3 Strategies that Helped Me Become a Better Writer
Gleaned from personal reflections on my 5-month writing journey
I haven’t held a traditional 9–5 job in five months, yet I have grown more over these past five months than I was capable of growing in a year while working at my last job.
While I gained a number of professional skills in my last role, my time was limited with how much I could grow my career path outside of work. Or rather, I chose to rest, have a social life, and get chores done instead of actively pursuing career advancement.
I was incrementally moving up in my organization, but at the same time, learning it was not the direction that I wanted to continue pursuing, which meant I felt stuck.
Thanks to the pandemic, this prolonged stretch of unemployment has allowed me to make the leap from my working a day job that wasn’t aligned with my long-term career goals, to exploring career options in more non-traditional spaces.
Below, I have outlined three intentional steps I have taken over the last five months to transition from my full-time job in the non-profit field to a writing career.
I Start Writing. Then I Shared It Online.
I began by writing short blog posts and sharing them on Medium.
At the time, I was not aware of the community aspect of Medium. I viewed it similarly to websites such as Thought Catalog or Elephant Journal, which I had consumed content from for years, but had never built a relationship with any of the writers. Granted, I never attempted to write for either of those sites. To write for them, you had to write a pitch, which would either be accepted or rejected by the editors.
As a new writer, I viewed this as a significant barrier to entry. I didn’t know how to write a pitch. I assumed that my lack of experience writing pitches would mean that the first time I tried submitting one, it would be rejected. It’s true that the first pitch I wrote was terrible. But I used my fear of rejection as an excuse to give up before even trying.
The best part about Medium is that there are no barriers to entry. You can write about anything, publish it through the Medium Partnership Program and it’s eligible to earn money.
Yes, there’s a chance that no one may read it. But if you love writing and just one person reads it, that is enough incentive to keep going.
Before December 2020, I self-published two stories on Medium. The stories just sat there because I was too afraid to share them with my inner circle. But in December, I set the goal of writing one story per week for one year. I knew that with putting that much work in, I wanted my stories to be read, and the only way to make that happen was by sharing them with my circle. Sharing my writing online with my family and friends was the most challenging part, as it meant exposing a part of me that they hadn’t seen before and putting myself in a position where I could be judged.
Yet, to become a writer, to really, truly be a writer, there was no way around it.
I wrote a story within an hour, took another hour to edit and add a photo from my camera roll, then took a deep breath and shared it on LinkedIn. I had never shared anything so personal on LinkedIn before, but I knew it was what I had to do.
The next day, I just about fell out of my chair when I saw that my article had been viewed 27 times, and then watched in amazement as the views went on to accumulate 71 by the end of the week. With the independent blogs I had poured hours into growing up, I received no more views than I could count on one hand.
The positive reception of this first post was confirmation that I had a story to tell and there was an audience interested in reading it.
I Invested in Two Reasonably-Priced Online Courses
I knew I had a lot to learn. I wasn’t ready for the commitment of jumping back into formal education beyond my bachelor’s degree, so I instead opted to take advantage of courses I found online.
I happened to receive a catalog from the local community college about continuing education courses. On the front, in all caps, it read “GET PAID TO WRITE.”
It felt like a sign. I opened up the catalog to find that there was a three-week course taught over Zoom about charting a course to fulfill your writing dreams. The cost? Only $79.00.
I mulled the idea over for a day or two, then decided I had to sign up. That course laid the foundation for me to explore the potential avenues I could follow to make a living as a writer. It inspired me to believe in myself and encouraged me to consider topics that I could potentially write about. I wrote “6 Steps to Launch Your Writing Career,” based on Don Sturgill’s class and the biggest takeaways I walked away with from that course.
Once I completed that course, I opted for a course that was more Medium-focused, so that I could work on practically improving my writing skills. I found Anangsha Alammyan’s course, Project Medium priced at $100.00 for the first tier.
Through instructional YouTube videos, weekly coaching calls, personal editing on my stories, and a supportive group chat on Slack, her course has guided me through practical steps to challenge myself, apply to Medium-partnered publications, and as a result, increase exposure for my Medium stories.
These two courses have provided me with guidance and support throughout the first five months of my writing journey. As I near the end of Anangsha’s course, there is no doubt I’ll continue to seek out further online educational opportunities. Perhaps I may dive into a Coursera or Udemy course next.
I Used Social Media to Network with Other Writers
As a writer, there is no better feeling than receiving a comment on a piece of writing that says, “Me too!”
As I continue to develop my craft, I hope to continue to dig deeper and express my ideas in a way that others can relate to.
The transparency of the first story I wrote hit a cord in a way that I had never before achieved with a blog. As someone who had never before shared their innermost thoughts online, it was a little overwhelming.
But I was also touched. And I knew it was a sign I was headed in the right direction. The two encouraging comments I received on LinkedIn meant the world to me.
Looking back, the response I received to the blog I wrote in December doesn’t seem like much. What made it seem monumental at the time, was that I had never before been brave enough to share one of my stories so publicly.
I had no idea what to expect. I thought it would perform similarly to my independent blog posts from high school and college — that I would see maybe 5 views the first day.
Overnight, it felt that I had somehow been inducted into the creator economy.
At the same time I promoted my story on LinkedIn, I also created an Instagram account to share all of my stories. For the very first time, other creators were reaching out to me. I was stunned by a personal message I received on my first Instagram post from another woman about how she could relate to what I was going through.
It’s something that celebrities experience constantly. But I was experiencing it for the very first time. It was strange, flattering, shocking, and overwhelming all at once. Unlike every other social interaction, I have had in my life up to that point, this time I had put something into the world that had made an impression on others, allowing them to connect with me without me being present or interacting directly with them. My story now had a life of its own, separate from me.
A few months later, I received another pleasant surprise. I had been invited to attend a free month of “Writer’s Cohort Power Hours” organized by Paperbacks & Co. I must have been using the correct hashtags, as Lauren, the founder, had come across my new writer’s Instagram. The “power hour” turned out to be an opportunity to meet writers around the globe via Zoom, declare our goals, mute Zoom for the hour while we independently pursued our writing projects, and then later came back together as a group to discuss.
I felt special, receiving a personal invitation to attend. It was another sign that I must be doing something right. I still remember the bolt of inspiration I felt in the first session I attended. It was a Zoom room of twenty or so other female writers, who were chiming in and talking about how they would be working on a character sketch or editing a draft for their book.
Virtually, I was surrounded by women who looked like me, some who were similar in age to me and all of whom I could relate to in some way, who were writing books. It made it that much easier to draw the connection between writing a book and me. That maybe I could write a book.
Writing a book was something that I had passively thought about but was always something that I would do later, when I had more experience, or after I had received some sort of divine inspiration about what my book should be about. These women were writing books during the writer’s cohort that I was a part of. As I worked on writing cover letters or blog posts or working on my soon-to-be-live website, they were writing actual, real-live books.
Closing Thoughts
After graduating from college, the career advice I internalized was to start working an entry-level job that would allow me to slowly work up to a dream job. I worked three internships, two contract jobs, and two part-time jobs before finally securing my first full-time job. It took working that full-time job two and a half years to realize it was not the career path that I wanted to continue.
Thanks to the internet, if there is something that you are interested in, there are fewer barriers than ever before. You don’t have to complete an internship or accumulate experience before becoming a content creator, author or writing a piece to pitch to a magazine.
You just have to write.
I hope that my reflections may provide some insight or inspiration to fellow creatives. If you are similarly stuck in a full-time job and have yet to tip your toes in the creative waters, start by putting yourself out there.
You never know who may come across your work and think, “Me too!” and where that may lead.
