Dec 1, 2022
This Writer Worked 1720 Unpaid Hours On His Newsletter Before He Made Any Money Writing
The struggles of being a creator
Writing online is easy. You only have to think of a few ideas, plan your content, write, edit, and publish. But, what’s not easy is to do it consistently. Writers who can produce content with consistency become successful at writing.
New writers dream of making 6-figure incomes from writing. But, when reality hits, and they realize how much hard work it takes to achieve that, most of them give up.
I’ve been writing online for more than two years. I have explored many platforms and made a decent income from writing. Even though I love writing, I also hate it because it’s a real challenge to be consistent.
Jack Raines recently shared a piece in his newsletter, Young Money, called The Struggles of Being a Creator. His content resonated with my story with online writing.
He discusses how he got into online writing and the initial challenges he faced. Although he makes a nice income now from his newsletter, he says it took him 90 posts and 1720 hours of work before he started making any money.
Jack says that creators don’t really get off days like in 9–5 jobs. Instead, we are constantly thinking about the next piece of content. Further, he says writing is the last thing he wants to do on a Monday morning. But still, he motivates himself to keep going.
“So yeah, being a creator kinda sucks sometimes. But so does being an accountant, a chef, a lawyer, a pilot, a financial advisor, a football coach, a banker, or a teacher. The key isn’t finding a career that never sucks. The key is finding the suck that you are willing to accept.”
Jack’s story taught me that you must overcome resistance and write even when you don’t feel like doing it.
As I said before, only those writers who are consistent become successful. Yet, consistency is the hardest part to overcome. It’s the biggest resistance to creative work.
But if you can overcome that and write even when you don’t feel like it, you excel at your work.
In one of my recent stories, I talked about how you should write even when you are not inspired. If you take action (write) instead of waiting for inspiration, you can easily overcome the battle of consistency.
The good part, however, is that if you write even when you aren’t inspired, you will eventually find the motivation or inspiration to continue doing it.
Mark Manson calls this the ‘do something principle.
Writing is not the hard part.
Most new writers think writing is hard. That’s not true. Writing is easy. What’s hard is sitting down to write. As Stephen Pressfield shares in his book, The War of Art:
“There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.”
Let’s take another example. We all know that exercise is good for health. So, it’s a good choice to go to the gym and work out for 30–60 minutes daily.
Yet, why do the majority of people don’t do it? It’s because exercising is not the hard part. What’s hard is motivating yourself to go to the gym.
As Woody Allen said:
“Eighty percent of success is showing up.”
If you just show up, you have conquered the difficult part. Now, all you have to do is get to work.
Show up consistently, and you will conquer your battle.
Thank you for reading.
If you like my work, buy me a coffee.
If you want to learn more about online writing and get better at it, this e-book is for you.
