Today is the ten-year-anniversary of my first blog post. Back then, I didn’t know the first thing about headlines, title case, or narrative structure. I had no clue I was going to be a writer, let alone that I would get to do it full-time. And I definitely didn’t imagine landing here, a decade later, fully intending to write not just for another ten years but for the rest of my life.
Still, somehow, I’ve managed to publish over 2,000 pieces of writing since that first post. I rarely feel all the wiser, but I’ve undoubtedly learned a thing or two along the way. To mark the occasion, I’d like to share ten of the more palpable lessons from my journey: one particular theme that emerged during each of the years that I’ve been writing.
Here are ten lessons from ten years of wordsmithing.
1. Fun will carry you farther than desire ever could.
Right after that first article, I started writing a series of technical posts on how to google. I wrote and wrote, and it grew and grew. Eventually, I decided to turn the series into a book.
I did everything myself, from the cover to the screenshots to the description. It was a terrible idea, and the book hasn’t made so much as $500 to this day. I didn’t know that books need marketing, that tech guides became outdated the moment they hit the market, or that, for the love of god, you must not design your own cover — but none of that mattered.
I just had fun. So. Much. Fun. I simply enjoyed the process of learning. In later years, I would write to achieve certain outcomes, and those projects often ended up in the dustbin sooner rather than later. Even now, after all these years, if I ever feel stuck, frustrated, or down, I can always write as long as I pick something that’s fun.
There’s a great quote from the movie The Gambler: “Desiring a thing cannot make you have it.” When you’re only writing to attain some goal, the writing itself becomes meaningless unless you actually hit that goal. When you’re writing for fun, you’ve won as soon as you start typing.
2. If you hate ghostwriting, you might be an artist.
Now, some people, they are actually good at writing towards goals. For them, writing is just a skill. They don’t mind using it to cash in, and they’ll even let others take the credit. Me? I did one well-paid ghostwriting gig, and even though the pay was stellar, I vowed to never do it again.
I hated not having my name on something I was proud of. It wasn’t a rational reaction, but that was the point: For me, writing is a calling. I want to stand for everything I’ve written, good or bad, with my name. I want the accountability and the credit, even if it means I get paid less.
There’s nothing wrong with either approach. It’s just a matter of values. Where you put your integrity on the line is up to you — and sometimes, your ego, that pesky little devil that deserves to be ignored most of the time, indeed tells you something important. Listen to your gut when it does.
3. Early in your journey, the fastest way to improve is to write more.
In your first year or two, when in doubt, just write more. You’ll learn so much from each piece you publish to the next, you almost can’t write too much. Get the big leaps from nobody to amateur out of the way. The point is to be as quick as you can in reaching the first of many inevitable plateaus where you’ll have to spend a lot of time before you can level up once more.
4. For every year you manage to call yourself a writer, you’ll feel more comfortable calling yourself a writer one year into the future.
The first pieces I’d be genuinely upset about if you deleted them happened three years into my writing journey. Until then, I wasn’t sure if writing was “my thing.”
Even after I had serious confirmation from the world that my writing was “worthy” — in the form of views, likes, shares, comments, and dollars — I felt unsure for another two years or so. But now that I’ve written for ten years, I can easily see myself floating down the river of time in the writing boat for another ten years and more.
Your identity is a cathedral made out of water. Technically, you can switch out any part any time, but it still feels precious — and some spires you can only place at the top after you’ve done the hard work of building a tower over many years.
5. You can’t write yourself into a hole — because you’ll fall into holes no matter what you do.
One year, I kept writing what I thought was some of my best stuff, but the money just wouldn’t flow like it used to. What happened? Nothing, actually. Money comes, money goes. Algorithms favor you, and then they don’t. A disconnect between your effort and your results always sucks, and the longer it persists, the more you’ll start doubting everything. Don’t.
Tough times will always find their way to you in this life. Don’t lose hope in your work, mission, or abilities. Just keep writing, and let the tide of words carry you out of the hole all on its own.
6. Everything you’ve ever written becomes a tool in your belt, and your artistic arsenal can be endless.
Essays and blogs might be my supreme discipline, but just because I’ve only written a handful of crypto news blurbs, onboarding documents, and academic research papers, that does not make those writings useless.
Whenever you need to, you can pull anything back out from your archive and pick up right where you left off. You’ll never be a master of every kind of writing, but you can still assemble an armory of structures and styles that would make Tony Stark go green with envy.
7. Words are the most powerful force known to mankind — and that’s not a coincidence.
Language is the #1 evolutionary differentiator that sets humans apart from all other species. We can condense knowledge, communicate it, even store and transmit it across generations. That’s why everything is written. Have you ever thought about this? Like, seriously: Everything is written.
Ads, movies, Youtube videos and TV shows — scripted. Music: lyrics, rhymes, and even the notes in sheet music — that’s just its own language. So is code, the thing on which literally everything runs nowadays. This is to say nothing of emails, text messages, memes, clever Instagram story captions, social media comments, and all the other ways we send trillions of word strings to each other on a daily basis. Never mind the classics, from essays to op-eds, letters, annual reports, and books, of course.
In the pandemic, all eyes turned online, and thus, all eyes turned to writing. People read. People watched. And people listened. It was our collective comfort in a dark time, and it was all thanks to the written word in one way or another. Whatever the next global crisis is going to look like, chances are, we’ll look to words once again.
Never underestimate the power of writing.
8. Sometimes, you must slow down to speed up.
The more you learn, the more refinement each next masterpiece will require. Eventually, there’ll come a time to post less or at least contain your daily efforts, and spend more time on bigger callings. Longer articles. Better threads. Books, even?
I took several big hits in my career so I could finally start writing books — the “writer writer’s” crown discipline, if you ask me — and I would do it again in a heartbeat. I might never get rich from publishing books, but at least I started walking the true path of craft and mastery I want to be on in this life.
9. Every writer needs a home and a hill.
A home is a house full of love and support for your writing, but it’s also a website you own that won’t burn down when the umpteenth writing platform goes up in flames.
After starting on my Wordpress blog, I posted my work everywhere except on my own website for years. On Medium. On Quora. On Substack. Only recently did I finally take the time to make sure most of my work is alive and well (and backed up) in a place I will always control and have access to.
That very place — my digital home — is now also the hill I want to defend till the end. If everything else goes at some point or other, fine. My blog, especially the daily blog, is my hill, and I will fight for it as long as I can hold a pen.
Every writer needs a place or practice like this. It gives you a stake in the ground to hold on to when the storms of life are about to carry you away.
10. There’s never a good time to write the stuff you care about.
Last year, I was so focused on getting one of my projects into a good financial place that I barely worked on my next book. In hindsight, it would have been a great time because now that project has collapsed anyway. Ironically, I’ve made more progress on my book this year, even though career-wise, it’s much tougher.
The truth is there’s never a time when it’s convenient to write down the very words floating closest to the center of your soul. You just have to take the time and do it amidst all the chaos we call everyday life. If you don’t, the world — all of us — might never read them — and in my book, that would be the only real tragedy in this universe.
11. Tomorrow can be a good day.
Okay, that one actually goes back to my parents. But I want it to be my epitaph, and it’s thanks to writing that I realized this.
It’s true for your practice, of course. On some days, you’ll write ten words. On others, you’ll write 1,000. But tomorrow could always be the one where a few lines of genius fall onto the page.
Even more importantly, however, it’s true for life as well. Whether you write or not, read or not, know me or not, I want you to remember:
Tomorrow can be a good day — and if that’s the only thing I can pass on after ten years of writing, it’ll all have well been worth the while.