Writing

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Make your creativity work for you.

Creativity is like Bertie Bott’s every flavor beans, a risk with every mouthful.

“You want to be careful with those. When they say every flavour, they mean every flavour — you know, you get all the ordinary ones like chocolate and peppermint and marmalade, but then you can get spinach and liver and tripe. George reckons he had a bogey flavoured one once.”

— Ron Weasley

With every new creation, you dare to eat another Bertie Bott. Even with a solid idea-to-paper process, your creativity will surprise you. You feel moody, surprised, vulnerable, depressed, and enthusiastic while writing the same paragraph. The dynamics make creative work harder than cognitive work, but you can learn to play with it.

Elizabeth Gilbert chewed more Bertie Botts than most of us. She’s been a writer for almost three decades and the personification of a self-made creative-genius. If you read her books about chasing happiness, 19th-century botany, and sexual liberation in the 40s, you’ll see nothing but growth.

From 2007 to 2019, her writing style and content depth drastically evolved. And, lucky for us, her 2015 book takes us through her insights on creativity. Here they are.

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“When courage dies, creativity dies with it.”

Fear is part of any creative process. You might fear your lack of talent, inspiration, professionalism, experience. You might fear other people’s opinions, or, even worse, your own judgment. You might fear you’re too old or too young to start. See? Fear is intertwined with creativity.

“Your fear will always be triggered by your creativity because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome,” Gilbert writes. “In fact, it seems to me that my fear and my creativity are basically conjoined twins — as evidenced by the fact that creativity cannot take a single step forward without fear marching right alongside it.”

You don’t need to be fearless to strive for your creative endeavors. But don’t let fear take the lead. Gilbert uses a car metaphor to describe the role of fear: “You’re allowed to have a seat, and you’re allowed to have a voice, but you are not allowed to have a vote.”

Courage isn’t the opposite of fear. Courage is to feel fear but risk it anyway.

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“You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures.”

Focusing on things outside of your control will leave you frustrated. You can’t influence how people react to your work. It’s pointless to measure your worth by external reactions, like monetary rewards, audience reach, or editor opinions.

All you can influence is your creative process.

Focus on the dedication to your path. Or, as Gilbert writes, “work with all your heart, because — I promise — if you show up for your work, day after day after day after day, you just might get lucky enough some random morning to burst right into bloom.”

When we look at the work of successful writers, we only see the tip of the iceberg. We envy other writer’s success but don’t look at the dedicated work they’ve done for years. We admire the great works of George R.R. Martin and Stephen King but forget how even they still struggle through the hard work of the creative process.

You have to stick to your path, even if you’ve achieved your definition of success.

“Most of my writing life consists of nothing more than unglamorous, disciplined labor. I sit at my desk, and I work like a farmer, and that’s how it gets done,” Gilbert writes. “No matter how great your teachers may be, and no matter how esteemed your academy’s reputation, eventually you will have to do the work by yourself.”

See? There’s no magic. No fast track. You have to drag yourself through ups and downs and eventually, just do the work.

Don’t wait for inspiration to strike you. Measure your progress by your dedication to writing. Inspiration and fear will join you along the way.

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“Most things have already been done — but they have not yet been done by you.”

I remember my writing coach’s words, Sinem Günel, who told me a harsh truth in one of our first coaching sessions. Unless I’m a scientific researcher, she said, I shouldn’t expect to create any groundbreaking work.

While I first felt offended — I wanted to innovate education with every written word — this also took away the pressure.

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel. All you need is to describe your experiences with the wheel and how it can benefit others.

As Gilbert put it: “Once you put your own expression and passion behind an idea, that idea becomes yours. Authenticity beats originality. While the latter often feels like an extraneous attempt to create something new, authenticity brings an inner serenity that creates calm resonance with your readers.”

Every great writer imitates before they find their own voice. Saying what you want to say is the definition of authenticity. Don’t worry about the degree of innovation.

This is what artist Austin Kleon meant when he wrote, “Every new idea is just a mashup or a remix of one or more previous ideas.”

