My October Writing Challenge

And an open invitation to join me!

Photo by Christin Hume on Unsplash

If you read my blog regularly, you may remember that back in August, I asked myself: Can I Make It As a Professional Writer?

A brief recap of that post:

• My goal was (and still is) to make a living as a writer this year.
• I planned to focus on ghostwriting content and count on my blog and newsletter for supplemental income.
• I also wanted to spend time on a screenplay, but not with the expectation of making any money from it.
• Lastly, I planned to stick with these three projects until the end of the year, and then reassess my strategy.

It’s been exactly two months since that post, and I’m reassessing a bit early. I’d like to first share with you how things have gone so far, and then tell you about the challenge that I’ve set for myself this month (with an invitation to join in!)

Two Months Down

These first two months have gone fairly well. They haven’t lived up to all my wildest dreams, but they didn’t totally flop either.

My first priorities were to get more consistent with blogging and to keep my newsletter as high-quality as possible. These were the two writing projects that were already bringing in money, so I felt like I had to give them the most attention.

I think I’ve succeeded on both counts. I’ve posted blog post nearly every day, and I’m really happy with the newsletters that I’ve been sending out. Both the blog and the newsletter have seen modest growth in income and readership.

My second priority was to start ghostwriting content. I’ve done some of this, but not quite as much as I hoped. Still, overall, it’s going okay.

I don’t want to get too bogged down in the details of the niche, but I’m focused on topics tangentially related to the law. This draws on my education and allows me to charge higher prices.

However, if you want to try something similar, I’d recommend just finding a topic that fits your background. A secret to being able to write content quickly is to focus on an area that you already know well. For me, that’s the legal world, but for others, it could be…