I Wrote every day for a Week: This Is What Happened

Making a routine out of writing left me addicted to the process.

It had been nearly five months since being out of work due to the pandemic. My blog traffic was drying up, and so were my ideas and drive to write. I was writing book reviews that no-one was reading and getting pitch rejections every other day.

I would write sporadically, on the anomaly day of the week where I suddenly felt a surge of inspiration — and then nothing for days, just staring at the numbers on my stat count and getting increasingly frustrated.

For sure, writing is never about the numbers. But on some level, a writer is going to want to be read.

I have always been a writer — from filling up fluffy pink notebooks at 8 years old to writing short stories and poems in my early teens. At university, I started writing articles, about politics and big issues and had my words read and scrutinised for the first time. I mind it less now.

At the start of this year, I decided to start a blog and really work on it, hoping to have something to add to my portfolio. Yet did I know that writing would become my saving grace during the empty days of lockdown.

It was upon creating a Medium account and reading an article by Matt Lillywhite that I realised I needed to change my relationship with writing.

I had read about the benefits of writing every day and making it routine but always been sceptical. What if I ran out of things to write? What if writing became a chore? What if I just lost the plot? Surprisingly, none of this happened.

Instead, writing every day profoundly changed my relationship with it and made me realise this is what I want to do, this is what I’ve spent countless nights worrying about, wondering what I’m going to do with my life. And it was right in front of me the whole time.

This is what happened when I wrote daily for one week.

Writing became an addictive necessity

The first day I got up to write was hard. My alarm was set for 7:30 am and begrudgingly I stepped out of bed and made myself a cup of liquid gold. I opened up my computer and stared at the list of ideas to choose from.

Naturally, I chose to write about Twilight. Something so trivial, but yet became the most-read piece that the week. As I wrote, I tried to suppress my giggles, not quite believing that this was going to be the first topic of choice. I had just finished Midnight Sun and was drowning in a bit of nostalgia and felt the need to share my thoughts.

As the days went on and I continued to wake up at the same time with the same ritual, the words began to flow and I couldn’t stop writing.

Making writing routine made me fall more in love with it. I’ve always been someone who gains pleasure from writing and expressing ideas but I have never become addicted to the process. I can sit back now after the week and admit writing has become somewhat of an addiction.

I never ran out of things to write about

Granted, I had a pre-prepared list of topics to write about every day to choose from, but regardless, I never got writer’s block or lacked the motivation to write. The more I wrote, the more I wanted to write.

Before, I would wait around for inspiration and always wondered why I could never think of things to write and sometimes just lacked the will to write. Turns out, the more you write, the more things you think of to write and the more you want to do it.

Some of the things I published this week are better than others, but one thing’s for sure, I am sick of having a folder of drafts and unpublished articles pilling up without me giving them a place in the world.

Sometimes you’ve got to just press publish — if you don’t, you’ll never learn from it. Change your mindset — use every opportunity to publish as one where you can learn.

Publish even when you’re not a hundred percent satisfied, and view it as a process of growth and reflection.

Besides, you can always delete the story if you look back in a year and can’t stop cringing.

I earned $0.62 in the first week

I had pretty low expectations about how much my writing would earn. For one, I wasn’t in it for the monetary gains but rather, changing my relationship with writing.

However, I was surprised at the amount I managed to earn in the first week, just from publishing seven stories and having very little presence here. I know it is minuscule — but hear me out.

Three of my stories were curated by Medium and those were the biggest earners. When I compare this to my blog on WordPress, which I have had for 8 months, it seems pitiful. For all my time on WordPress, having posted over 100 articles, I have only earned 14p in AD revenue.

It seems that Medium is the place to publish if you are looking to earn some coin for your hard work. I’ve even been thinking about giving WordPress up altogether, but I’ve established a small community over there. And obviously, to fully access Medium you have to become a paid member, not something everyone will be prepared to do.

I gained followers… rather fast for my standards

Again, this was not something I was looking for, it just happened. Medium always seemed like a bit of a hard nut to crack in terms of building up a following. But in the first week, I gained 22 followers and was already receiving some ‘claps’ which was nice. Again, much faster recognition than on WordPress.

From sharing my work elsewhere I also gained about 30 new Twitter followers. The mind boggles. I’m guessing if I keep this writing thing up every week it will start to accumulate.

I got less scared of having my writing out there

It’s been a journey over the past three years of getting used to people reading my work, which sounds crazy when you consider I want to be a writer.

But I guess every writer always has that niggling worry that people aren’t going to like what they’ve written or it’s not going to be read at all. On some level, you always worry about how your work is going to be received — but I found the more I published, the less I worried.

I’ve definitely got better and publishing every day has got me more immune to the sense of anxiety I feel from publishing. As a result, I have gained a huge amount of confidence.

Writing every day for seven days fundamentally changed my relationship with it.

Making it routine has caused me to re-assess my writing process and realise that writing for me is a necessity. For my sanity and also for my self-development. The more you write, the more you can learn.

From now on, I’m not going to wait around for inspiration to come but just do it, and punch those keys every day for as long as I can.

Some days my writing will be better than others, but at least I will still be doing it. I’ve come away from the week loving writing more than ever and feel a greater sense of ease with the process. The words flow quicker and so do my ideas. For that, I am eternally grateful.

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