What I Learned From Publishing An Article Every Day For A Month

In late September of last year, I committed to a writing challenge that I had not come close to completing before: writing an article for every day of the month.

I realised that October was just around the corner, so I figured that declaring the challenge there and then was in good timing.

I even set up several rules for this challenge:

• Articles must be 500 words or greater. The point was not about hard limits but instead about not trivialising the challenge by releasing articles that were only a few words in length.
• Articles must be of a good standard. Thought must have gone into them, and they must have been proofread before publishing them.
• One article per day. Any additional articles on a day will not count towards the total. This was to avoid writing five articles in a day to post on the day or to schedule for later, and then taking five days off. The point was to write and publish every single day.
• Articles do not have to be from scratch and can include pieces from my "draft" section. This was part of a push to clear my backlog of unfinished works. However, this was down to personal discretion: I could not submit a work if only minor work was required on a draft. Really, I only picked articles that required greater than 500 words' worth of effort until completion.
• Articles cannot be rewrites of previous articles. However, I could take themes from past works to expand into articles so long as they covered unexplored ground
• Articles cannot be pay-walled. All articles must be free to access.

With the rules formulated, I started the challenge on October 1st.

I am happy to say that I completed the challenge--31 articles, one for each day of October. I completed an additional two articles towards the end of October, so for the month, I amassed 33 articles.

The challenge has been a tough but rewarding experience. So, within this article, I would like to share my experiences of writing and publishing every single day for a month, and hope that it will inspire you to write.

Let's begin:

1) Writing wasn't the hard part: concept formulation was

When I came up with an idea for an article that I was satisfied with, the words came relatively effortlessly.

However, coming up with concepts to expand into articles about was challenging...and was the biggest cause of writer's block within the endeavour.

In hindsight, I think the biggest case of paralysis-by-analysis came when I feared that some of the article ideas might have been too similar to past articles. I sometimes tried to be too out-there and unique when many of the ideas would have been well within the confines of the challenge.

Thus, I learned not to overthink the topics too much going forward.

I will close this section on with this advice: the perfect idea does not have to come to start writing. If even the slightest inkling of an idea for an article comes, it is worthy of consideration. It will be a learning experience and something to add to a body of work afterwards.

2) Writing becomes a habit when done every day

I wrote an article about writing every day. And I applied those principles to the challenge...and succeeded.

Habits are things that are done without much thought--for example, brushing teeth, washing hair, and checking emails.

Writing can become the same--something you just do.

Like with any habit, starting out is the hardest part. Adjusting to doing anything new regularly is a deviation from the norm, and instils feelings of discomfort and anxiety. However, once you're over the hump, these negative feelings fade into the background. After the first week of the challenge, I did not feel this immense resistance to writing like I felt in the beginning--I wrote, realising that I had to if the challenge was to be completed.

Personally, even though I no longer publish a piece of work every day, I still maintain a consistent writing schedule. I think the challenge forged a sense of discipline within me that I can tap into whenever I hit a slump--knowing that I did it once before and can get into the rhythm once again.

3) Image selection was one of the hardest aspects

What gets written--the main text, if you will--isn't the only component of an article.

How it gets written, how it is structured, how it is stylised (bold, italics, etc.), and which media supplements it are also important pieces of the writing puzzle.

Additionally, images are often placed in published works to make it more appealing, to which this article is no exception.

Throughout my years as a blog writer, I have spent many hours scrolling through royalty-free stock image websites finding perfect photos for my articles. This highlights how challenging and time-intensive such a task can be. And to illustrate this further: during the challenge, finding thematically appropriate images sometimes took almost as long as writing the articles themselves.

I will even admit that throughout the challenge, the time limit was stretched to the maximum many times in the struggle to find a suitable image for the article in question.

All in all, this aspect has taught me that there are multiple components to writing beyond the content and the prose. So, going forward, I will continue to keep a sharp eye out for tonally consistent images for my articles without overthinking the process.

4) I received less audience growth and article engagement than predicted

The primary forces for the challenge were cultivating discipline and personal achievement. However, I also wanted my blog to grow, and therefore reasoned that writing every day would be a means of doing that. I recognised how social media algorithms reward consistency and thus figured that being consistent would show my work in feeds more regularly.

But my expectations were a tad optimistic.

On a positive note, across the month, I saw my audience base go from around 190-195 to 205 (a ~5% increase), and a slight up-tick in article engagements (views, claps, highlights, and comments).

However; on a negative, many of my articles received zero claps, highlights, and comments...and many of my followers were gained via community engagement (interacting with other creators on their articles).

This was disheartening, but I took away two key things:

One, I realised that growing my audience further would mean writing consistently for longer.

Whilst I do not publish every single day anymore, I still try to write consistently. Following this challenge, I managed to release a few articles per week for a couple of months (and only slowed down when other responsibilities crept up). As I stated at the beginning of this section, being consistent is crucial for being selected by the algorithm, which makes it more likely for others to see and engage with my content.

Two, it reinforced what I knew about community engagement, which is that content creation is a two-way process.

If you write and publish articles and do not pay mind to the works of others, then you are leaving out half of the equation. It is like shouting at a loud social event...will anyone hear you, let alone pay you consideration?

I found that posting in publications, or writing communities, on Medium would expose my work to a larger audience more consistently. This is like trying to make friends via a common interest as opposed to the aforementioned shouting scenario.

And sure enough, my work gained more traction once I utilised these communities.

So, in sum, I learned a lot about audience growth. Generating content helps, but the constant churn is not the only thing to consider.

5) Writing every day might not be unsuitable: but publishing every day might be (for me)

I don't have plans to publish every day.

This is because:

• I want my articles to feel fresh. I do not want to force an article out simply to hit a quota. If this means more time in the oven, then so be it.
• There are more productive ways for me to improve as a writer than to simply write. I read, learn how to grow an audience, strategise, etc., which can feel more productive than brute force writing.
• I do not have the desire to publish every day. Simple as that.

Maybe this will change in the future, or maybe I will maintain this pattern of writing. All I know is that right now, I am capable of releasing at least a few articles per week, and can write something on most days of the week even if it does not enter the public. I even think writing something every single day is an achievable goal for me.

And with that in mind, I continue my writing journey and strive for incremental improvements during each session.

Summary

For every day in October, I successfully wrote and published an article. That is 31 articles for 31 days.

Throughout the process, I learned many things. Below is a summary of the main takeaways from it:

• I struggled more with idea formulation than the writing process. Once I came up with a topic, the words came with relative ease. However, until I decided upon a topic, no progress could be made.
• Writing can become a habit: like washing, and brushing teeth. The emotions of failing the challenge were stronger than the demands of the challenge itself, so I made sure that I did my bit to complete it.
• Finding the right images for an article is a lot trickier than expected. I spent a long time searching for an image that "felt right" for a particular article, and sometimes spent almost as long doing so than I did writing the content.
• I expected to receive more article engagement and audience growth. However, I realised that writing articles isn't enough: community engagement is just as, if not more, important.
• Writing every day is not unsustainable for me. However, publishing a new article every day might be. I work best on publishing most days of the work rather than all of them...but I admit this could change as I become more experienced.

Might you take up a similar writing challenge in the future?

I would love to hear about it.

Thank you for reading.

(Leading Photo by Joanna Kosinska on Unsplash)