Nov 28, 2022
Write 3 Articles a Week — A Guide For New Writers
Use the tricks I used when I started and stay consistent for the last year.
When you write online, the initial days are pretty hard. We all lack one thing and that is consistency. In the beginning, we all have to focus on quantity to feed the algorithm (the more you feed it, the more likely you become to get noticed). And for that consistency is so important. Posting once a month is not going to do any good and you can not expect to see any results from your work. No matter what the platform is — whether it is Medium, LinkedIn, or Twitter; uploading content at least 3 times a week is a must. Anything less than that is not recommended for a visible outcome.
When I started my journey here on Medium, I also lacked showing up daily. To cut that out I have tried various methods and posting routines until I finally figured out a way to stay consistent. So, in this article, I am going to share with you tips on how you can find consistency with your online writing journey and post at least 3 times a week without fail.
The definition of consistency varies from person to person. Because of that, I would suggest using this article just for taking ideas. No need to blindly follow what I did. You can try out other ways too, to figure out what works best for you.
1. Setting a plan
We humans work best under a deadline or better let’s say a plan. What I meant here is that if you set yourself a plan and give a deadline to meet, you have no chance to be lazy. You have to finish the task anyway. That is what I used in my starting days when I started writing here. Although now I do not have a fixed writing routine nowadays; before it was more of a fixed date to finish writing for the upcoming week.
I used to write in advance means — I used to have 2 weeks of content pre-written. My writing days were Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday (sometimes I used to write 2 blogs a day on weekends). On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I used to publish articles.
In your case, you can do the same. Make a weekly to-do list of writing content. Set a mind that — no matter what happens you will finish writing on the allocated day.
2. Initially, starting with small articles
Even though I have officially touched my 1-year mark on Medium this October still I sometimes struggle to put up 1500+ word articles. Most o my articles are around 900–1000 words long. When you occasionally write articles this long, it may not seem long enough, but putting these long articles every week is no joke (you can not just stretch a 5-word line to 20 words for the sake of making it lengthy). It is not something that I achieved overnight. A year of constant putting up content bring me here.
But when I started off my journey my focus was to just write. The length was not a concern for me. Because of that, most of the content I used to publish here was 400–500 words long.
3. Finding ideas from every possible thing
Finding ideas to write is the main barrier to consistency. And when you are just starting off this may seem a major issue. But The thing is that there is nothing new in it. We all face this initially. Even when I started writing on Medium, I used to lack ideas for my blogs; for which sometimes I used to copy ideas from other writers (only ideas not their writing, btw). But as time went on and I kept producing more content my mind started expanding. I started finding ideas from every content I consumed from others. This is such an ability that we have to work on. There is nothing god gifted in it. Just changing the way you are seeing others' work/things (along with practice) can help you build this ability.
Initially, the ideas you come up with may not excite your audience or readers. But over time the more you understand what your audience wants the better you will get at coming up with attractive ideas.
As a suggestion, I would highly recommend taking ideas from YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, and also from Medium. All of these are gold mines.
Bonus
As a writer starting to write an article is the hardest part. This is why you often heard people saying the first paragraph is the hardest to write. It is not because the first few lines will decide whether your reader will read it or not, but also because you have to convince your messy mind to focus on one particular task.
That is why I always suggest starting anyway. It does not matter how good you are writing or how many grammatical mistakes you are making. If you just stop procrastinating and put your mind t writing, you will eventually get in a flow. And that is what makes you finish a whole article without a break.
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