The Blueprint I Gave My Friend Who Wants to Be a Writer
He wants to quit his job and get paid to write — so I gave him what I know and thought it would be worth sharing
One of my closest friends — known as the Gandhi of wisdom in business circles — called me this week. He rang me three times in a row so I knew it was urgent.
“What’s up, Chief?”
“I want to write, urgently. Can you help?”
He’s never asked me this question before. We never talk about writing so it was odd. He thought about quitting his job to write. I told him that laptop dreams will destroy his writing dream really fast. He got the message.
Here is the raw, unfiltered, straight to the point, no bullshit guide I gave him, and it might help you too.
Pretend You’re the Expert
My friend is an expert in business and technology. When he talks about it in person, he commands the room. When he sits down to write about what he knows, he feels like an imposter.
He goes from the expert who has certainty, to the child who feels insecure.
I asked him this question: “How would you write if you were told you were the world expert on your chosen subject and given a Nobel Peace Prize for it? Write like that.”
Drop the “not sure” remarks and remove the disclaimers.
When you believe you’re the expert, you write like you are.
Ban Yourself From Feedback
“Can I pretty please send you my draft?”
“No freaking way, amigo.”
He wanted my feedback and I told him it didn’t matter. I sent him my first blog post ever and told him he was going to start out terrible and that’s the point.
Feedback is just an excuse.
Quality is subjective. People will say your work is amazingly helpful and clickbait all in the same breath.
Opinions are confusing for writers.
Opinions are like censorship. When you accept an opinion, you force yourself to change your mind.
Have a 5 p.m. Deadline
When he agreed he was going to start writing, I told him, “Sounds good, chief.”
I then sent him a text: “Can’t wait to hear you published your story at 5 p.m. next Friday. I’ll have a beer cracked while I wait for your text.” You’ll ruminate your writing dreams to death if you don’t have a deadline.
Deadlines burn the bullshit in your head.
Have Someone Hold You Accountable
Find a friend who has embarrassing photos of you — ideally nude photos. Tell them you need help. Tell them that you need them to hold you accountable. Tell them your writing goal is X and if you don’t achieve it within a month, you want them to share your bare little butt on the internet.
Watch how fast you write after the deal is set in stone.
Choose One Platform You Own and One You Don’t
Where to write is a question my friend has asked me a lot. My thoughts have changed somewhat in the last year. The truth is that you want one platform you own and one you don’t.
The platform you don’t own will give you access to their audience, and the platform you do own will be your backup plan in case something goes wrong. A platform you own will always make you more money in the long-term than a platform you don’t (long-term meaning 5+ years).
Write About What Is Easy
Technology and business come easily to my friend. He can talk my head off for days about it. So, they are the best topics for him to start with.
Two topics, to begin with, is all you need. Don’t pick what is in fashion or a trending topic because you won’t write with the same level of passion.
Start with writing about what you know.
Write About What Is Hard
“Hard” means a story or experience that you don’t normally talk about; otherwise known as vulnerability.
When you write about what is hard, you have the potential to inspire a nation with your words.
There are far too many easy stories that look like they were written by a person who was an immaculate conception. Writing about what is hard is inspiring. The first time I took off the mask of perfection and wrote about mental illness, frankly, it saved my life. It was the first time I had really ever told anybody about the torture going on in my head.
84,000 people shared that story. Every article before that was about startups who were going to become unicorns. It wasn’t hard. It wasn’t me.
Be yourself and write about what feels hard to share.
If You Feel Emotional, Sit Down to Write Quickly!
The best writing comes from emotion.
When you’re pissed off, write. When someone you love dies, write. When your boss fires you, write. When your partner breaks up with you, write.
Learn to love the overwhelming emotional events and write about them. I promise you after doing this writing thing for six years, the stories loaded with raw emotion, happening to you at that moment, will take off. By releasing that emotion you help others heal their pain. You remind us that we’re all similar. We’re one race, one species, connected by love.
Whatever you do, don’t let the emotion subside.
When the tears are rolling down your cheek, that’s when you must write.
Do not rob us of that moment!
Block Money From Your Writer’s Mind
If you want to have no chance at a writing career, focus on money. Money will completely screw up your writing and force you to content-market-yourself into a grave of negativity.
Money blocks the helpful thoughts in your mind with dreams of stuff you could own by writing on a laptop. Material possessions are the worst writing motivation you could hope for.
You will not get rich after writing for a year.
Focus on the endless ways you can be helpful. You might just find that writing to make money doesn’t even matter in the end. That’s how I feel. My friend wanted to write because he was sick and tired of his job. He thought writing for money could be the short-term answer.
Writing is a long term goal, not a short-term one.
If you need money desperately, get a job.
Creativity is far too precious and valuable to be traded for money.
The compound interest you earn from creativity can pay you for the rest of your life if you can be patient enough to forget about money for now.
The Blueprint
Finally, this is the blueprint I gave my friend. It has proven to work for many people who have followed it:
- Find two platforms to write on.
- Create a one-sentence call to action.
- Set up a landing page with a subscribe button.
- Sign up for an email list provider.
5. Write a minimum of once a week, for at least an hour, for a year.
6. Edit your writing on a day you’re not writing.
7. Choose one image that sums up your article.
8. Collect five to 10 writer friends in the first year (you’ll need each other later to share mailing lists).
9. Start writing two articles per week after three months. Notice the difference.
10. Repeat this writing blueprint until your life changes.
Final Thought
Many of us have writing dreams and we stuff them up before we’ve started. This is because we let excuses, attention, and money screw up our chances, which the audience doesn’t care about.
Anybody can write. Anybody can eventually make a living from writing. Like anything, though, you have to show up for long enough to accept the rewards of your hard work.
Take the blueprint I gave my friend and write your dreams into reality.
If a knobhead like me who misspelled the word English on the front of his high school binder folder and walked around with it for a year without noticing can do OK, you’re going to do extremely well.
Show up to write for the next year and see what happens. You got nothing to lose.