What Happened When I Wrote For 105 Days In A Row?

I never thought I’d be writing a post like this

I wrote my first story for Medium on 30 October last year. That means I’ve written for 105 days in a row. Today is day 106. When I wrote my first story I didn’t have any expectations of reaching the 100 mark.

I lot has happened in that time, most of which I’ll cover here.

Why didn’t I write this post after 100 days, as that’s a nice round number? The truth is that I was planning to but totally forgot about it. I was enjoying writing so much that it just slipped my mind. It’s funny how time passes so quickly when you’re having fun. It’s also funny how the number of articles you’ve written climbs so quickly when you’re having fun.

So that’s my first takeaway — I didn’t realize that writing could be so much fun. In high school, my English teacher described my writing as “average at best”. Maybe she was right, but it didn’t fill me with confidence and make me want to explore writing further.

I had the same experience with reading at school. The books were so terrible that the experience put me off reading for many years.

But here I am, reading and writing far more than the average person.

My second takeaway is that consistency matters. If I write every day I gain momentum. If I stopped for a few days I’d likely find it tough to start again. I’m the same with other things in life, like exercise. I find it easier to exercise a little every day than a few days a week. The breaks just kill my momentum.

Takeaway #3 — I can make money writing. That may sound obvious to some of you, as there are many freelance writers on here. But for me, this is quite a novelty. Not so much that I can earn money from writing, but that I can earn money writing about anything I want.

I’ve made money writing Kindle books in the past, but that somehow seems very different from just writing posts like this. A book needs to be planned. Today I went for a tea (no coffee today) and decided I wanted to write this post, so here it is. No planning is needed. Hopefully, it will pay for my tea.

I suppose you want to know how much I’ve earned in 105 days and how many posts I’ve written.

So far I’ve had 139 articles published. Another one has been submitted to a publication. So that’s 140 altogether.

As for earnings, I didn’t start earning until 12 November last year. So I’ve had 105 days of writing and publishing and 92 days of earning. In that time I’ve earned $1115.14.

That’s equivalent to $10.62 a day over 105 days, or $12.12 a day if I only count the days since I joined the Medium Partner Program.

To achieve this, I write for an average of around an hour each day.

Either way, I think it’s a good start but nowhere near a living wage. I’m not aiming for a living wage though, so anything I earn here is a bonus.

The next takeaway (#4) is that my confidence as a writer has grown in such a short time. At the start, I worried about what others would think about my writing. I’ve now learned that it doesn’t matter what they think. Some will like it, some will hate it. I can’t control that. No matter how good or bad your writing is, you’ll also get people that don’t appreciate the work you put in.

I just write what interests me. If it interests a few other people then that’s great. If no one at all likes a particular story, that doesn’t matter either. It was still writing practice and valuable feedback.

I’m aiming to get to 200 stories by sometime next month. My output has increased this month, so things are going well. I published 38 stories in both November and December. This dropped to 34 in January. This story will be my 28th this month. If I keep up this rate I’ll publish 65 this month. That would be quite an achievement for me.

I’m grateful that I live in a world where I can earn extra money from writing at home or from cafes. It’s a real blessing. I hope you all also appreciate the amazing times we live in.

That’s it for now. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.