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“Debt will always be the abattoir of creative dreams.”

Creativity works best when there’s no pressure attached to it. Your inspiration creeps away when it feels the burden to feed a household. Plus, worries don’t go well with your creative flow.

To make creativity work for you, you’re better off keeping a job that can pay your bills.

Elizabeth committed to becoming a writer in her early twenties. Yet, she didn’t go to an expensive school to learn to write. Instead, she made a living on jobs like bartending, tutoring, flea-marketing, or waitressing. And meanwhile, she wrote every day throughout her twenties.

“I held on to my day jobs for so long because I wanted to keep my creativity free and safe,” she writes. “I knew better than to ask this of my writing because, over the years, I have watched so many other people murder their creativity by demanding that their art pay the bills. ”

Don’t drive your creativity away by relying on monetary rewards too early in your career. Instead, have a job that pays you bills while you create without monetary pressure.

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“Learning how to endure your disappointment and frustration is part of the job of a creative person.”

Almost any creator can relate to the disappointing feeling after a rejection. But turndowns are part of any creative journey. If one creates with courage, one will face refusal again and again.

Elizabeth writes that she stacked all her rejection letters in one place. Every time she got a rejection from a publisher, she sent a new application at the same time: Whenever I got those rejection letters, then, I would permit my ego to say aloud to whoever had signed it: “You think you can scare me off? I’ve got another eighty years to wear you down!”

If you want to unleash your creative potential, you have to see rejection as part of the process. If you dare to reach high, hearing a lot of no’s is unavoidable. By playing the long-term game, you can stick to the process.

“The world is filled with too many unfinished manuscripts as it is, and I didn’t want to add another one to that bottomless pile. So no matter how much I thought my work stank, I had to persist,” Gilbert writes. “You try and try and try, and nothing works. But you keep trying, and you keep seeking, and then sometimes, in the least expected place and time, it finally happens.”

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In Conclusion

Generalizing creative writing advice is hard since every brain works differently. What is good for Elizabeth Gilbert might not have the same benefits for you.

And while these five insights have been useful to my creative journey, they might be useless for someone who’s at a different stage of their creative process.

But if your goal is to create great content, support others, share your knowledge and struggles, and eventually make money online, these five pearls of wisdom can help.

1. Courage means to feel fear but risk it anyway.
2. Measure your success by the dedication to your path.
3. Authenticity beats originality.
4. Create without monetary pressure.
5. Endure disappointment and keep on trying.

Creative work is like Bertie Bott’s beans. But if you dare to eat them despite your fear, one day after another, you’re on your journey towards your best creative self. In the words of Gilbert:

“The essential ingredients for creativity remain exactly the same for everybody: courage, enchantment, permission, persistence, trust — and those elements are universally accessible.”

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It’s not only how you write but also what you write that matters.

Many new writers start with an illusory superiority. Naïve as I was, I expected my first article to be a hit. Journaling, academic work, and well-rated high-school essays made me overestimate my writing ability. Together with all the other writers who start with overconfidence, I was on top of what social psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger label the ‘Mount Stupid.’

According to their research, incompetent people overestimate their own competence and, failing to sense a discrepancy between their performance and what is desirable, see no need to learn or improve. New writers know so little, they fail to see what they don’t know.

“We start at a disadvantage for several reasons. One is that when we’re incompetent, we tend to overestimate our competence and see little reason to change,” cognitive researchers Roediger & McDaniel write about this phenomenon. “To become more competent, we must learn to recognize competence when we see it in others, become more accurate judges of what we ourselves know and don’t know, adopt learning strategies that get results, and find objective ways to track our progress.”

Many new writers never get to this point. They quit after the disappointment of a bad performing first article. Or they gave up because of the daunting number of skills neccessary to become a prolific writer. While overcoming the first, I almost quit because of the latter. Comparing oneself to Niklas Göke, Michael Thompson, Ali Mese, or Megan Holstein can feel demotivating.

