How Spirit Killing Bureaucratic Writing Made Me Successful

Templating the template to success

Photo by Florencia Viadana on Unsplash

When I found Medium in May 2020, I immediately saw the opportunity. To improve my storytelling technique, what better place to do that than in a live environment with immediate feedback?

As a nameless, faceless bureaucrat, my creativity was on life support. Years of stiff and formal writing had destroyed my spirit, and I needed to get it back.

Before I could do that, I had to figure Medium out. I became obsessed with reading ‘how-to-write on Medium’ stories, devouring them a dozen a day before jumping in.

I didn’t start creating much content until late August 2020. I’d been finishing my master’s degree and couldn’t afford the distraction. So it surprised me to see I earned $103 in September. I then more than doubled that in October and crossed November’s $100 threshold on the 15th.

Screen-cap of my MPP payout, as of November 24th, 2020. I ended the month at $203.30. I left the name of the one article in at the bottom so you could confirm this is from me (photo: author).

I did this by doing three things:

• Building and Following a Writing Template. The steps of which have always been key to my success and are the focus of this article.
• Content and Volume. The…