Motivation to publish your writing

Most writers tend to be critical of their own work.

We hesitate to publish what we've written because we're worried about whether people will like it, whether it's good enough, whether there are errors that we haven't found.

Here’s a trick to motivate yourself to hit the publish button.

Imagine the alternative.

What happens if you don’t hit the publish button?

Maybe you work on it a little longer and then it’s eventually ready and you finally publish. Great.

But what happens a lot of times is that the piece never gets published.

The tragedy of unpublished writing

I was recently organizing some old files on my computer and I found some essays I wrote years ago. We’re talking tens of thousands of words.

And none of it got published.

As I was scrolling through and reading, I had two thoughts:

• Some of this is pretty good.

• Dang, it’s a shame I didn’t publish any of this.

You might be wondering, why don’t I just publish the essays now?

I could, but it’s not the same. My viewpoints have changed. My ideas are concentrated in a different sphere. It wouldn’t be aligned with the “flow” of my writing journey.

So all those drafts will just remain on the hard drive of that laptop that will probably get put in storage someday. Or I’ll sell it back to a computer store and they’ll wipe the hard drive.

What’s the worst that can happen?

What’s the worst that can happen if you hit the publish button?

Somebody will find an error.

Somebody will disagree with what you wrote.

Now, on the other hand, what’s the worst that can happen if you don’t hit the publish button?

Your writing stays in a notebook or on a computer and never makes it out into the world.

80% rule

Of course, there are limits to the “just hit send” advice.

You don't want to publish a completely unfinished piece of writing.

Use the 80% rule.

Once you have a piece of writing somewhere between 80% and 100% complete, try to have a twitchy finger on the publishing trigger.

If you find that you're obsessing over it, making minor changes, wondering if it's good enough … just hit publish.

Publishing an 80% finished piece of writing is way better than putting in all the work to get to that point and then overthinking it and never getting it out into the world.

Another trick

Break your writing into smaller pieces.

The longer the piece, the more likely you are to get stuck, bogged down, or discouraged, and then you never publish.

Instead, break the larger piece into smaller parts and publish the parts as you finish each one.

Final thought

Not enough people publish their writing.

You might be thinking the opposite: too many people publish their writing.

Yes, there are like 8 billion people on the planet now and everyone’s a content creator.

But just think about it on the micro level.

How many people are in your friend group?

Maybe 20 close friends.

30-50 more acquaintances.

Family members.

There are probably about 100-200 people who genuinely care about what you’re thinking about and what you have to say.

You have hundreds of thoughts in your head every day.

You’re constantly having a conversation with yourself.

If you write some of those thoughts down and publish them, you can move the conversation from the internal to the external.

In my experience, it’s a lot more fun to have a conversation with someone else about your thoughts, instead of just talking to yourself all the time.

Don’t know where to start?

Step one is getting thoughts out of your head and into words.

Three ways to write:

• Write by hand: grab a piece of paper and a pen and just start writing the first words that come to mind.

• Type: open a Word Doc or a Google Doc on your laptop and just start typing the first words that come to mind.

• Speak: use a transcription software like Otter to transcribe the words you’re saying out loud.

Next, time to publish.

Four ways to publish:

• Substack

• Self-hosted blog (I use WordPress)

• Writing/blogging websites (Medium)

• Social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn)

Need help? Send me a message. I can give advice based on my ten years of experience writing and publishing via all these different methods.

Happy writing!

P.S. I wrote this with Substack. If you want to start your own Substack, just click the button below. 👇