Yet, the few new writers that move past this point embark on an exciting learning path. Writing is one of the rare professions that offer a ticket to life-long learning. Here are the two learning curves that make writing worth mastering:

Curve 1: Learning how to articulate your ideas

Writing includes much more than writing. It’s not as simple as having an idea, writing it down, publishing, and watch it reach millions of readers. New writers often fail to acknowledge the micro-steps that are neccessary to move from idea generation to a well-articulated article.

Items on the first learning curve help new writers to organize their thoughts and pack them into a neat, coherent package:

• content consumption as sources of inspiration
• researching and applying for publications
• a solid idea-to-paper process
• writing clickable, non-clickbaity headlines
• choosing article pictures
• writing powerful introductions
• engaging the reader using an appropriate style
• editing articles including proofreading, writing flow, word choice, and grammar
• formatting the article according to respective publication style guides

While the number of items might feel overwhelming, countless guides can help to gain mastery. For example, Cynthia Marinakos offers excellent advice on headline writing, Niklas Göke on the skill of captivating introductions, and Ali Mese provides a useful grammar cheat sheet.

How fast you move on this learning curve depends on your mindset and your discipline. After reading six books and taking three writing online courses, I’ve noticed a recurring statement: the only way to improve your writing is to write.

An open, learning mindset helps to digest and apply everything you learn from people more experienced than you and reach out to people you look up to. But a daily writing praxis is what makes you hone your craft.

Your speed on the first learning curve depends on mindset and consistency.

Curve 2: Becoming an expert in your writing areas

If you want it or not, you become an expert in the topics you write about. When you write about personal finance, you’ll know your way around money management. If you write about attention fragmentation, you might be able to recite a list of ten things you can do immediatly to minimize technological distractions.

When we write, we elaborate. “Elaboration is the process of giving new material meaning by expressing it in your own words and connecting it with what you already know,” cognitive researchers define. And elaboration, as this study showed, is one of the most effective learning strategies.

And as you become an expert on the topics you write about, it’s important to make a conscious choice. When you accept a writing client you don’t want to represent, you’ll soon find yourself in cognitive dissonance, meaning your actions don’t match your beliefs. You’ll represent something you no longer want to represent.

Nicolas Cole included a great tip for this learning curve in his current book on online writing. “In your first six months of writing online, you should be less concerned with “establishing” yourself and more focused on “discovering” yourself,” he wrote. Once you know what you enjoy writing about and see the data from what people want to read, you can move on.

“If you start writing about marketing strategies, but data tells you it’s your stories about being an angel investor people love reading most, you should pay attention to that. If you start writing sci-fi, but you discover it’s actually your historical fiction people are flocking to, data is trying to tell you something. If you start writing poetry, but you find your morning meditations are what get dozens of people to comment and engage with your writing, what are you going to do? Keep writing poetry? Once data enters the equation, this is where the “Who Do I Want To Be?” conversation gets interesting.”

— Nicolas Cole in The Art and Business of Online Writing

Closing thoughts

Writing is a life-long learning journey. It’s one of the rare jobs you (eventually) get paid for acquiring new knowledge.

Once you move up on both learning curves, writing will feel more natural. At the same time, one curve doesn’t go without the other. If you’re great at articulating your ideas but no expert in the topics you write about, you do not realize your full writing potential. The opposite is true as well: If you are a topic expert but don’t know how to articulate what you want to say, there’s no way you can get through to your readers.

To move from a new writer to a prolific writer, we must watch out for both learning curves. Fostering a growth mindset, learning from the best, experimenting, and deciding on a writing genre helps.

Whatever you’re doing, keep in mind: writing is one of those rare jobs where you get paid for learning. So, it’s worth doing the work it takes to improve your craft. Cambridge Editors’ Blog puts it best:

“Writing takes hard work and practice, just like everything else. If you want to be a good writer you need to put in the effort, plain and simple. And that means anyone can be a writer so long as they are willing to put in the work. It’s a comforting thought.”

