This post marks the 7th story I’ve written this month. Last month I wrote 6 stories, which then was a huge landmark for me. 3 of them were featured in various Medium publications and in total earned me enough to buy one coffee.
But to have surpassed that number only a week into my goal of writing every day in February is an incredible feeling.
I wanted to take you on a journey over the last 7 days and show some struggles in trying to publish new content every day.
Life gets in the way
I had to travel for work this week for a combined marketing & sales summit my company is doing. Normally when I travel for work I have a lot more downtime, but this week is different. My schedule is full of activities that start at 8:30 am each day and end at 8 pm or later each night.
When starting my February journey I knew that I’d have to travel for work this week, so I needed to prepare ahead of time. I had 2 drafts in the backlog that I was able to quickly finish without much effort, but I was still responsible for 4 more stories this week during a very hectic schedule.
I was forced to write and publish all of my posts in the morning. That meant getting up early, grabbing a quick breakfast and coffee at the hotel, and then heading back up to my room and hammering out a post before leaving for the day. I’d often get back late at night, and I didn’t want to risk missing a publication before I left for the day.
I had to publish every morning if I was ever going to meet my goal. Further, I started scheduling posts out a day in advance; whatever I’d write in the morning would be scheduled to go out the next day, so I was always one day ahead. If something came up and I wasn’t able to write then I’d at least have a buffer before having to get a new story out the door.
Life happens, but if something is important then you’ll make time for it. If you don’t make time, then it’s not that important to you. Simple as that.
I feel amazing
I was already proud of myself for how often I published in January, and very excited at the early reception I received. My stories in January were viewed almost 1,000 times which is incredible for me as a beginning writer on Medium.
I’m also growing traffic to my website, NickLafferty.com, and it’s really fun to see the numbers slowly tick up each day as I publish new content. No one has subscribed to my newsletter, yet, but getting that first subscriber will be a sweet moment. I had a great idea for a secondary newsletter tonight, unrelated to my brand, that I’m excited to get started on.
To have already exceeded the number of articles I published last month, in the first 7 days of February, feels amazing. I’m doing this writing thing, and my work and dedication speak for itself. I’m not doing this for the views or the fame, I’m doing it because I love it.
A side benefit is I have more content to link to within my articles now that I have a growing backlog of work. Interlinking is important not only for the reader but for SEO too as you show Google associations between your pages.
I had to push through my struggles
Publishing every day is hard. Some days I didn’t want to write anything because I didn’t have anything to write about. One of those days was yesterday, where I wrote this weird story about why Christmas in July is a terrible holiday. I never planned to write that story, it just came out a phase of writer’s block.
It’s not my best work, but I had to publish it. That is the trade-off I’ve accepted on this journey, not every story will be great, but one story will get published every day no matter what.
Tonight I’ve already scheduled my post for tomorrow, and this post will go out the next day. So I’m back to being ahead by 2 days, but I had to put in the work to get here. I’m sitting in front of the computer at midnight in my hotel room after another long day. But I’m wide awake, maybe due to the house music that’s been pumping in my headphones over the last 2 hours.
I’m a writer. And it feels great.