Unlocking My Creative Side Over The Year
Note: Ship30for30 is a writing community I joined in January 2022. I’ve met a great deal of people, built real connections and my thoughts below are my way of being thankful for the same. This is not a paid endorsement of any kind. As a reader of my content, thank you for being there.
March 2021 - Buying a domain
In 2021 March I had this wild idea of being a writer. It seemed so obvious. Write and people will read. What I didn’t consider was that people have this epiphany literally every minute all around the world. I decided to go one step ahead - buy a domain and build a website 😎.
Writing Once A Week
It seemed fair to write once a week given the investment I made. I started off well but eventually fizzled out. Writing is a weird thing. There’s flow once you start but there’s friction to get started in the first place. I continued this weird relationship for almost a year. Writing every week rarely happened. I wrote around 15 articles for the year. The math doesn’t check out 😬.
Joining Twitter
Twitter is a great platform for ideas. In the midst of the pandemic, my only source of information was the internet. LinkedIn isn’t my favorite hub for ideas. There are more people hiding knowledge than sharing it (in my experience, not that I’m generalizing everyone).
My good friend Mihir told me to join Twitter. I did and for a month I used an anonymous account. I gave it a little more effort and started observing something different.
People share ideas on Twitter.
Some people want to help you. No money, no sales. Just help.
People are reaching financial independence doing the above.
Changing My Misconceptions - Understanding Myself
I had a few misconceptions based on my experience on other platforms. Every ‘course’ or ‘workshop’ seemed like a ‘get rich quick’ scheme to the tutor because, quite often, none of that knowledge is sustainable or noteworthy.
The one thing I always did on Twitter was check the products and business people were into. Free ideas helped me understand what I wanted to do myself (or at least refine it better). I saw people write essays and make money from it (this is what it looked like to me). Honestly people didn’t write essays - they wrote about their business with their customers in mind.
Little did I realize writing on the internet was a skill everyone needed but few had.
New plans for 2022 and Joining Ship30
With my experiments on writing and surfing ideas in 2021, 2022 was the year I decided to take more concrete actions.
Writing everyday in the month of January was my goal. I knew it would be hard, but I also knew I had to adapt to the internet. Something I wasn’t quite good at despite being able to write. That’s where Ship30for30 came in.
They mainly focused on moving away from analog writing (what we normally see in the books we read) to digital writing - writing for skimming, to add value in lesser words and keep things simple.
I had my doubts before joining but seeing the people who were already part of the community convinced me it was a risk worth taking.
Aha! Moments
This is my favourite part of the internet - when you do something and you go “aha”.
When I started adapting the lessons I learned in Ship30, I started hearing things like
Your writing is easy to read
Your essays are so helpful, thank you so much!
I read some of your essays and want to read more.
This was what the community promised would happen if I showed up and it did!
Community and Consistency
Writing alone can be hard; especially when you don’t have a consistent feedback loop of readers.
The community on Twitter wrote essays like I did and read my essays. The same of course, was expected from me. I’d be a prick to not repay the favour.
People are full of great ideas. People also love validation. By participating in each others essays and providing feedback and support a lot of us found it easy to keep writing. In fact, I find it weird if I don’t write these days.
Showing up everyday was key - irrespective of the quality of writing.
Perfectionism isn’t the solution. Producing content is.
Treat people on the internet like people you know personally and you will be amazed what the internet has to offer.
Plans for 2022
Writing everyday helped me realise I can create content consistently. Will I write everyday? Probably not. I do plan on:
Building in public - using my audience to help me build products that can help them.
Getting into podcasts - I don’t know how I feel about this but I love having conversations so let’s see how that goes
Creating Digital Products - My goal is create products that help people but don’t require me 24*7. Digital leverage is my best bet.
Takeaways For You
If you plan on creating content but don’t know where to start, writing everyday might be a great way to figure things out.
If you have a hesitancy to start writing, joining a community like Ship30for30 might help you out. Feel free to reach out to me if you have questions.
Be comfortable putting yourself out there. We consume so much, we want to create but we never do.
I’m happy to help out anyone who wants to get an idea on where to start.
One condition: You have to start. Hoarding advice with zero implementation isn’t my cup of tea.
Small Wins
I’d like to share some small wins to show you that anything is possible with consistency. It’s not difficult. I wasn’t born with these skills. I learned them and am continuing to learn them.
Hit 300 followers on Twitter in 1 month, 1 week
Wrote more than 12,000 words 1 and a half months
Made solid friendships with people on the internet by just writing
Understanding my aspirations much better than I did when doing things solo.
Thank you for being a part of my journey. Hope to see you for greater things that are en route. Looking forward to seeing yours.