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90 hours of coaching broken down into 7 mins for you

Benjamin Franklin once said,

“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

This spring, I followed the advice and invested $699 in a medium coaching program. Until April, I hadn’t written anything except for 150 pages of academia and 1350 pages in my bullet journals. Since April, I’ve published 16 articles on medium and filed the resignation for my 9–5 job.

Here are 19 essential lessons I’ve learned about writing from my professional medium coach, and Benjamin Hardy, PhD’s online writing course:

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1. If you’re a new writer, focus on white space

The less experienced you’re with writing, the more white space you’ll need. Section breaks, paragraphs, and subtitles help you deliver your message.

My first articles are living proof that white space works. I published this article before my first coaching session and this one after it. To this date, the first article earned 9$, the second 127$. These numbers show my medium coach was right about the importance of white space.

Reserve your longer paragraphs for the time you found your writing voice. Gary Provost, a famous American author, once demonstrated how to write longer passages that sound like music:

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say, “Listen to this, it is important.”

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2. Publish 100 articles before you expect anything

A writing career isn’t linear. In the beginning, while you’re learning the craft, don’t expect to earn anything. As with everything in life, there’s no such thing as an overnight success.

Making a living from writing is the result of hard work. Authors earning >2000$ on medium or other platforms have spent months practicing.

You can reach writing success as well if you’re willing to put in the work.

Most writers lose faith in their abilities before reaching exponential growth. Following my coach’s advice, I committed to publishing 100 articles before expecting any return on my time investment.

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3. The only way to improve your writing is by writing

The only way to get better in writing is to sit down and write. Thinking about writing, speaking about writing, and reading about writing won’t be nearly as effective as writing.

Once my coach asked me the following question, and my writing practice changed:

Do you know there’s a difference between creation and consumption time?

While consuming is all about reading and learning, creating is the process of putting words on paper.

Here’s how I track writing vs. consuming time. Tracking helps me to find a balance between learning and writing.

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4. Writing quality will improve with writing quantity

The quality of your words will increase with practice. Instead of editing yourself a fourth time, focus on producing more content.

As an economist, I’d label it as the diminishing return of editing: The longer you edit one article, the later you start a new one.

Ben Hardy explained it’s better to publish a lousy piece than not publish at all. Some of the articles he resisted to publish, went viral afterward.

Unless you stop editing a piece and spend your time on writing a new one, you don’t create. Don’t be too critical on yourself and identify perfectionism as another form of procrastination.

Publish before you think your piece is perfect. Writing quality will improve with quantity.

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5. Build a daily writing/creating habit

To write a lot, you need a writing routine. While plenty of articles tout specific writing routines, you know best what works for you.

I get up at 6 AM, practice yoga, journal and meditate. At 6:40 AM, I start writing. By 9 AM, I’ve done all of my creative work and ride to work.

It doesn’t matter which routine you decide on, as long as you stick to the habit. Or, as Austin Kleon puts it:

“What your daily routine consists of is not that important. What’s important is that the routine exists. Cobble together your own routine, stick to it most days, break from it once in a while for fun, and modify it as necessary.”

Ask yourself,

When can you make time to write and focus without distraction?

What helps you getting into your creative state?

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6. Always ask, “What’s in it for my readers?”

I felt incredibly proud to publish my first pieces. But my mentor made me realize my articles equaled personal journal entries. She asked:

Do you write for yourself, or do you write for your readers?

One should never write without your readers in mind. Here are some helpful questions, both from my mentor and the medium curation guidelines:

What’s in it for your readers?

Is your piece written for the reader?

Does this add value for the reader?

What do you want your readers to take away?

Which feelings do you aim to provoke?

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7. Headlines make or break your stories success

Headlines are the entryway for your readers. If your headline doesn’t spark your readers’ interest, they won’t bother to read the first lines of your well-crafted introduction.

Benjamin Hardy jots down 10–20 headline versions for each of his pieces before he determines the best one. I follow this advice by spending 20 minutes on brainstorming headlines. Being strategic about headlines helps you reach more readers.

