Writing Habits & Insights
Writing Challenge — Day 30
Welcome to the final day of my writing challenge. (All links at the end) There are many writing contests and I am thankful to everyone who read, responded, engaged and participated in this journey and decided to stop by my tiny little corner of Medium. Shoutout to Niru and Lalitha Brahma for your continued encouragement!
Prompt Topic —
- Have you partcipated in any writing challenges, either on Medium or elsewhere? How was the experience?
- What did you learn?
- What worked? What failed? What was unexpected?
Response:
Overall, the experiment has been a resounding success from my perspective for the following reasons:
- My views doubled — woohoo!
- Had hardly written anything in the past few months, so it was euphoric to know I wrote and posted everyday for 30 days! I missed “posting” on day 21–23 but covered up in the last week.
- 15,000 words!! I was easily able to churn out 500-word posts consistently. There were only 3 days when I fell below the 500 word mark, but even those days I stayed close to 450 words. Plus, there were days when my word count exceeded 700 words per post. This means a 30k word novel during NaNoWriMo or other month is totally doable.
- Planning was key to ensure adherence to my self-imposed goal.
- My IVANA process helped tremendously to speed up writing and streamlining the ideation process. I have a full time day job, and April was hectic with one week caring for a sick toddler and a full week of traveling for a family vacation. Still, I DID IT!! In fact, some new Medium voice typing features helped me become even more productive! Details about the process in link at end.
- I barely made a dollar or two in the first quarter, mainly because I had posted nothing new and the algorithms like recency of content. This month I’ve already recovered my Medium membership amounts and still 2 days to go. The money is still peanuts but it is good validation for something I am doing for pure joy!
- I like knowing that I am building a strong daily habit. This is foundational for “Oak tree habits” that is indirectly beneficial in other facets of my life.
- It was wonderful gaining two dozen new followers. I have done zero marketing so it is good to know Medium likes my content (somewhat) and readers are organically discovering my content and choosing to follow me.
- Longer posts did much better, especially those with a leadership tilt. Former is surprising because people usually skim ahead and prefer shortform content. Latter makes sense because I rank high for the “leadership development” keywords and have even authored a book on it. I assume many people follow me to get content related to this topic.
What is next?
Overall, this 30-day challenge has doubled my motivation to write more frequently. I don’t feel I will be able to sustain a daily cadence in the future. However, weekly or even twice a week seems very doable. The future will tell.
I loved working on this challenge. And you?
Links:
April Writing Challenge Rules and Details:
IVANA method of writing to turbocharge your writing efficiency:
