When I set up a writing tracker and log book at the end of last year to chart my progress during 2020 I hadn’t anticipated how one particular spread in the journal would make me write every day. It wasn’t deliberate at all, I just included that page because I wanted to record which projects I worked on on a daily basis. It’s not even a neat, Pinterest-friendly spread. I just scribble inside a rectangle when I’ve worked on a project that day.
I hadn’t anticipated how I’d feel if there was a gap in the grid. If I hadn’t worked on my novel for a day. Or even, horror, for two days. I had pride. And wanted to make that column a solid mass of scribble. But I also didn’t want it to become a stick to beat myself with. So I decided to keep it simple. I’d write for between ten and thirty minutes a day on my novel. Once I’d done that I could reward myself with a scribbled in rectangle!
It’s a similar system to when, a number of years ago, myself and a group of writers, would aim to write one hundred words a day. Only one hundred. If we wanted to write more we could - but that was the minimum we had to aim for. And it worked. A regular writing practice became established.
I’ve achieved quite a bit during my time online in the last decade. The one thing I’ve struggled with, however, is fiction. I started my online presence in order to create a brand for myself when I pitched agents with my novel. But lack of confidence and fear manifesting in procrastination and a focus on other projects on and offline meant the novel never got completed.
So this is how I’m going to do it. By writing every day for between ten and thirty minutes - and recording my progress on my YouTube channel. There’s nothing like a bit of accountability to make you pick up the pen or open your laptop!
I made this video to chat about why I decided to undertake this project and I also reveal how many words I managed to write, using this process of up to thirty minutes, during the course of a week.
I’ll update you again in a month!
Over the weekend I sent out a newsletter which opened with a short anecdote about my YouTube channel. The subject of the newsletter wasn’t actually about YouTube at all but I received an email back from one of my lovely subscribers asking what had happened with my YouTube journey. She said: It feels almost like we followed you on your journey then when you arrived at the Emerald City, you left us outside the gates.
I completely agreed. I’d stopped talking about YouTube once I reached monetisation. I’d shared a lot of what I was going through including my analytics and how close I was getting on my Instagram Stories - but then just didn’t carry that narrative on.
My YouTube journey has dominated my life for a year. I was thinking about it a lot; anxious that I would not reach the relevant requirements and then, when I did, I was worried about being rejected and monetisation would not be allowed for my channel.
So I thought I’d explore why I stopped talking about my YouTube channel in this blog post, as well as looking at my YouTube journey so far.