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8. Check headlines, instead of your stats

My coach caught me on the spot with this one. Here’s what she said:

“The first times you get curated and published with bigger publications, it’s tempting to check your stats again and again. Especially if one article got published in a publication.

But instead of reviewing your cents trickling down, use your time wisely and study successful writer’s headline.”

Instead of checking your stats, study virality. Look at successful writer’s headlines, like Jessica Wildfire, Niklas Göke, Kris Gage, Liz Huber, and Tim Denning.

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9. Combine logical with emotional writing

Before mentoring, I thought the number of high-quality sources lead to popularity. It turns out I’m wrong.

The combination of head and heart knowledge makes a story unique.

I come from academia, and it’s easy for me to combine other writer’s logic and craft a coherent story. However, when you look at best-performing articles on medium (like this one, this one, or this one), you’ll realize they don’t sound like peer-reviewed papers. Readers aren’t looking for pure facts.

Instead, it’s your personal experience, combined with a touch of logic, that speaks to your reader’s heart and triggers reactions. To start an article, my coach asked me the following helping questions:

What are the things you can’t stop thinking about?

What are you excited, angry, upset or inspired about?

Which difficult experience did you encounter and what helped you to overcome this?

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10. Search images by emotions, instead of keywords

Choose a picture that supports the emotional message you’re trying to convey. Your answers to the questions above offer a great starting point for image search.

In the beginning, I used my pictures and searched at other platforms for the perfect image. But top medium stories demonstrate, in most cases, the built-in Unsplash image search is enough. While crafting your article, click on the + symbol and select the loupe. Then type in your emotion-triggering keyword.

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11. Structure your article bones to write faster

Working for days on the same piece can leave you frustrated. Particularly, if you can’t see any progress. For writing development, Ben Hardy’s practice helped me the most. It might help you as well if you tend to get lost in your writing process. Here’s what he said:

“Always start with the headlines, then get all of the subsections.

Once you’ve got the subsections title them in powerful ways.

Once you’ve got the subsections titled, get quotes for each subsection or other essential elements you need.

Once you have these bones formed, begin writing.”

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12. When you write, — write

Once you have the bones formed, focus on writing. When you stop for research or edit yourself, you break your flow state.

Focus on putting words on the paper. Don’t stop your flow. Don’t look for more knowledge. Use abbreviations for flowing through your craft.

• LINK if you want to link something later on write
• CHECK if you need to double-check what you’ve just written use
• IMG in case you want to add an image or graphic

Editing and researching interrupt your flow state. Add all of the above once you’re done with the first draft of your piece. When you write, just write.

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13. When you don’t feel like writing, write

As said in the beginning, writing quality improves with quantity. Hence, you need to write consistently. When you don’t write, you don’t produce content. You don’t learn. You don’t improve.

Create environments that help you to write. In case you don’t know how to focus without distraction, no matter what, read Cal Newport’s Deep Work. If you only have a limited amount of time for writing, focus on smaller tasks like researching headlines, images, or coming up with new ideas.

On days, where you don’t feel like writing, try to compose the worst piece you can. It’ll make your process more fun.

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14. Bury mediocre passages in your editing graveyard

Editing can hurt. Deleting entire phrases might feel like going backward. But to craft excellent writing, you should edit without compromise. Mediocre sentences will ultimately lead to average articles. Not every word you typed deserves to stay in your piece.

A document that serves as editing graveyard can help. This document has the sole purpose of editing more strictly and not clunch to useless words. You cut out all fluff from your original piece and bury it in your paper. In case you miss your words or want to reuse them for other articles, you know where to find them.

If you’re unsure whether to keep or destroy a passage, read the entire paragraph out loud. Your voice is a great editing tool after you’ve written your piece.

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15. Use a system to manage your ideas and articles

The more you write, the more critical it is to keep an overview. Inspired by my medium coach, I use Trello for ideas and article management. Here’s how I use Trello:

In the column “ideas,” I store all headline and topic ideas. I prefill most idea cards with an outline and the described bones structure. Prefilled content helps to get into writing quickly. You no longer have to sit and wait in front of a blank piece of paper, waiting for ideas to cross your mind.

