I Wrote Every Day for One Year and Here Is What Happened
And published on Medium at least five days a week.
I wrote.
And wrote.
I wrote in my dreams.
Then,
I wrote some more.
For an entire year. Every day. Publishing on Medium nearly once a day.
I had writing experience, a defunct blog. But no professional writing experience.
Goal — to write every day for one year, publish on Medium every day at least five times a week for a year.
Start date — June 26, 2019. My first post.
The results…
This may sound insincere, but I mean it when I say I’m most proud of sticking to my goal. It isn’t an easy feat to write every day for a year, quality pieces to publish on Medium — read by strangers. That in itself is not a simple task, and some days I felt like I was going insane.
I dreamt about Medium, especially the first three months when I didn’t miss a day of publishing. Waking in a panic some nights with the thought, “did I post on Medium today?”
I wanted to quit. Several times.
I wanted to give up, at least four times. For the handful of days I didn’t publish, I was sick of Medium, so sick of myself, and my ideas I wanted to delete my account and never write again. Throw my computer out the window, so the temptation to write on Medium wasn’t an option.
It was challenging, I loved/hated it.
But I kept at it. Banishing my negative thoughts with a walk around the block or reading the comments on my stories from strangers. Reading positive comments kept me going, even when I received just one or two comments total. They made me take a breath, go back to the keyboard, and start typing whatever idea came to mind, even if I thought it was stupid. Especially on those days, when I thought my writing was unoriginal and boring, I had to persevere, or I would stop for good. I knew if I just kept writing, eventually, I’d get to something interesting. Nine times out of ten, I was right.
Your worst ideas on the page don’t matter if you take the editing process seriously. When you edit with ruthlessness and with an observer’s eye — you edit with the reader in mind — you can get to something worth publishing.
That is true for all writers.
Take editing seriously. Tip — read your writing aloud. It is the fastest way to get more clear and concise writing. When you read in your head, your brain skips over typos and can’t discern where you need to work on the flow and rhythm. Writing is like listening to music; when you hear it aloud, it is easier to improve flow and rhythm.
When you fail, don’t quit.
Not everything you write will be a winner.
This is especially true on Medium. Not every story will speak to the specific tastes of the readers on Medium. Eventually, if you stick with it, some stories will land, and you will be ecstatic when that happens — if you don’t give up.
“The genius thing that we did was we didn’t give up.” — Jay Z
When your story goes viral, it will make you want to write more. But until then, you have to keep posting, even after you pour your heart and soul into a story only to get five claps or no claps, no highlights, no reads, no love.
Keep going anyway.
When you have a few stories that reach a certain level of engagement, you can make money later down the road. I’m still making money from a story I wrote six months ago. It is a slow burn on Medium, but you don’t necessarily see those results for a while.
You have to be patient.
When a story goes viral, it does not mean your next story will go viral, it most likely won’t. No matter how many people tell you do x,y, z to write a viral story, there is no magic formula, you just have to keep writing quality work.
Your cumulative output matters more than any single thing you write. The secret to becoming a better writer is to become a prolific one.
Stay positive.
If you stay positive, even when you aren’t seeing the results you want, you will keep writing. Negative thinking will not keep you persevering. You need to preserver to see older stories gain traction. If you stop creating new stories, when an older one starts to take off, you want to be active when readers check out your profile. That way, they are more likely to read your latest writings.
Your cumulative output matters more than any single thing you write. The secret to becoming a better writer is to become a prolific one.
To become a better writer aim for quality in your writing, plus quantity, which ensures you will improve over time. It is some unknowable combination of the two that gets you readership.
You have to write many drafts to get to the gold. Once in a blue moon, you’ll write an article in five minutes, and it takes off on Medium for reasons you’ll never know.
There is no magic formula.
The key is consistent publishing and finding what works. Write more of the stories in a similar vein to those that work.
All writers write a shitty first draft, good writers write the second draft, and the third. Great writers keep at it every day to improve their craft.
Being a writer is a life-long endeavor.
The writing muscle.
It wasn’t easy at first to produce one post per day that I felt was good enough to publish.
My writing muscle had atrophied. I had taken a break from writing, unless you count Twitter, and let’s not. I can tweet with the best of them, but a 280-character count does not a writer make.
At first, I didn’t think I would have enough content to publish daily.
One year later, that notion is comical.
Now, I don’t have enough hours in the day to write thoroughly on all the ideas I’d like to drill down on.
Energy flows where attention goes.
I keep ideas I want to write about on post-it notes, index cards, my notes app, and scribbled in notebooks scattered throughout my car, desk, purse, and life.
My capacity for the amount of output I can produce has expanded because I’ve strengthened my writing muscle.
It takes me less time to write a post, not by much, but what has significantly decreased is the amount of energy I have to put into writing a quality post.
Today, the effort is minimal compared to when I first began. It is incredible to me. Writing a post takes a lot less bandwidth now, confirming what people say, writing is a muscle, it needs to be flexed and maintained every day, or else, it is a struggle to start again.
This is my biggest takeaway. Writing is easier when you do it every day, just like everything else in life.
If you are serious about getting paid as a writer, you can’t leave writing to only when you feel like it, it means writing every day even on the days you do not feel like it.
If I only wrote when I felt inspired, I’d write maybe once a month. I write every day, and nine times out of ten, after the first 20 minutes of writing, I want to continue.
Stats.
- The One Book That Will Change Your Life, has the most views, over 108k, and has earned over 3k.
- Follower count: increased to 3.5k followers. I think I started around 500. I came in with zero audience outside of Medium.
- At any given time I have at least ten top writer tags.
- How My Lawyer and My Husband Taught Me The Gift of Non-reaction is my first story accepted in P.S. I Love You, 20 days after I started regular publishing. I consider it my most successful story, not in terms of engagement, but it’s the one I’m most proud of. It is solid writing, and I wrote it in about 30 minutes. It poured out of me.
- I was accepted to one Medium in-house publications, OneZero with this post, I have kind of stopped submitting to the larger ones because I’m not sure they read submissions. The two I have applied to a handful of times are GEN and FORGE.
- I’m a frequent contributor to P.S. I Love You, The Startup, The Ascent, Publishous, and Mind Café.
- I’m the editor of two publications: The Write Path, a publication dedicated to writing and productivity. And The Happy Spot, dedicated to relationships, love, and life. Both are growing in followers.
Summary.
I love Medium.
Medium is a website for readers and writers. I have not found another site where you can showcase your writing with such little effort and gain readers quickly while making it one of your revenue streams.
Because of the internet and social media, there has never been a fortuitous time to make money from home and be your own boss.
Like Medium, social media platforms have opened doors to endless opportunities and created added avenues for financial success while working for yourself.
Opportunities that weren’t possible even ten years ago exist now because of the internet.
I’m going to keep writing to see what the next year brings.
You might also like…
Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering type-A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.
Or you can follow me here.
