3 Reframe Techniques for Newbie Writers to Turn Their Editing Frustrations Into Opportunities for Growth
Editing increases the quality of your article, but it could slow down your publishing frequency
I find it annoying when it takes me longer than 4 days to publish an article.
This goes against my goal of publishing 2 articles a week. That’s the advice I’ve taken from pro writers to get a platform’s algorithm to pay attention to you. But as a beginner, this is a big ask because I’m trying my best to avoid publishing half-baked articles.
My inability to publish more often makes me feel like I’m not cut out to be a writer. It’s frustrating.
But I get it — it’s a long journey.
It’s unfair to expect myself to pump out articles like a pro. The fact that I’m struggling is a sign that I have a lot more to learn. Mastering a skill takes time, thus, it is not smart to expect myself to write like a pro when I’m not. The more I push to publish like a pro, the more I burn myself out. Thus, I need to do the opposite:
Reframe my frustrations into opportunities for growth.
The better I can relieve that frustration, the longer I stay on the (long) journey to become a writing pro.
This is a reminder to practice clarity
Whenever I catch myself editing an article for more than 2 days, I start to regret why I started writing about my idea in the first place.
That’s my trigger to tell myself: I don’t know what (tf) I’m talking about!
But instead of scolding myself for jumping too quickly to write the article, here’s what I tell myself instead:
Ok, let’s acknowledge that I don’t have enough clarity about the idea to write about it. But the idea isn’t wasted. It just means that I need more time to think about it. The idea can go back into the “vault” for further assessment. I may or may not use it, but it’s there as a reminder that I shouldn’t be too quick at writing about something I don’t quite understand.
But let’s keep going anyway and not waste all that time I already spent.
Experimenting with headlines
You know what they say about headlines — if you can’t get readers to click, the quality of your articles won’t matter regardless of how hard you worked on it.
Due to my lack of clarity about the topic, I find it difficult to tie my content to the headline. The iteration cycle starts when a better headline pops up in my head. Then, as I’m updating the content to align with it, a new and better headline pops up. To stop the cycle, I simply stop caring about headline-content alignment.
Now, this is difficult to do because it goes against my goal of publishing “polished” content.
But here’s how I reframe it to make myself feel better:
I’m publishing this article not so much to sell my idea but to test how effective my headline is. I’m also doing this to understand if people really cared about the topic. If they don’t then at least I didn’t spend all that time editing something no one would care about. But if they cared to click, then that’s my signal to write a much better version of this article.
Who says I’m in it for the money?
After going through (the painful process of) editing, and deciding to publish (an “unpolished” article), I then go through the uncomfortable feeling of poor stats!
I care because it’s an indicator of how I’m improving as a writer. While there are nice comments from other people to validate my improvement, it can’t change the fact that the comment is subjective. Stats, however, are an objective measurement of my improvement.
I’d be lying if I said, “Oh I’m not in it for the money” because indirectly, it is about the money.
Your monthly earnings is an objective validation of how the audience of a platform perceives you. This is why I can’t help but feel down when I’m only making cents! It makes me question myself if I really wanted to become a professional writer.
But, at the same time, it’s stupid to quit writing because of it.
Here’s how I reframe that experience to get through it:
Whoa before you start questioning yourself, remember how you’re not doing this for the money. It’s for research! You are here to spread and test those ideas. The goal of this practice is to test how your personal experiences can help other people. The money (while it’s an objective validation) can come after I build a community around the topics I love to talk about. So keep publishing.
The overall intent of reframing is to help me stay on the long journey of becoming a pro writer…at least long enough to see that I’m becoming better than who I was months ago.
It’s a marathon, not a race.