Once I started putting an idea onto paper, the Trello card moves to “working projects.” Some longer articles, like this one, linger around in “working projects” for a few days as I add ideas to the piece in several writing sessions.

When I finished editing the article and found both the headline and an emotion-provoking picture, I submit the article to a publication. In the “submitted to publication” column is a timestamp on every card that indicates when I expect to hear back from the publication.

In case publications rejected my article, I move the card to the “re-edit” column as my work needs further improvement. If a publication publishes my piece, I slide the card to “published.”

All articles in the “published” column receive an entry in my article overview sheet, which looks like this:

This excel sheet is a great motivator for reminding you of the work you’ve completed. Moreover, this system helps you keep track of the number of articles published, your curation tags, and the publications you’ve published with. You can use your sheet to set your writing KPIs.

What indicates your on track in your writing process?

Do you measure your success by the number of articles you published?

By the words, you’ve put on paper?

Is it the total reading time in minutes, that shows your effort?

Or is it the variety of publications you’re looking for?

Be clear about your key performance indicators. The clearer your goals, the easier it’ll be to reach them.

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16. Publish with publications to reach more readers

Instead of self-publishing my first articles, I should’ve spent more time researching suitable publications. Here are the three benefits of publishing with publications:

• You reach more people
• By following publication guidelines, your writing improves
• Thereby, your chances of curation increase

Once you’ve written and edited your piece, research suitable publications, there are medium run publications like Onezero, Elemental, Gen, Zora, Forge and Human Parts, and prominent other publications like P.S. I love you, The Startup, The Ascent, or like this one The Writing Cooperative. If you’re unsure which publication might suit your writing, use medium’s search for your topic. Look which publications recently covered your area of expertise.

Don’t feel discouraged in case publications reject your piece. I applied three times for The Ascent before they accepted one of my articles. See the application process as a free learning opportunity; if editors reject your work, ask yourself how to improve your writing. Ask for feedback and use the publication guidelines to double-check.

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17. Done is better than perfect

As a writer, you put your name behind everything you publish. I asked my coach several times how she determines a piece is “good enough.”

Instead of looking for the perfect breakthrough, give your best to produce as much useful content as you possibly can. You have to accept your okayish content if you want to become an exceptional writer.

Don’t overjudge your work and don’t fear to publish something that isn’t perfect. Once you’ve hit publish, you can let your fears go and focus on your next idea.

In retrospect, I wasted my time editing this article for 8 hours. I would’ve used my time better by posting earlier and creating more content.

Done is better than perfect. Hit “publish” once your piece is good enough.

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18. Learn to write faster

Megan Holstein said in one of her inspiring articles on writing,

“Every writer’s business is a factory. We can choose to produce a better product, or we can choose to produce more of it. The more writing we put out to the world, the more readers might stumble across our writing.”

By publishing more than 30 pieces a month, my medium coach puts these words into action. Thereby, she earns more than most people I know. Moreover, with quantity comes quality. When you improve your writing speed, your writing quality improves likewise.

To increase my writing speed, I track the time I need to write an article. While this doesn’t sound highly creative, it helps me to keep my goal in mind and to focus on the process.

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19. Ideas are everywhere

Whatever idea comes to your mind, be sure to capture it in your idea management board or a journal, so you don’t lose it. Ideas come best when you don’t aim to have them.

Here are some great prompts from my mentor, that helped me getting ideas:

Which stories can you tell from your life?

What’s interesting about your career?

Which resources have helped you in your daily life? How?

Which book have you read that triggered something in you?

What topic are you currently struggling with?

Which vulnerability do you dare to share?

Write about something you care about and be brutally honest about it.

Feel free to try anything you like, whether it’s investments one day and relationships the next. People follow you for your voice, rather than expertise on any given topic.

And whenever you lack ideas, check out Bookshlf to get inspired by academics, distinguished professionals, journalists, and online creators.

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