You’ve heard it countless times before. The most common advice I see for aspiring new writers.
Write every day.
And not only write, but publish.
So that’s what I’m going to do in February. This is my commitment to publish 29 pieces in February.
Stupid leap year added an extra day :)
Why February
Because February just started, and it conveniently is the shortest month of the year even with the leap year. I have the best chance of success since it’s only 29 days.
Writing and publishing something new every day for 29 days will be difficult. Some of my pieces wil surely be garbage, but the journey is what’s most interesting to me. How will this shape my writing for the months to come?
I love testing things
I’m addicted to the a/b test. At work, I write ad copy for digital marketing campaigns. I write the subject lines and content for our marketing emails. I help our new users understand our product through a 7 day email sequence designed to educat and interest them in our product, with the ultimate goal of getting them to pay us money.
I a/b test the shit out of everything. I constantly have headline tests running in Google Adwords to get more people to click my ads. I test my email subject lines to get the highest open rate.
I test things in my life too. I’m quitting video games for an entire year as a test to see what I can create in that time. This February challenge spawned out of that; I would’ve never done this if I was still playing video games.
No test is complete without a hypothesis, so here we go:
- My writing will improve and will become more structured.
- I’ll increase my exposure on Medium, gaining some new followers
- Maybe make a few bucks in the process
- There will be some frustration fueled late nights when it’s 11pm and I haven’t published yet.
Push yourself
“If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”—Bruce Lee
I hate being comfortable. Comfort means I’m no longer growing, testing new things, and pushing myself for greatness.
That’s not to say I sleep on a bed of nails. Come on.
I’m writing this on my comfy couch, wearing my favorite, super-soft, comfy-ass sweater. I’m cozy af right now.
I have this drive to push myself to greatness.
It’s why I’m in the gym 5 days a week, because it’s hard and I want to push myself to achieve more. I love waking up in the morning and my muscles are sore because I had a great workout the day before. I pushed my body beyond it’s comfort zone.
I wasn’t always this way. Throughout high school, college, and most of my post-graduate life I lead a relatively comfortable life. I played video games often, didn’t exert myself in any aspect of my life, rarely committed to working out for a long period of time. I showed up to work but was not a top performer.
Looking back, I was just coasting.
I’m no longer content with that. I have ambitions. I want to write a book and record an album at some point in my life.
This February challenge marches me down the path of writing that book.
I know can be a great writer through practice.
So here we go. See you every day for the next 29 days.