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When I first started writing in January 2018, I challenged myself to publish one story every day for 30 days. To my amazement, I never ran out of topics to write about. So I kept going. I wrote 200 stories without skipping a day.
Was it hard?
Nope.
When you write consistently on a daily basis, it keeps your mind sharp. You are more observant and find inspiration from a wide variety of sources. I go into more details in this video.
In October 2018 is when I started writing longer form articles, which would take me a few days to write. This was much harder to do, but I kept my routine of writing every day as soon as I woke up, so it still worked. Here was the result:
For those looking at the read ratio and think it’s low, here’s what I have to say:
The longer your story, the lower the read ratio;
The nature of this article was more of a pick-and-choose than a consume-it-all-at-once; and
Read ratio is the least important statistic. Fan count is what matters most.
That being said, here’s one way you struggle to find inspiration: you’re too stuck up on checking your stats and figuring out how to increase them. It took me a great deal of work to stop obsessing over my stats, especially when I started to make real revenues like with the article from above.
Another reason why you’re struggling is by not being consistent in your writing. I’m dead serious here. Be honest with yourself, are you really as consistent as you can be? Shaunta Grimes, Shannon Ashley, Anthony Mooreand Niklas Göke (https://emptyyourcup.substack.com/) are champions of consistency.
Learn from them.
When I was consistent, words flowed without me even ever having to pause to think about what I would write. I would write up to 1,500 words in a single hour!
I like to experiment with my morning routine, and my experiment from this month was highly destructive to my writing creativity. I basically moved my writing to a few hours after waking up. It turns out, this doesn’t work for me.
Another reason why you’re struggling is that you haven’t figured out a time you can be consistent in writing where your creativity flows. Experiment until you find it. Change every other week or every month. Don’t change more frequently than that though, it takes time to build a habit.
Here’s another reason I hesitated writing, but I’ll do it because I’m authentic and honest. You’re too stuck up. You’re too conscious of what you are about to say and about how you’re about to say it.
But isn’t it true that authenticity and vulnerability are key to success in writing?
Here’s what I hesitated writing: do things that loosen you up. I’m ashamed to admit it, but some of my best stories ever were written under the influence of some alcohol (1–2 beers or a glass of wine). Here are my three personal favourites:
I Reinvent Myself Every 6 Months and So Should You
Will Education Be Pointless 30 Years from Now? — Part One
How Taking Naked Photos Of Another Woman Actually Strengthened My Marriage
They’re not less deep because of it. I’d argue that they’re actually deeper because I didn’t hold back.
I’m not saying to drink alcohol to write kids, but just figure out how you can loosen up and be your real authentic self. Physical activity really helps too.
But not everyone can do it on demand, strangely enough. You’d think being yourself in writing would be easy but it really isn’t. People who do it right succeed.
Summary
The reasons you are struggling to find inspiration for writing is one, a few, or all of those:
You’re obsessing over your stats;
You don’t write consistently every day;
You don’t write when your creativity flows best; and
You’re too stuck up on your “image”.
Work on the above four and you should “unblock”.
You can do this!
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