August 11th, 2023 - A little less

I'm getting the feeling that I want to reduce the variety of what I'm doing with my writing. It's a common feeling.

I seem to go through cycles of adding new stuff on that I think I'll maintain, getting quickly bored or burnt out and then longing for a simpler life.

I watched a brill video from Nathaniel Drew the other day. He has this video series where he trials the daily rituals of famous artists and in this video he mirrored the routines of Vincent Van Gough. The man produced a new painting roughly every 36 hours so for Nathaniel that meant about 8 hours of work - in this case painting - each day.

Obviously that's not entirely feasible for me as I have a full time job to maintain, but the idea of that is very alluring when you're fed up with trying to maintain all these other areas. For instance, I love my short fiction blog - but there are times I regret committing to it. Maintaining a stream of content is hard. And it does remove some of the enjoyment of just reading and sharing in a more casual way. But I am glad that my blog exists because I know that as a short fiction reader, I would use it. And so you see I've managed to take myself full circle in the space of about 4 sentences to ditching the blog to saving the blog.

All the while this wanting to commit to simply writing fiction for long hours every day hangs over me. It's a common thread in my life - I am terrible at deciding what I want to spend my time doing. I want to be a doer of lots of things. Maybe instead of trying to do them all at once, I can do a little less at one time and focus on the long vision. Across a lifetime I can certainly do lots of variety, but right now in this moment and day I probably should do just one thing, and do it well. How to turn that into a practical reality?

July 26th, 2023 - A little naive

I may have been a little naive (though I prefer to say optimistic) about the amount of hard work required to start making money or building an audience from writing alongside all the other writing I'm currently doing.

I thought I could publish 2 Medium articles a week - that very quickly dried up - I've published 3 since making an account.

I thought I could land a copywriting client reasonably quickly - instead, it's taken a lot of hard work to get 3 cold emails sent out (with a load of work I've done for free) and I've had no response so far.

When I began I had a target of 100 Medium articles and 25 Copywriting cold emails sent. I could still do that, I just need to really really push to make it happen.

July 7th, 2023 - Writer mentality

I've been thinking a lot about my changing attitude to writing lately.

The blueprint for how I saw writers working pre-teens was J. K. Rowling. It was through reading the Harry Potter books that it clicked that books were something people made, they didn't just appear, and that the love I had of telling stories could actually be a thing that I do.

But Rowling's career path isn't exactly the best example to base my own own. I think it set up a lot of notions in my head that the only way to really make money as a writer is to write something brilliant and to get lucky with the interest in it. So I resigned to creating a career that could support my writing on the side. Which is what I've been doing the majority of the past years, trying to increase the creative writing output whilst maintaining a job that pays the bills.

It's only in the last year or so a few different modes of thinking have really started to take hold. 1. That it is possible to make real money from writing and 2. That writing is closely tied with personal development beyond wanting to be a better writer.

Over recent years I've leaned into writing a lot more as a way of dealing with my own anxieties, headaches and confusions - a way to bring clarity to my thoughts and to create the opportunity to rethink. And it's only in this year that I've revisited efforts to make money from writing, scoping opportunities to get good at and make money from sales copy.

As it stands my output goes into a lot of different areas. The important thing I've come to clarify is the mode that each of those areas exists within.

My daily journal - for my own wellbeing

My daily creative fiction - for my creative development and potential long term career

My writers diary - for freely logging my thoughts around this writing practice

My Twitter, Medium and Threads - for me to experiment with ideas and see what people respond to, potentially creating an income in the longer term

My blog (that short fiction site) - for me to explore and create a space in the niche of short fiction, potentially supporting a longer term income stream but mainly for my enjoyment

My copywriting - for me to make an income in the shorter term

Being aware of what each area is for I think is really helping to clarify my mindset around it, and helping me to paint a better picture of what a full "writers life" might look like.