Bulletproof method for consistency
In the past, I often participated in Inktober when I was more focused on my art.
Then I thought, why don’t I just do ‘Writober’ this year?
I want to publish more often, and the only way to do so is by doing the work.
My goal is to publish over 1,000 articles in 3 years.
Despite having self-published a book last year, I still have imposter syndrome. It’s strange, but for some reason, I can only believe I’m a real writer when I have a track record of 1,000 published articles.
Here’s my system for publishing every day in October on Medium.
To set myself up for success, I prepare the night before.
You might’ve heard from other morning writers that they never start with a blank page.
Neither do I.
The night before I write, I prepare an outline. My outline is a bullet-pointed list of all the things I want to include in the article so that the following day, when I hit the keyboard, I have all the information I need.
Inspiration strikes me at odd hours, so sometimes the outline is an analog version on a sticky note.
While I decide the night before to write about My dog has more followers on Instagram than I do, sometimes I don’t feel like writing about it when I wake up.
Whenever that happens, I go to my trusted spreadsheet, where all my articles are tracked at every stage, and I pick another topic.
Usually, I have 3 articles in the ‘Outline’ stage.
Whenever I am not in the mood to write about a certain topic, I move on to another without forcing myself to put together that story.
In my case, 3 outlines work well, but you may need only 2, or 5.
This method always works!
Once I have the topic figured out, and if I feel the bullet-pointed list is too flat, I ask ChatGPT to suggest other ideas.
Here’s the prompt I first saw in one of Corrie’s articles. This is what it looks like:
What are some unique perspectives or ‘hot takes’ or ‘contrary angles’ I could take for an article about [insert your topic or article’s title]? Give me a list.
It always works like a charm.
I’ve always been able to use some points from the ChatGPT’s output. But if nothing else, the AI output makes my brain think about other angles to incorporate into my articles.
Every day, I strive to publish something of value, not just something.
I believe in short-form content, and I can certainly deliver valuable content in a few hundred words, but I decided to keep Writober articles a bit ‘meatier’ whenever I can.
This means I keep my articles around 600 words or write until I surely provide my readers with value.
This month, there is only one goal: submitting an article to a publication every day in October.
So far, I haven’t missed a day of submission; however, some larger publications might take a while to schedule my articles.
I’m a serial experimenter, and I like to write about what I do and the results of my experiments. For free access to my previous Medium articles & insights into my experiment lab, join my Substack newsletter.