I’ve Written Over 3,000,000 Words in 3 Years, Here are 3,000,000 Lessons Learned (not really)

Writing is such a weird thing I never saw myself doing. I always felt like a “creative person” but that lent more toward design and marketing — not writing.

Mandatory writing thangs. Yes, thangs.

Stephen King is a writer. Seth Godin is a writer. I’m a guy who chases weird business ideas and used to make daily YouTube videos before the word “vlog” existed. How can I consider myself a writer??

I have to give Twitter credit for helping me become a writer. Sorry, there aren’t any “Twitter writing hacks” you can learn. Instead, I’ll just tell that writing 140 character tweets is way less daunting than 140 word anythings. Let’s not even talk about 1,000+ word articles that seem to flow from my fingers these days like fine wine pours from a cardboard box (or some appropriate wine metaphor that makes sense).

Twitter was my gateway drug to writing. There was no barrier to entry. There was no right or wrong way to write tweets. I mean, yeah, we could talk about all the stupid shit people tweet, myself included. But I think you get the gist: Writing extremely short-form content helped me peel back the writing curtain.

Adding authenticity into my writing flipped my world upside down

In 2013 I came back from a rad conference in Fargo (yeah, North Dakota, like the show/movie/insert other stereotypes).

The conference and the speakers I listened to made a profound impact on me: It’s not hyperbole to say that conference changed my life.

At that time I had been blogging, for lack of a better word, reasonably consistently. I’d written and published about 100 posts before The Great Fargoan Adventure of 2013.

When I sat down to blog about my experience at the conference, it wasn’t as if I’d unlocked some new level of writing skill. Nay. Instead I just wanted to authentically and honestly share my experiences and feelings. It was the first time I’d ever done that in my writing. Everything else I’d written up until that point was complete garbage. Oh, I mean, it was business-type-stuff. Yeah. Not garbage. Helpful business content.

The resistance to write authentically was real though. Since I’d never really done that before, it felt awkward, uncomfortable, and I was worried no one would read it. I pined over that blog post. I almost deleted it a handful of times.

But then I did what anyone does who is tired of doing things the same way and expecting different results: I pushed through. I (nervously) hit publish.

So what happened? Angry comments? Hatorade? Silence?

To the contrary! I received more positive feedback and replies than I ever had on anything I’d written before. I’d go so far as to say I received more positive feedback from that one article than I had on ALL 100+ blog posts combined. Again, not hyperbole.

Could I write authentically all the time and get positive feedback?

Do people care about my honesty and opinions?

Am I ever going to understand the correct way to use parentheses in my writing?? (Probably not, and who cares?!)

Writing authentically about my own experiences became my unique differentiator

I mentioned you’d get 3,000,000 (not really) lessons in the title of this article. So here’s the biggest one:

Everyone can compete on the subject of your writing, but no one can compete on YOUR unique experiences with that subject.

That’s what I realized started to resonate with people. My experiences were unique to theirs. Sometimes my experiences aligned with theirs. Often my experiences were simply weird and people like to read about things that are different from their own.

Authenticity became my divining rod in my writing. The more me I could put in my writing, the less I’d ever feel like I was competing with anyone else’s writing.

I flipped the script on my self-limiting beliefs:

• I will never write anything as compelling as Stephen King and that’s totally fine with me. I’m not a fiction writer, so why compare myself to Mr. King?
• I will never eloquently explain a marketing strategy like Seth Godin and I’m cool with that because he has 20+ years experience on me.
• I will never share an article about an experience in business that gets a bunch of press or notoriety. But who cares? That’s not why I write. Being famous from my words is not my intention.
• My writing will be formatted incorrectly and probably break all the SUPER important (not really) rules of writing. There are no rules any more. Rules are for people who play it too safe (in business/creativity).

I write because I love this medium (hehe) for expressing myself. Sure, I’d love to record audio or video of all my thoughts and stories, but the barrier to entry for doing that is insanely high. Down with barriers!

This is how sexy “doing the work” looks. #lacroixlife

In my 12+ years as an entrepreneur I’ve had conversations with thousands of people who feel “stuck” and “overwhelmed.” They don’t know how to just start writing. They don’t know how to chip away at a daunting dream project or idea. They don’t know how to channel any of the inspiration porn they devour on a daily basis. And I believe the reason behind all of those things is that they haven’t found their “authentic writing.” Which I put in quotes because their/your “authentic writing” could be a podcast, video, crayon drawing, or those cool stone sculptures where all the stones of different shapes balance on each other in impossible positions. Those are so freakin’ rad.

After millions of words written, I’m not aspiring to be the “next” anyone, I’m simply trying to share my experiences in a way I enjoy sharing

Something tells me if you’ve read this far, you feel one of two ways:

1. You enjoy reading the ramblings of some random dude on the Internet.
2. You have stories you want to share. You have experiences that have changed your life for the better. You have unique thoughts and ideas that are trying to claw their way out of your brain.

(I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hope you were a mix of #1 and #2 — hey, honesty in writing is my jam!)

You don’t need to be the next anyone. You need to be you. But, and this is where most people won’t be candid with you: You also need to be open to improvement, growth, and willing to admit that you suck.

Of those 3,000,000 words I’ve so proudly written in the past 3 years, 90% have gone in the virtual trash.

They’re awful. The remaining 10% have ended up in 200ish authentic articles (like this one) and a couple books. Does that mean the entirety of the 10% I published are good? Nope. Recently I went back through my post-Fargoan-adventure in writing and realized my writing sucked:

But that’s okay! Remember, you (and I) need to be open to improvement. We need to acknowledge the fact that we’ll never write (or create) anything perfectly. Our tastes will change. Our skills will improve. Our shitty early writing is great to publish so we can move forward. Just don’t forget to go back at some point and update the early writing/work to meet your new standards. Google and your readers will thank you.

A good rule of thumb in writing: Make it useful or entertaining

And that’s not just for writing. That’s a great filter for the creation of anything.

Usefulness will never go out of style. Entertainment might, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to focus on entertainment if that comes easier than usefulness.

A decade ago I couldn’t have written anything useful about entrepreneurship (or even this topic of writing). Heck, this may not be useful to you right now. But I’m okay with that. I’m not going to please everyone. The folks that do enjoy this, though? Those are my peeps. Those humans get me. We align and our journeys will move forward together holding beautiful red plastic cups filled with cardboard box wine!

This is so us. Now all we need is that wine.

I didn’t have any rules of thumb with my writing early on. Certainly not when it was just tweets. My rules (and thumbs) have evolved over time. I’ve allowed the space for that to happen. You should do the same with whatever you’re creating.

Getting incrementally better at anything you want to be doing is way more important than never trying at all.

So yeah, I didn’t give you 3,000,000 lessons. Heck, I may not have even given you three. But hopefully you have some food for thought. Hopefully this nudges you to take a leap of faith and hit publish on something you’ve been scared to put out into the world.

Go forth. Hit publish. Embrace the sucky-ness of your creations. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the fruits of my labor and continue to as time goes on.

You will too.

💪🏼

Okay, we’re at the end of the story. I need to give you a call to action. Hmm… Um, go to my website! The link is somewhere. You’ll find it if you actually give a shit. Oh yeah, then I have a newsletter-thing I write. You can find that on my website and subscribe. I have stuff you can buy too. Even a course on writing! So. Buy some stuff. I think I’m nailing this whole “bottom of Medium article marketing strategy.” Yeah? Yeah. 😊