of bed for an entire day. It’s the first time that I came to face what uncertainty is like.

But the more it happened, the easier it got to deal with it. And today, I’m glad it happened.

Answering these questions should help you find your right path:

1. Why do you want to be a writer?
2. What kind of writer do you want to be?
3. What people do you want to work with and why?
4. Have you put out your work?
5. What are the things you need to prepare before you quit your job?
6. Are you okay with uncertainty?
7. Have you thought of your personal brand?
8. What is your plan for finding clients?
9. How many sources of income do you have?
10. What is your plan to attain the fixed income you need?

You can answer some of these questions after you’ve already experimented with gigs and writing styles. This will give narrow down your focus to work towards.

But before that, know that:

• Only the process is in your control
• If something is not working out, try something different
• Recognise and work on your limiting beliefs
• Detach from your content and stats, publish and move to the next task.

It’s taken me 13 months to be here and I feel this is only the starting of what I want, to be a creative entrepreneur apart from a writer.

Since the road is long and sometimes bumpy, don’t forget to have fun!

Author’s Note: Some links mentioned are affiliate links.

Click here to subscribe to my weekly newsletter that leaves you healthier and happier.

Want to upgrade your life with a side hustle and make money online? Download my free ebook.

If you liked this, you might enjoy: