WRITING

The Polarity of Writing in Quantity Vs Quality

A thousand articles or few masterpieces? Market your content or not?

When you roam around Medium, I am confident that you probably have encountered two perspectives on the strategies to make it to the platform.

There is so much Medium advice written every day after all. Some would say that the key ingredient for success is just writing daily. Some would also say that quality matters most.

And both sides have very valid points. For me though, it's not one or the other.

It’s both.

I myself have battled with this dilemma as my philosophy in writing is that it is a personal expression, a place where I vent, a safe place for emotional release. Its purpose is fulfilled when I clear my head in return and if my emotions are expressed in the paper. Believe it or not, I find it comforting that I can put my overthinking in writing than taking that anger, frustration, or sadness to others.

Writing is first and foremost, therapy for me.

So when I hit publish, I think, if just one person finds anything helpful, then I’m good with it. I am perfectly fine just letting it go in the wild and releasing it in the ether. Just see what happens. I am not even marketing my work because I don’t have social media channels that I cultivate.

But you know, I think all writers here aren’t clueless or naive of the trade that’s happening. Although I myself deny it, we all, at the back of our minds want to succeed in Medium.

So, is the secret sauce just writing daily? Or it is about creating the ultimate masterpiece that will most likely be shared and reshared?

Writing in Quantity

I think writing for quantity helps us practice our writing muscles. It is a mental exercise to put your thoughts on paper, structure it, and do it fast. It takes constant practice. I think that it is important first to hone that skill of churning out content and allowing yourself to explore your voice, what works, and what your identity is. It takes exploration and exploring takes repetition and time.

For some people, writing is second nature. I am not that lucky to be in that boat so what we lack in nature, we make up for nurturing what we do have. Make freakin’ lemonade out of lemons. I am sure all of us have something to start and work with. I don’t believe that we are a blank slate. We have a story, we have a perspective.

Or perhaps it is not even about being gifted, if we want to master a skill, we just have to put in the hours. For people who always have the excuse in everything, give me a break. We can all do it if we want to. It’s just a question of how much we really want a thing to happen. Why do you think people say manifestation is powerful? Of course, you are repeating a mantra to yourself every single day! When you do, you create a system, you strategize on how to achieve that something or that state. That’s all you think about, you plan around it, and you create actions that will lead you to it. “Success” is inevitable that way.

I have taken the challenge to write at least a thousand words every day and it has been an amazing journey so far. Not all of the things I write make it to Medium but again, just the act of putting your thoughts in the paper is worth it.

Accept that it is going to be slow

Your growth on a platform when starting out is gonna be a long-winded road but the race is not only for the fast but also to the slow and steady. Notice how I said that. When you are a tortoise, accept that fact and let the hare go to the finish line first. Why are there hares? Those are the people that have worked their asses off to gain their existing following.

I saw a video on YouTube by Shelby Church talking about her earnings and making money on Medium and yeah, it only took her less than a month to get her article on go viral. “This Is How Much YouTube Paid Me for My 1,000,000 Viewed Video” has 46,000 claps as of the time of this writing. Now, many people in the comments section are a bit bitter by it because “she’s only successful because of her YouTube channel”. Damn right, she is! And she has every right to reap the rewards of her hard work in gaining subscribers in her channel. She’s been consistently putting out content for a decade, what have we done? Nobody is stopping anyone to create content in YouTube too. In fact, I will be linking her profile here too, just to help her out more.

Yes, it's unfair. But life is about finding your leverage. If you don’t have it, build it. How to start? By writing in quantity. Practicing and honing the craft.

Are you even able to write daily? That’s the real question I ask myself every day too. Before I complain about other people’s success, I should probably take a look at my process and the way I devote myself to the craft.

Decrease friction

What is friction? James Clear’s Atomic Habits posit that the reason why we can't do the things we want to do or be successful in forming habits that we want to stick to is that our environment is not optimally designed to it. We cannot rely on “self-control” and “self-discipline”. We have to design our environment to fit the routine that we want to adapt to.

So, what stops me from writing daily in Medium? One thing I remember is the fact that I am not used to writing on the platform’s editor. I write on another app and I used to just copy and paste. I think that process makes my brain think that ‘ah, too much work’, so to decrease friction, I forced myself to write on Medium’s editor and bookmarked it on my browser.

Dog-ear those ideas! Whenever I stumble upon good topics, I always write it down directly on the Title line so that way I could not forget it and I could always return to the idea whenever I view Your Stories. Turns out, I liked the editor- it's clean and very minimal. Small changes like that created a system to encourage me to write.

So ask yourself now, what’s your friction?

Let’s write in quantity, they don’t have to be perfect. Notice how its not “for quantity” but “in quantity”. Its practice. Learn to capture your ideas and package them. Fast.

Writing with Quality

I think it wouldn’t hurt that while we are writing in quantity, we should also be writing with quality. Nothing is stopping us to do both. I’ll be honest though, some of the things I published are not even up to par to my personal standards. But I didn’t really care. Because again, I have a bias or am really leaning towards writing for the sake of writing.

It is therapy for me.

Treat writing as an art

Let’s just say in the name of personal development and growth, I am willing to step out of my comfort zone and try to put more thought into what I put out. I think my problem was not treating writing as a form of art. Like art, art. The craft deserves more respect from me. Don’t worry, I am changing the way I view it now.

If we want to be an artist, we want to acknowledge our weakness, take feedback, and hone our craft for the better. That means actively going our way to find flaws not only in our writing but taking a look at our overall process from ideation to publishing.

But first, how do we write with quality? One factor pointed out by an amazing article by Sam Altman in The Only Way to Grow Huge:

“… if you want to be a great company someday, you have to eventually build something so good that people will recommend it to their friends-in fact, so good that they want to be the first one to recommend it to their friends for the implied good taste. No growth hack, brilliant marketing idea, or sales team can save you long term if you don’t have a sufficiently good product.”

Our product is content. There is no workaround with creating quality pieces, we can fill our process with growth hacking strategies but at the end of the day, if the content is subpar, it wouldn’t catch on. It cannot be shared by others.

Let it be so good that people will not hesitate or it's almost a no brainer to reshare it. That’s just a single metric, but it can be a good guide when we try to produce that masterpiece.

But remember, even masterpieces don’t catch on. You cannot guarantee virality. But to that, a healthy mindset on why write in the first place should anchor us to reality. We write for our own satisfaction first. At least that’s what I tell myself.

Marketing your content

I have no problem promoting other people’s products and services but when it comes to my own work, I have this icky feeling to-just not do that. Before I was into digital marketing and writing, I am an engineer. I work in an office and I guess the culture and mindset are just, different. My work ethic has always been, ‘Let your work speak for you. You don’t have to promote it.’

And I still believe that. To a certain extent.

But the online game is unfortunately not an office. If it is one’s goal to be noticed, one should put oneself out there.

And I am slowly warming up to that idea. I tell myself, “baby steps”. But that’s just me. Anyone who has the leverage of existing followers should totally dive into it. Market and show your work.

The takeaway

So in conclusion, I think what we could take away is:

1. We should constantly hone and master our writing skills and the subskill it requires like researching, structure, and formatting by writing daily or in a committed repeated timeframe. That way we develop the speed and quantity is just a byproduct of that increased rate to produce content.
2. Quality follows as we iterate to better our output. Take feedback, rinse, and repeat. There is no way to go, these concepts work hand in hand together.
3. Market your work too, as the goal is virality. Leverage current network and social media following if you have any.
4. Keep a grounded view that writing is for the artist’s satisfaction first, and I think with humility and respect for the art of writing, maybe, though nothing is owed, the universe will align the events to our favor or reward us for our efforts. Money and validation are again, just a byproduct of the good work and commitment that put into our craft.

Turn Blogging Into a Career.