I never thought I’d be able to say this but…
I’ve written one story on Medium for 365 days straight
I’ve grown 100 Naked Words to 34,000+ followers in the process.
One year ago, I was stuck… stuck in a job that didn’t light the fire. I wanted to do something that mattered. I didn’t know what that was yet.
I’ve been a serial dabbler, jumping from this to that but never really committing to anything. My flavor of the month this time last year was an e-magazine that I decided to start on a whim. I managed to get a few dozen paying subscribers for it, but I quickly burned out.
Feeling lost, I remember scrolling through Medium when I found a post from Jonas Ellison. He was celebrating his first year of writing every day in his publication, Higher Thoughts.
As I read through his milestone post, something inside me told me to do what he did and — on a whim — I decided from that day to also write every day.
Here is the post that I wrote:
I didn’t know what I was doing and despite letting old habits die hard and starting something impulsively again, something magical happened this time round: I didn’t quit.
I traveled to China to be with family and even with the Great Firewall, I found ways to connect to Medium and wrote. I wrote on weekends too.
To make it easier for myself, I queued up stories to be automatically published at 10 pm every day, forcing me to write something otherwise a blank story would be posted, something I couldn’t accept.
I wrote first thing in the morning once I got to work. It was my morning ritual that set me up for success for the rest of the day.
I made it a priority and committed.
At that point in time, I had been learning French on Duolingo and had become addicted to microhabits. I was lazy as all hell and knew that if I tried to write 500+ word monologues, I would burn out.
So I did what I could. I only allowed myself to write 100 words a day. Now, I obviously didn’t stick to this word limit strictly. I went over almost every time. But by telling myself that I was not allowed to write any more than 100 words every day, I wrote more.
But by telling myself that I was not allowed to write any more than 100 words every day, I wrote more.
So it was just me writing these little, random, pointless, vulnerable mini-blog entries. It was me, sitting on a stool in the middle of the room, talking about things that mattered to me.
The door to the room was open and I could see people outside, walking by. Some people walked past, then quickly came back. They heard something that caught their attention.
Tentatively, they came into the room, standing against the wall furthest from me. I looked up from my ramblings, half-smiled at them, and kept rambling.
After a month, I had 100 subscribers. Here’s the Letter I wrote to everyone to thank them for their support of my little project.
Around this time, I also started accepted writers. I toyed with the idea, thinking that maybe I’d open it up for everyone once I had more subscribers. But something in me nudged me in the direction of allowing interested people early access.
Gail Boenning was my first writer. I’m proud that she was my first writer. I honestly couldn’t have had a better first writer. She embraced the idea from the get go and wrote. And wrote and wrote and wrote.
And suddenly, the room wasn’t so empty anymore. It wasn’t just my voice echoing around the chamber. Gail’s voice was there. Then more people started coming into the room — in droves. A few of these people became writers too.
I watched as the months ticked over. Followers could steadily come in and for a period of time, I was obsessed with numbers. I would set goals to hit for the number of followers I wanted by the end of a month and feel down if I didn’t reach them.
Then I calmed down. I had an epiphany: I couldn’t control who followed the publication and who didn’t. All I could control was how vulnerable I was when I wrote.
All I could control was how vulnerable I was when I wrote.
That determined how many people would react to my stories and decide to follow the publication.
It might seem easy for me to write this, but there were points where I wondered what the point of it all was. Why was I writing? Who cared whether I wrote or not?
It was the combination of a well set habit that I’d already done for hundreds of days, as well as people who emailed and commented, thanking me for maintaining the publication that carried me across the line. Without them, you wouldn’t be reading this today.
Because I didn’t quit, the publication now receives:
From about half an hour a day every day for a year, I am now able to impact tens of thousands of people a month. I never set out to do that, but I’m content that something beautiful came out of what initially was an impulsive act borne out of frustration.
Three little tips to change your life
There is so much great advice out there that I hope my tips here don’t take anything away from them. These three lessons are what I learned from coming out the other side of writing every day for an entire year.
1. Make it laughably small — you won’t be laughing soon
This tip is the most important. I wanted to change but I was sick of giving up all the time. So I asked myself:
What was the one thing I could do where it was virtually impossible for me to fail?
It was writing, specifically writing a tiny amount. I’m a prolific writer, but life gets busy. So I thought, “what if I wrote a sentence a day? Nope, too easy.” That was laughable, but I wanted to make it a tiny bit more challenging. That’s how I settled on 100 words a day.
It was still pretty laughable… for the first month or so. Then in the middle period, it started getting tough. Like any writer, I was running out of things to write about. I had days where I had no motivation. I considered giving up several times.
But I didn’t.
I kept going through sheer force of will and now today, you’re reading this. So no matter whether it’s writing, exercise or something else, make your daily goal laughably small. You will grow, you will change and what you thought once was too easy for you, you will come to respect.
2. Embrace the down times — that’s when you grow the most
Only because I wrote every day doesn’t make me a better writer than you. Most days I produced some pretty questionable prose. I would look at the picture I randomly chose to accompany the day’s piece and would aim to extract some meaning and inspiration out of it.
The first down time, I just felt crappy. I think I was about five months in. The publication was growing OK, but I thought to myself: “why the hell am I doing this?”
“Why the hell am I doing this?”
I didn’t have the answers, but my habit just kept me going. Now after a year, I can’t tell you the answer. Truth is, I don’t know why I’m writing every day. I don’t know why I’m so committed to this publication. But sometimes, something deeper calls you and you just do it.
You don’t have to logically explain everything. Higher callings happen all the time and while I don’t think this publication is an act of God, I’ve since learnt that I just have to be patient and see where it takes me.
See, that’s the growth talking.
3. The work is always worth it.
People from all around the world are finding 100 Naked Words and being inspired by the vulnerability of the stories they read there. Some are throwing their hat in the ring and laying themselves bare for everyone to see, empowering themselves in the process.
All the while their mediocre writing is gradually becoming something they can be proud of.
There’s no way to suddenly improve how you write over night. It’s a process you have to commit to. Once you get over the fear of laying yourself bare, you have the challenge of staying committed.
When you get over that challenge, you’re so much wiser. You’re able to look back a year from the current day to the day you started and see how you wrote back then to how you write now. The words might seem the same, but the writer is different.
The words might seem the same, but the writer is different.
For me the greatest fear is looking back and finding I’m the same person. By writing in this publication, I don’t have that fear any more.
Slowly but surely, I’m growing — and you will too.
