Powerful Lessons I Learned After One Month of Writing
Information on how much I made, publications, writing, sourcing, and medium community Involvement.
I woke eagerly. Today was the day! Christmas was finally here, and my present to myself was in question. I rushed in the direction of the Christmas tree, but I made a last-second turn into the living room instead. I wasn't interested in what was under the tree but in my laptop instead. I opened my computer with haste and refreshed my partner program stats. I had done it! I made my goal by 9 cents. Merry Christmas!
Writing
Historically, I would do so much research that I would be overwhelmed by all of the details by the time I wanted to create the story. As a result, I would never publish what I made because it was never perfect.
The story wasn't good enough, and as a result, I wasn't good enough to create.
"Just start," words from content creators I have heard for years. The advice was always the same. You don't need the latest and greatest computer to be a writer. You don't need to be an expert before you start. Those things come with time and practice and then they would say the quote I'm sure you have heard.
"Done is better than perfect." — Benjamin Franklin
However, I didn't want to be like other people. I wanted my first article to be memorable. I wanted to start with creativity and quality equivalent to seasoned authors. I told myself I wanted to be the best or nothing at all. I was being naive, and now I see that. I'm still young, so I am happy I learned that lesson now.
Publications
At the beginning of the month, I started attempting to get into difficult publications with no success. I quickly learned that failing to get into these larger publications only damaged the confidence I had developed. However, Publishing without a publication wasn't an answer since I had no audience.
I only had seven views, two reads, and one clap after my 4th article. Rough.
As a new writer, the best thing I did for myself was writing for publications anyone can be in as long as you follow their guidelines, and that I enjoyed. This meant I focused my attention on publications designed with new writers in mind. I quickly came up with two publications.
I didn't want to overwhelm myself by searching for dozens of publications, so I kept it simple, which has worked for me well. Although I may not have an audience as substantial as another larger publication, I have to consider I'm still learning and a new writer.
My first article(seen below) in the publication Writers' Blokke did the same as my first four combined articles. Although I understand this isn't a lot. It was a big deal for me.
Medium Community Involvement
I believe it's crucial to involve yourself in the community that you follow and publish in. I try to read and comment on at least four articles from these two publications every day and encourage you to do the same! It feels good when people comment on your posts. You'll also have the potential bonus that people may look at your work because of the quality of your comments.
Unfortunately, I have seen a lot of people who follow others not with any intention of reading their articles but only as a way to promote their work. So if you are a new writer, I encourage you against follow for follow and other similar tactics.
Sources
I quickly realized that I had little knowledge regarding sourcing information when I started writing. So instead of reading an article about how people find their sources, I read the articles of people I enjoyed reading and investigated their sources.
I wanted to try and write with the support of scientific articles instead of from news websites and other Medium-like platforms. This would allow me to be as close to the original information as possible instead of sourcing an article that was sourced from another article. The reason is because of the telephone game I used to play as a child. If you are not familiar, this is how it works(bear with me):
- A group of people sits in a circle around a room.
2. One person starts by whispering a sentence into the person's ear on their right.
3. The next person repeats the sentence to the person on their right as close to the original as they can remember.
4. Continue around the circle until the sentence is whispered to the person who started the game.
Results are generally that the sentence originally said has drastically changed meaning.
To avoid joining other writers in this game, I decided instead to get my information from sources like these:
Final Thoughts
SEO
I have a little knowledge about SEO and understand what It is, but for the moment I'm not going to make my life that complicated yet.
How Much I Made
In the last month of writing, I successfully published ten articles. So, roughly I published one article every three days. Moving forward, I'm going to try and write more often. I'm happy with how much I wrote for the month because It took a lot of learning. Even though I only published ten articles, I wrote every day, resulting in 25 drafts. I have gained a lot of speed since I started and can sometimes finish a draft in a few hours compared to 6 hours for my first article.
I finished this month with 448 views, 536 reads, and 66 fans that amounted to $1.09.
Start Now
If you are waiting to start writing, start today instead, even if that means writing on paper with a pencil. There will always be reasons we shouldn't start today, whether that's about writing or another part of your life. The most important thing is that you start creating and start acting.
I will be writing a follow-up next month. I plan to publish 90% of the days for the next thirty-one days.
