What I Learned After Writing 100,000 Words

byGabeTheNaabe

181 followers

Updated 4 years ago

Hey there.

Blog articles. Pieces of poetry. Philosophical works. Ideas. Freedom. Sexuality. Chapters and chapter outlines. Stuff about CBD and relationships. Posts written to market ethical products. Short stories. Posts meant to persuade representatives and protect myself from the corrupt parts of the law. Poetry from the deepest and most sincere parts of my being. Ideas I keep secret for fear they'll be stolen and used to make millions. Mental health, physical health, spiritual health, freedom, love, intelligence, feelings, the physical, the metaphysical, and more.

My largest post broke 13,700 words while my shortest poems are barely over 100. Some of my favorite posts can't be comprised of more than 1,500 words, and some of the posts I judge the most are over 4,000.

This doesn't include my 650+ Quora answers, countless notes I've taken over the years, and my work on other social media such as Instagram and Pinterest.

I've put in my effort and done what I set out to do - build the house. Or, in this case, three houses - It's A Green World, A Fine Time, and my self-titled website. And really, it all started out with me wanting to write about depression and how to help yourself if the conventional methods weren't working for you!

I decided I wanted to make some money, and I didn't see an opportunity to do so while writing about mental health and spirituality... So I created It's A Green World in an attempt to inform y'all about CBD and to sell some products. But, ironically, when I went to boost my posts they wouldn't let me, saying that "CBD is illegal in some states, therefore we can't advertise it anywhere." I was shocked and stunned, and honestly, I didn't enjoy writing about CBD anyway. It wasn't my passion.

I created A Fine Time because I wanted to write about relationships and sex, but in the back of my mind I had this nagging thought - why wasn't I writing what I wanted to write? Why wasn't I writing about mental health, creating philosophical works, and pondering spiritual matters? Was it only because I wanted to financially succeed? My 13k+ word post was posted here, and while I'm proud of my feat I didn't enjoy writing it very much.

Turns out it's quite difficult to advertise sexual wellness products, so I decided I had enough! I started working on www.gabrielmohr.com, and I'll be writing there from now on.

But, now to the point of this post. What have I learned after writing so much? What can I pass off to those who are just starting out?

1. Always write what you want, when you want. Don't rush if you don't want to. Don't improve yourself so you can write 12 hours a day if you don't want to. Don't listen to the people who say it's a great income source. It can be the best income source in the world, but if you don't enjoy making money that way then what's the point?

If inspiration strikes you once a month, great! If you feel like you want to improve yourself but you change your mind later, that's okay too! But, looking at your blank document and thinking, "here we go again" isn't the way to do it, especially in your off time. This goes very well with my next paragraph!

2. You can financially succeed by writing literally anything you want! I'm not saying this to be a motivation coach or an inspirational guru, but simply because it's a fact. If you want to make a full-time living writing about bunny tails you'll find an audience and you'll make your money! Even if they won't let you purchase PPC advertisements for your core products you can succeed through influencer marketing, and social media in general. If you want to write about spirituality and mental health (or else anything that tends to be abstract), make sure to be legitimate in promoting your products, don't try and scam others with the "take a pill and all of your pain will go away" kind of bullcrap. You can also throw your Patreon out there, just as a general rule :)

3. If you're on a budget, Pinterest group boards and Tailwind Communities are the key to building and maintaining an audience. If you aren't on a budget, hiring people to make effective advertisements and promoting them through PPC and live TV is extremely effective for building an audience.

The latter is self-explanatory, but for the former it's simple - go to www.pingroupie.com and type in some key words (if you're writing about mental health then type "mental health"). Write down the board names and the names of the owners, message them and request to join their boards. Once they've accepted you you can repin other people's pins, or very easily make your own pins with Canva. Personally, I make my Pinterest pictures with Canva on my phone, write an awesome description, add my blog post into the "website" portion, then I add them to various group boards depending on what content they want to see. I get to spread positivity and conscious information to others, AND get 15k views/month in a month-ish for free? Yes please!

Tailwind is partnered with Instagram (and Pinterest?), so it gets to offer Tailwind Communities. When we join these communities we get to share Pinterest pins, and each person who views and shares them on Tailwind contributes to your overall view count on the official Pinterest website! Even more views/month for absolutely free (with the option to upgrade and join more tribes/share more pins)? Yes please!

4. The Genesis framework is one of (if not the) best WordPress website frameworks I've ever come across. I think it's $119 for the entire package, however the framework allows for amazing customization and the ability to add a lot of different high-quality themes to the framework and make your website look very slick. If you visit any of my websites (although my self-titled website looks the best, imo) you'll see what I mean. Very slick. Very worth it.

5. You don't need to be intimidated. Are you intimidated? Okay. Log on and write one word.

Yep. One word.

You don't know how to work WordPress? Or maybe you're stuck?

Okay. Watch one WPBeginner video (great channel for WP stuff, by the way). Do something else and come back tomorrow.

Or else you can dive into it and disidentify from the beliefs that hold you back... Either way, your health matters a lot more than what you get done, yeah? :)

6. It's okay to give up. You know how we've been told to never give up? Well, keeping this mindset while we're writing/working on our websites can produce a lot of stress, especially if we take it very seriously.

If something isn't working for you, you may even be tempted to give up because, deep down, you don't want to do it anymore. That was the case with me - I learned how to give up what I didn't want to do, and I learned the difference between taking a stress break and giving up entirely. If you're writing and you suddenly lose your passion, stop - for as long as you want! Then come back later if you want to.

7. I find that doing everything I can for free before paying for advanced tools and stuff works best, save for the website theme (that's my thing, I like my websites looking good right off the bat). Advanced marketing tools, PPC, programs that help you build backlinks, all of those are great but cost some money, money that can definately be earned by using free tools, dedication, passion, love, and some elbow grease.

8. Don't pay people on Fiverr $5 to advertise your website! Look, I know it's tempting, but nothing comes out of it. If you want everything done for you (website creation and promotion for 30 days) you're looking at $2,000 :)

9. Don't be afraid to expand into other areas of creation! Real-life events, a YouTube channel, a community-driven goal, all of these things are wonderful things to do if you want to do them.

Speaking of community-driven goals, we're gunning for 1,000,000 mental heal pins on my Mental Health group board on Pinterest! We're doing this as a tribute to mental health, for those who struggle, and for those who are a shining light in people's lives. If you want to join the fun you can find me on Pinterest (the link is right under my profile picture), click the "Mental Health" board, and click the button "Request to Join!"

10. At the end of the day, I can sit here and give you all the advice in the world. But what works best for you is for you to decide. Do you want slow growth or fast growth? Do you want to write 10 hours a day or 1 hour a month? What do you truly want to write about? And why? How do you want to grow your audience? What kind of content can you see yourself producing in the future? Is this going to be a routine, or a sporadic project? Are you going to pour your heart and soul into it, or treat is as a commercial project?

You deciding these things for yourself will definately give you more wellbeing and wholeness than listening to little 'ol me ;).

Thanks for reading my article, I hope it helped a bit. If you wanna leave a comment I'll try and remember to respond to it, but I make no promises ;).

Psst... I've created more writings that I haven't added to WA's content section yet, so perhaps my 200k post will be closer than you think.