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Is Writing Your Job or a Lifestyle Aspiration?
Why I was Right to Give Up Making Lists
I’ve written on Medium off and on for a while now. The platform is great for helping you create readable, digestible content. It’s also a good place to get your work in front of an interested audience.
However, I didn’t take Medium seriously as a source of writing income until recently. Sure, I’d written for magazines and gotten the guaranteed check for $100 or $250. That is nice. Plus, there’s a built-in audience of readers who see your work. But those opportunities — to get published in a paying magazine — don’t come along often enough to make that work sustainable. Sure, this type of writing can be a part of a portfolio — but it’s difficult to make it on published magazine articles alone.
Now, I’m all-in on Medium. And I just read a great piece that talks about the importance of going all-in on your work.
What Would Happen if You Went All Out? | by Edina Abena Jackson | Jan, 2022 | Medium
This reminded me of something I wrote recently about how to make writing your job. The short answer: Make writing your job. Treat it like work. Because it is. Set aside time for it, make it happen, and give it 100% when it is time to write.
As Jackson notes:
When you half-ass things, you don’t get results and you move on to the next thing. It becomes a pattern, a cycle of “starting over.” An endless hamster wheel of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Want to Make Writing Your Job?. Then Make Writing Your Job! | by Andy Spears | Jan, 2022 | Medium
Toward that end, I recently joined Simily and published my first piece there. I’m going to stay on the platform and publish at least one piece a week to see how things go. I’m writing — here, on Simily, and on NewsBreak — because writing is what I want to do. Instead of talking about it or dreaming about it or scrolling articles about it, I’m doing it.
Instead of writing “join Simily” on a list and then reading about it and thinking about it and wondering what if, I just did it. I’m in.
What’s your story? Are you all-in on writing? How do you stay motivated to give 100%?
Update: Here’s my review of my first week on Simily.
