How I Got Into Writing
Introducing my background story, what’s yours?
I was a young boy just in our limited country with only 4 TV channels. On one of these channels, I aired StarGate. To some just a dust of ordinary sci-fi. To me, an escape from the day starts and tribulations of life. I had divorced parents, my father wasn’t exactly a man of stability, and when he promised something, he regularly failed to deliver, but I always hoped it would be different at the time.
I told myself that one day I would love to take the cool trips they had in Stargate, whether travelling between worlds or using groundbreaking technology that only some can access. As time passed, I graduated from university with a master's degree.
I didn’t go any further because further study purely for the degree didn’t make sense to me, and I started to focus more on my commercial projects. My career as a freelancer began.
Thanks to the fact that I want to do work that interests me and that I enjoy, I get to do very interesting projects. The only thing I regret is the NDAs because if I didn’t have them, I could share my enthusiasm with you when I get my hands on things that some people can only dream about.
Writing playfully
In May 2019, I decided to take my writing further. I chose the web app Writing Playfully to do so, where I also got a certificate confirming that I can write at some speed, well it wasn’t purely a certificate chase, but after writing a few theses and some term papers at university, the thought of writing a book one day crossed my mind.
Well, when I’ve been writing on Medium, I’ve written over 527k words up to April 8, 2023. The average 100-page book is 50k words, so I may have written a few books, which is funny.
YouTube
The writing wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do, though, I would have loved to make YouTube videos, but due to the fear of imperfection, every video that has gone out so far has been somehow messed up, as my brain freezes up at that point and won’t cooperate with me on my YouTube career, so I’ve settled into the shadows of writing, as anyway if you want to make a nice video then the paper is needed too.
When you want to do something, you find a “role model” In my case. I came across a guy who was starting with YouTube. He wanted to do videos around productivity, which completely differed from what I wanted to dedicate content to. Still, I liked his work, so I started following him, but so far, no subscriptions.
Based on what I’ve read, I'm approaching this because I understand that a subscriber who doesn’t subscribe to your content is ultimately an anchor since you need active people. This guy continued with his activity, and at his, I guess, tenth video at a time, he pulled up a review on the headphones I also bought, the Sony WH-1000XM3.
It may seem comical today, but this guy was Mark Ellis. In the 2+ years I’ve been following him, he has released 474 videos to date (well, at least the public ones) and reached the great achievement of 100k subscribers on YouTube.
The funny thing is that we’ve been on this imaginary journey together almost since the beginning is probably unknown to Mark, as I’m more of a silent follower who doesn’t like everything and writes comments rather less.
The proof of our long journey together is that I have access to the community discord “for free” without having to be a Patreon as a thank you for being one of the early members.
How did I get into writing?
Well, it wasn’t other than through reading, I got into the medium platform together with, I think, the 4th video Mark released where he described the platform he makes money writing on. That was kind of the first targeted encounter with the medium.
I avoided it for a long time, but we would occasionally hang out together while reading technical articles that seemed to be written a bit better behind the paywall, and that was one of the turning points when I paid for membership through Mark’s creator support link at the end of September 2021, because who else to support but someone you’ve been on a journey with for almost two years.
After paying for the membership, I got unlimited access to articles on Medium and started devouring the content there. The 15th of January 2022 came, so why not try it and start writing?
My journey was thorny for the first few months. I had very poor numbers, and it was demotivating. Still, eventually, I bit the bullet, increased my activity and created a lovely hobby to torment my haters and trolls and enrich my readers. And if I have succeeded in this, anyone can because I come from a small village in the middle of nowhere.
What helped me in my writing?
During my journey on Medium, I read a lot of paid ebooks and a few books about writing and theoretically countless articles on Medium about how to write. Why did I put the time and money into it?
The reason is simple: I wanted to succeed, and the best cornerstone to success was Mark’s eBook, which was tailored to me as Mark writes about similar topics to me, or I write about similar topics to Mark. It’s more apt when Mark started writing earlier.
Another building block was my single-mindedness, so even when most people give up, I didn’t give up and persevered. That’s what you can’t be afraid of in your writing.
If you want to succeed, you must do something long enough, and people will eventually notice your work/effort. I’m proof that I currently have 1000+ followers. Thank you for the vote of confidence, and I look forward to our next journey together.
Who do I write my articles for?
I’m trying to bring great tech stuff and premium brand products closer to regular people, as I’m not rich enough to afford cheap stuff, and I believe I’m not alone. My articles are mostly about technology, the future, innovation, apple and digital life topics. I look at things differently, and I understand that some may not like it, but that’s about it.
For now, I still write for fun, not for money. It’s just an excellent benefit for buying toys I can write about. Thanks to writing, I have improved my expressive skills.
I can better define problems and, at the same time, spend less time thinking of solutions as everything fits together better. Writing is a great creative activity where you can unexpectedly clear your head.
Conclusion
I am writing this article as a sort of background to my story. I have kept a lot of things from you because you probably don’t want to read about how my father wanted to rob my girlfriend and me of over 250k, yes this happened to me, but I am over it, and I take it that this man is no longer in our lives.
But unfortunately, it’s true. Writing has helped me with one thing I thought I had forgotten. I was named, rejoicing in the little things because nothing pleases you more than a nice comment on an article you’ve given care to.
Yes, my English is still not perfect, well that was one of the main reasons I started writing because I wanted to improve my English. If you decide to join Mark’s Medium Academy next season, I’d love to see you there because it’s creating a community of equally passionate people.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article! If you enjoyed it, I appreciate your support through likes 👏🏻 and comments 💬. And if you want more content like this, don’t forget to follow me! Cheers 😊👌👋
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