This is My 100th Story — Everything I’ve Learned

I hadn’t planned to write this this morning, but when I opened my drafts… I realized that I was about to publish my 100th story.

(Fanfare sound)

My first post was on September 15. 6 months later… 99 stories later… I have 975 followers.

That gives me an average of 9 followers / story.

Is that a lot? You tell me.

I’m not going to rehash the same advice I’ve already written 10,000 times in other articles. I think you’re tired of it, and so am I.

The summary would be : - good branding - consistency in your routine - comment on other writers every day

These three lines are your secret formula to build an audience on medium.

Today, I wanted above all to share with you some reflections and observations I’ve gained from these six months of experience.

1) Some stories are only going to get views … months later

One of my most successful stories (over 300 comments) started getting views weeks after publication.

Another of my stories published a few weeks ago is only now starting to get views and daily comments.

Why is this? No idea.

If your story doesn’t get views right away, all is not lost. You’ll get some nice surprises, just click publish. That must be how Medium works. When you look in your feed, you can see that fairly old stories are in this tab. Your stories are like good wine on Medium, they gain value as they age.

2) Passion

Unless you’re a robot, I don’t think you can succeed in the writing business without passion. It often takes 1 hour to write a 5-minute read, and sometimes another 30 minutes to polish and edit the article.

Writing is the ultimate delayed gratification. You only reap the rewards of your work when you have enough material on the Internet to generate a fairly high number of daily views.

As soon as you slow down, you lose your audience. I don’t see how you can succeed if you’re not passionate about it. You have to love writing, love sitting down in front of your screen, love learning …

Love taking two hours to write something to have no views … Without passion, writing can crush your spirit.

4) Is AI going to end our careers ?

When I started, GPT had just come out. And since then, many improvements have been made. GPT is already better than many of us, as long as you give it the right prompts.

And yes, GPT will replace all those who publish generic content. Content you consume without paying attention to the author. Your edge is in your personality. AI can’t copy it or your story. AI can’t capture the nuance of certain emotions.

AI is a blessing for some and a curse for others.

If you create generic content, AI will drown you in the ocean of unreflective content.

If you’re unique enough, AI is a chance to shine in the midst of generic content.

4) What next?

No idea. I’m still growing my newsletter. I continue to follow my routine. I’m going back to an average of one post a day. The biggest writers on this platform write several posts a day, but I can’t do that. I’d have to be 100% on my writing to be able to do that and I work during the day between 6–10 hours a day. To keep going, I use 2 to 3 hours a day to write. 1 hour and a half in the morning to write my daily post. Another hour when I get home from work to network, post comments. It’s tiring, but you can’t succeed without making an effort.

5) Breaks hurt

I took a big two-month break between March and the end of May. I was tired and needed a break. I’d been publishing almost every day for about a year. My routine was unhealthy and far too exhausting. Take care of yourself, because when the machine stops, there’s no warning. My break from twitter took away almost all the commitment I had. My tweets used to easily have 20–30 likes, today I’m barely reaching 10. My account also used to gain a steady number of followers every month; I haven’t been gaining any for a month now. A two-month break has ruined a year’s work.

6) Keep learning

I’ve recently started reading daily again. I’m also piling on the video content to improve. The difference is massive. Both in terms of idea generation and skill progression. Everything’s moving faster since my learning routine started up again.

I set aside about an hour a day for reading. I can read a book in about a week. When I’m working on simple tasks, I listen to podcasts, videos or audio books, which also help a lot.

I only consume my one hour of reading time, and only one video per day.

Then I let my brain breathe. There’s no point in taking in too much information, you’ll tire yourself out for nothing.

7) Medium community is GOLD

Many of you support me. Comment on each of my posts. Claps. Share. Some of you leave the most encouraging comments since the beginning of this adventure. Medium’s audience is incredibly kind and caring. I see it and I thank you. Medium is one of the best places to make a name for yourself as a writer.

8) Believe in yourself

When I started writing here, I didn’t really have a goal apart from copying and pasting my twitter threads. The goal was to archive them, not to build an audience from it. 6 months later, I rarely post on twitter and medium has become my primary source of audience.

We don’t know where life is leading us. As long as we keep fighting and trying, doors will open. Never give up. Believe in yourself. I never thought I’d have almost 1000 followers after six months and here we are.

As long as you keep trying, you’re just one idea away from changing your life.

You have to believe in yourself because when you start out and have 0 followers, it can be intimidating.

But why can’t you succeed?

As long as you work? Get better every day? Take pleasure in what you do? The only way is up.

When I celebrate 1,000 followers in 6 months, others celebrate 10,000. And others even 100,000 on twitter. Does that make me a bad writer? I’m only concerned with my journey, and other people’s successes don’t reflect a failure on my part.

There’s no point in comparing ourselves. Everyone has their own path. And every day, you have the chance to build your own and write your own legend.

When you’re writing, it’s easy to get anxious if you start comparing yourself.

I was recently reading a novel by a great writer and my hands were shaking as I held the book: “How could I ever be that good? What’s the point of writing if I could never come up with something as good? Why would anyone read me when there are thousands of better writers out there?”

Forget about comparison. There’s nothing good in this route

It’s time for me to close this post. I hope I can celebrate 200 posts with you.

If you like my content, you can subscribe to my newsletter by following this link. It’s dedicated to building your writing career. And if you want to grow on medium and have your first 100 follows, I have a free book here.