My First Month as a Full Time Writer

Hello, hello! I hope everyone is doing well today and have been during these trying times! This week marks my first month of writing full time, so today I thought I'd talk about how I have found this first month!

This first month of writing has been a bit of a roller coaster for me. Starting up high and come plummeting down only to go back up again in some kind of twisted loop (why do people like those death traps?). I knew going into this lifestyle that it wouldn’t be all peaches and roses and that it would take extreme dedication in order to get where I want to be. But in these early days, I have found issues that I didn’t think would either exist or affect me as much as they did.

The main problem that I find myself having is the lack of ideas on what to write about, especially when it comes to these blog posts. After having wanted to do something like this for a long time, I thought I would have endless ideas on things to talk about, but that isn’t always the case. I originally started this blog almost a year ago now, with the idea of having it be a blog reviewing things that I liked; movies, books, video games and sports. At the same time, I wanted to make sure that I was writing about things that would also interest my readers as well as myself, which often became difficult. Not everyone who reads these posts are going to care about my opinion on a video game, while others will only care about that topic. Same goes for all of the other categories. So, I found myself wondering how to write about something that everyone would have some interest in, but quickly figured out that that would be impossible. I decided to expand on the blog a little bit, to include some of my own personal work. This way I could showcase my work and hopefully have a nice middle ground for people to visit my blog. This still didn’t fix my problem of struggling to figure out what to write each post though. I think the main reason for that is a lack of planning. I have never been one to plan out what I am going to write or how to write it. I have always just made it up as I went (a favourite plan of many people) but it is obviously not working for me anymore. I find it incredibly difficult to figure out just one post these days, let alone a week’s worth of posts. This is something that I obviously need to change in order to become a better writer and I wouldn’t have figured that out unless I took this leap.

The thing that I found that affected me more than I thought it would, is my views. When I started this blog, I always told myself that it didn’t matter how many views I got as long as one person was reading it. I have been extremely lucky in this aspect because I average about 20 views per post that I put up! I think that this is incredible! I’ve even had post that have gotten over 70 and a rare couple that have reached over 100 views!!! This is something that I never thought I would be able to do, and I am extremely thankful to everyone that has supported this blog since I started. I think what affects me the most when it comes to my views is the pressure that I put on myself. I want to be so successful when it comes to this, so I can continue to do it, that I focus to much on it. I compare it to more successful blogs that have tens of thousand of views and thousands of followers and writing deals. I often forget that they were in the exact same position as me at one point or another. Stephen King didn’t roll out of bed one day, spend a couple hours writing, sent his story off and was given thousands of dollars on his first go. Same goes for all of those other blogs and articles that I read. They spent years and years of their lives honing their crafts and that’s something that I am only just starting. A year ago, I never thought that an average of 20 people per post would want to read my ramblings on different topics and eventually want to read my micro-stories.

Something else that I have found out within this first month, is my planning and choosing what to focus on, and is something that drastically needs to be worked on. My primary goal behind choosing to write full time was to publish a book. At the start of this, that was the case and I was writing every day to get my book ideas down on electronic paper. But I slowly started to fade away from that. I started to focus on this more, making sure I had a post to write but that was it. I focused all my time on writing a post and then spent the rest of the day doing other things. I would only write a page or two on my off days and even then, sometimes not at all. It comes down to two things, I think. My lack of planning, which I’ve mentioned three or four times now and the amount of pressure I put on myself to be successful instantly. Books aren’t written in the space of a couple weeks and even if they are, they’re usually pretty rubbish. After those initial two weeks of writing, the story I was working on was a complete mess. The timeline was all out of order, my writing is average, and the base plot line has changed so many times I couldn’t tell you what I originally wanted the story to be. Like I said before, people didn’t just become best authors in a small space of time and it’s something that I need to remember.

So, the things I have learnt in the first month of my writing are important things. The main thing I need to change, is how I plan my things. I need to have more of a focus around planning and actually sticking to that plan in order to make sure I am getting everything I can out of my writing. The second is to relax a little bit. Sure, you can’t always sit back and wait for things to come about but I think that this is one of those times. I don’t need to stress myself out into a writer’s block in order to make money quickly. I need to take a step back and realise that if I work methodically and consistently, then everything will fall into place. But I need to make sure I change these things, not all at once because I won’t stick to them, but over my next month. To grow these things into powerful weapons for myself to take me to the top. So stick around, dear reader, because we’re just getting started.