Summary

The author shares their journey from struggling to write a single article to becoming a prolific writer who writes daily, emphasizing the importance of consistency and authenticity in improving writing skills and achieving success.

Abstract

The author began their blogging journey with a sports blog, facing initial difficulties in writing consistently due to procrastination and the learning curve of SEO. Despite early frustrations with monetization, they transitioned to freelance writing and SEO consulting, eventually finding success through daily writing and publishing on Medium. The transformation came from shifting focus from monetary gain to viewing writing as a duty, which led to increased engagement and writing opportunities. The author advocates for writing about personal knowledge and experiences, which not only speeds up the writing process but also makes the content more genuine and valuable to readers.

Opinions

Writing every day is challenging but essential for improvement and success in writing.
Early blogging attempts were hindered by the author's inability to write consistently and effectively.
Monetization of the author's initial blog was minimal, leading to frustration and a shift in strategy.
The author found greater success and satisfaction in freelance writing and SEO consulting.
Writing for Medium, with its editorial guidelines and community feedback, significantly improved the author's writing skills.
The author emphasizes the importance of writing about topics one is knowledgeable and passionate about.
Writing should be seen as a daily duty, which over time becomes easier and more rewarding.
The transition from writing abstract pieces to content that is helpful and engaging to readers was a key factor in the author's increased engagement and writing opportunities.

Writing Every Day Gets Easier With This Mind Trick

Cheers to my 100th article on Medium

Photo by 🇨🇭 Claudio Schwarz | @purzlbaum on Unsplash

I remember when I started my sports blog last year. I started writing the first blogposts around 29th December 2018, and I completed the blog and published it on 2nd January 2019.

The article was about 1500 words long, and It took me almost five days. Why? I couldn’t sit down for long to write an article, and it took me forever to finish the piece.

If I write for an hour, it would feel like I had been sitting down for days. So, I stretched it out and kept on procrastinating. It was my first taste of blogging.

I was learning SEO. So as I took the course, I would write the article alongside, so that’s why I took so long — I’m not that much of a procrastinator.

Afterwards, I tried to write a blog post everyday. I would go to a popular soccer blog and get news updates — rewrite it and post. Those usually took me about 3–4hours on average to write and edit it.

I wasn’t so good then, but I just kept going because I had read about people that were making loads of money from blogging, and I wanted a taste of the ‘blogging money’ everyone seemed to be so excited about.

I signed up for Google Adsense so that I could get money from PPC ads; I used SEO strategies; I was growing an email list and signed up for affiliate programs.

Months passed, and I was still not getting any money — my Adsense balance was about $0.5 after months of trying — I was getting frustrated because that’s not what I was promised. That was not the dream that they sold me on the hundreds of blog posts I had read.

I was handling the website and using Instagram to drive traffic to the website. But after some time, I quit the blog and just turned it into a mini-blog and focused on Instagram — it was less stressful, and I started doing it for fun, and not for the money anymore.

And that’s where things changed.

I went into freelancing with my skill in SEO, and I went directly to Upwork because, again, I heard it was an easy way to get freelancing writing gigs.

Let me not bore you with the details. You can read this article to find out what happened later — Pardon my efforts to create suspense.

So back to the topic — how to make writing every day easier.

Writing every day is in no way easy for someone whose not used to it. You would struggle, but you have to fight through it.

I started seeing the real writing money when I started writing content every day in my name and publishing every other day — I don’t publish every day, because I like to give my drafts a day or two before I edit — I use that time to shift from my writer self to the editor self.

If I write, edit, and publish the same moment, the result would be horrible because you would be tired and miss some things. Poorly written content is not good for anyone.

I would have to be honest; writing on Medium improved my writing. From the rejections by Editors in big Publications to the writing style guides, you have to follow to get your article accepted by these big publications.

You wouldn’t want to get rejected because it hurts like mad, so you would try to make each article better than the previous one.

If you read frequently here, you would see that people like Ayodeji Awosika, Tim Denning, Nicholas Goke, and many others, talk about how you should write every day. Every writer who has achieved a certain amount of success has one advice in common — Write Every day.

I didn’t think this was possible because I thought I wouldn’t have the time. Juggling my freelance work, school, my Xbox, my life — there wasn’t much space for writing.

It felt like a big ask. I started slowly — From writing my thoughts on my phone because I didn’t believe anyone wanted to read what I had to say, to write writing short pieces like this, and this, and yeah, this.

Every new writer goes through the phase where they write about life, abstract things, and things nobody cares about. Some remain in that phase, but when they get serious about making money from writing, they change their approach

If you scroll down to my earlier articles, you would see when I made the transition. I started to write about topics that interested people and could really help them — and my engagement increased — and more people started reaching out to me for writing Gigs.

I started to understand.

So I got encouraged and started writing every day. It wasn’t easy at first because of the time it took me to complete one article — when I wanted to write, I would research and read something about Marketing, Entrepreneurship, startup, etc. Because that’s what I thought people wanted.

So I kept going.

I would spend time researching before I found the right topic for the day. Some days it would get very frustrating, and I wouldn’t even know what to write. So I would just write what I felt — I would write like I was talking to a friend — unplanned but engaging and helpful.

That’s when another bulb lit in my head.

I didn’t have to write on something I didn’t know much about, I would write the first thing that comes to my head, that is helpful, and gather points from there.

This made my writing faster and more valuable because it felt like I was giving out a piece of myself instead of rewriting something from the internet.

As I write, I still do some research to throw more light to a point. I stopped looking at the word count every other minute. I just wrote and wrote and stopped when I had passed across my point. Sometimes I would check, and I’m already passed 1000 words already — writing became fluid

Final Note

If you’re still contemplating on what to write, just start where you are — Write about your thoughts, go through blogposts, read books — just make sure you write every day.

I saw the “write everyday advice countless times. I knew it makes you a better writer, but I didn’t know how, but now I do.

I promised you a mindset trick in the topic sentence. So here it is — Don’t think about what to write, or the money that comes from the writing — although it comes in the package. Instead, see writing every day as your duty.

Have the mindset that your job is to turn on your computer every day and write — with time, It would become easy.