Do writers really get better with time?

Do writers really get better with time?

Just because you do something again and again, do you continue to get better or eventually plateau?

Is becoming a really good writer just about repetition and producing good work over long periods of time?

As I’m beginning my writing journey, I wonder how long you have to write for to be considered good?

Is it just based on the audience you get and eyeballs that are on you?

Is that what defines a good writer, numbers?

Or is it about more than that?

Is it about sentence choice?  And evoking emotions? And stories? And length of a career?

Isn’t it just about consistency over long periods of time?

I don’t know.

Writing is in the eyes of the beholder.

If you write stuff for a long period of time that you enjoy, then what does it matter?

I guess that depends because people commit to writing to make a full career of it.

That’s when an audience is so important because that generates views and views generate income.

That’s why it can be hard to write for a career because so much of it is about distribution

If people don’t see your writing, how are you supposed to generate the views?

This is why I think about writing as a career similar to developing a software company.

For a tech company to generate money, they need to focus on two things – a great product and great distribution (marketing, sales, etc.).

It’s the same with writing if you want to make a career out of it.

If you want to make a career out of writing, you need to figure out distribution.

The nice thing is if you spend most of your time writing, then 6 months exclusively on distribution, you can figure it out.

You can learn how to do distribution.

You can message other people your ideas.

You can comment on forums.

You can share your writing on Reddit and popular websites like Medium, Substack and Wattpad.

But it’s about committing to it for a long period of time.

Because nothing comes easy.

There is no easy pass to being great at your job

It’s about putting in the time committed to the process to do it again and again for years.

It’s hard and scary.

You can’t control any of the outcomes.

You have to produce good work again and again then share it with the world.

When you share it on the Internet, you can find enough people who have similar interests to you.

Don’t underestimate how large the Internet is.

It’s access to billions of people at any time.

It’s a massive form of leverage.

One of the keys to my distribution is going to be sharing it in other languages.

If you can do that effectively in multiple languages, you can find enough people in other countries.

Then throw all your writing on a podcast and even more people discover it.

Then you put it in video form on Youtube and other people discover it. It creates network effects because people then can see all of that and see what else you’ve done.

Your writing is a content library. It’s how Netflix first originated and now every other streaming service is trying to do the same.

Content is king.

And with writing, if you want distribution, you can just repackage the same content.

Produce work in multiple different domains of social media and you get multiple different forms of distribution.

This is the Gary Vee strategy.

He basically told the world how to distribute content at scale that makes you happy.

Live your truth.

Tell your story.

Explain how you see the world to others.

If you think you’re boring and your stories don’t mean anything, you’re wrong.

You can teach so many people about the experiences and stories you’ve had so others can learn.

But a lot of people don’t want to take that step because they don’t want to commit to writing their stories.

They don’t want to be uncomfortable.

They’re scared of judgement and other people’s opinions.

Only when we’re old do we realize how much of our life is gone and how the most valuable thing you have is time.

So use it for you.

Spending your brainpower too much on other people is not going to make you fulfilled.

Letting other people’s judgments of you control the way you live your life is not going to make you happy.

The way I like to think about it is if you do something, would the 18-year-old version of you and the 40-year-old version of you be proud of what you’re doing right now?

If the answer is yes, then no else’s opinion matters.

You just have to keep working on your craft again and again.

Because you only need one to hit.

If one of the things you write hits and goes viral, then you’ve made it.

People anoint you successful.

But that can shroud your work.

It can make you believe you’re better than you really are.

It can make you forget to commit to the process.

If you want to be great in a discipline, no matter what it is, you have to commit to being the best at that thing for decades at a time.

That’s it.

In today’s world, many people are focusing on a job or kids or the ramifications of living during Covid.

They tell themselves they’re busy.

But tell me how much time you spend on your phone.

Tell me how much time you spend on social media.

Everyone complains they don’t have time, but they do.

They just don’t commit time to themselves, because everyone can make time if it’s enough of a priority.

I got lucky.

I’ve been on my own a lot of my adult life.

You learn a lot about yourself when you’re on your own.

The more you understand the world through exploring your curiosities, the more you realize how none of this matters. 

Any one person’s life is but a blip.

Because we’re all gonna die anyway.

We all mean nothing in the grand scheme of things.

Our life is but a meaningless piece of sand in a universe as vast as a beach.

So commit to doing things for you.

If you commit to yourself and share your work with the world, the world will return it back.

But you have to do it for a very long time without any results.

And be ok with that.

Most people don’t even want to start.

At the beginning, you shouldn’t think of other people, you should focus on the craft.

Other people’s opinions of you should not be more important than your opinion of you.

Once you’ve done the craft for long enough, share your work with the world.

So who cares if you get better with time?

As long as you’re happy with what you’re doing and progressing, that’s all that matters.