Mission Accomplished - 100 Articles in 100 Days

This year, in mid-April, I set myself an outrageous challenge. To write 100 articles in 100 days. It was outrageous because I averaged just 2–3 articles a week, spending 5–6 hours per article.

If I were to make article writing an integral part of my routine, I have to reduce that time to 1–2 hours per article.

The only way I knew how to achieve that was to follow Violinist Hilary Hahn’s 100 Days of practice model. So I announced my crazy idea and started keeping the score on Austin Kleon’s PRACTICE to SUCK LESS grid.

My aim was threefold.

To get better.
To bring the article writing time down from 5–6 hours to 1–2 hours.
To build a system to publish every day.

I told myself, I will not worry about whether my headlines were good or not, or whether my article was plain right boring; I will aim at publishing every day.

I didn’t bother to send my article to prestigious publications. Instead, I published them on my profile first and then sent them to those publications that accepted pre-published articles (usually on the same day).

I didn’t look at the stats or monthly statements to check how much money I was making. I just kept writing.

Some days, I wrote fluently; other days, I struggled. Some days I managed to write and publish within an hour; other days, I had to stay up late at night to finish the damn thing. But I didn’t miss a day.

Now here I am, 100 days later, proud that I kept my promise to myself.

Here are some of my humble achievements:

Published 100 articles in nine publications — The Ascent, ILLUMINATION, World Traveler’s Blog, DataDrivenInvestor, Age of Awareness, The Shadow, Age of Awareness, Loud Updates, and my own publication Authorpreneurs.
62 of my articles were chosen for further distribution. All of my short stories (except one) and all of my travel articles (except one) were chosen for further distribution.
I became the top Travel Writer twice.
My follower numbers grew from 900 to 2195.
Earned a bonus check of $500 in May.
My average article writing time now is 1.5 hours.
I wrote and published my first book in one week, in the public eye, writing a daily article to share my progress.

But real achievements were different.

My confidence in myself has grown through the roof. Not only can I write for long hours, but I wrote for three and half months without breaking the chain.
I have won several friends who are my cheer squad, my motivators, and my bedrock. Without their encouragement, I would not have been able to keep going. So a big thank you to you all.
I have built myself a system to write.
I wrote what I wanted to write rather than what other people were writing. I went where curiosity took me and aimed at things, habits, and topics I wanted to learn. I am surprised that 62% of my article were curated. It meant my offbeat topics were noticed.
I chose speed over quality. Speed comes with consistency, and with consistency comes quality. I knew if I continue to take 5 hours to write an article, sooner or later, I will give up because I don’t have that many spare hours a day to write just one article. But I can certainly spare 1 -2 hours a day to write an article. Now that I have achieved speed, I will aim for quality.

Where to from here?

First, I would love to have a break.

Not a long one, just small ones.

I am going to take weekends off. After reading Abraham Joshua Heschel’s The Sabbath, I see the importance of taking time off regularly.

I would aim to write five articles a week. However, if, on certain weeks, I could only manage two articles, I will not kill myself over that.

I will be directing my focus to write books from now on.

I have already published one, the second one is in the draft, and the idea of the third one is not letting me sleep at night. I intend to write and publish six books this calendar year.

I am also going to concentrate on writing for my publication Authorpreneurs. It is a small publication to serve a small niche of readers who want to take their writing to the next level.

In the past decade, self-published authors have started dominating the writing industry, and the trend is not only going to continue but explode. If you are serious about your craft, you should consider writing books and building a business around it simply because books have longer shelf life than articles.

In Authorpreneurs, I will be sharing insights about writing, publishing, and marketing books.

Join the publication if it is the direction you want to go as well.