The Rest Will Take Care of Itself
By: Shaunta Grimes
Tags: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, Blogging, Ｍedium

I’m working on a project right now. A big experiment.

I have this theory that writing short pieces — fiction and non-fiction — and publishing them on Amazon could lead to a decent income stream. My goal is to make $100 a month within 90 days and $1000 a month within a year.

Maybe I’ll do more. Maybe it’ll fail completely. I honestly have no idea. This isn’t the time for me to think about that. Because I have no control, really, over the results.

My experiment might fail spectacularly. It might take off and be the coolest thing I’ve ever done.

Right now, at this early stage, all I can do is focus on what I can control. That’s my work ethic. Creating content. My willingness to take risks. My persistence. My vision.

The Perfect Day Exercise

My very favorite self-help book was written by Barbara Sher. It’s called Wishcraft. I’ve written about it before, and how it really changed my life when I was very young and my marriage was falling down around my ears.

One of the exercises in Wishcraft that I still do at least once a year, even 25 years later, is something I call The Perfect Day Exercise. Basically, just sit down and right out a perfect day sometime in the future.

Just imagine that you already have everything you want. Where do you live? Who do you live with? What do you do with your time? What kind of work do you do? Go into detail.

When you’re done, do a little analysis. What are the elements of that perfect day? How do they compare to your current life? You’re trying to identify the gaps, so that you can figure out how to bridge them.

One of my gaps is blogging. I love writing for Ninja Writers via a blog. I even blogging here on Medium. But my income from that blogging is so unpredictable and the platform is so volatile, that it is difficult to count on.

I’ve also been teaching other people to blog on Medium for almost two years. I can teach all kinds of things — my students are curated regularly, they have great habits, they know technically how to blog well. But I none of us have any control over the income that comes from it.

To bridge that gap for myself and for my students, I started thinking about Amazon. It’s much, much bigger with many times more readers visiting it every day. The pool of money that goes to readers is multitudes larger at Amazon than it is at Medium. While Amazon also has some volatility, it’s got more transparency and stability than Medium.

So — my experiment. Can something like expanded blogging work for building an income stream? My thought is that short nonfiction works of 5,000 words or so (or fiction under 10,000 words) can be created regularly and published consistently.

Starting next week I’ll be publishing one non-fiction piece and one fiction piece on Amazon every week. My goal is to keep it up for a year. There are parts of this project I can control and parts I can’t.

Three Layers of Control

Control over your work has three layers. There are things you have absolute control over. There are things you have some control over. And there are things you have no control over at all.

Putting the bulk of your effort into the things you can control, less into what you can sort of control, and leaving what you can’t control alone will help you stick with your plan long enough for it to have a chance to work. And it will give you the best chance for success.

Let’s look at all three layers.

What You Can Control

The number one thing you have control over is your own effort. Your work ethic. You might not have control over anything else in some instances, but you can always show up and do the work.

When I think about my Amazon experiment, I have control over whether I actually produce those non-fiction and fiction short pieces. The only thing that can stop me, other than something totally out of my control like illness, is me.

As long as I’m capable of working, it’s up to me to decide whether or not to do that work.

I can control my efforts to learn, too. That means reading a lot and finding other people who can help me figure out the things I don’t know how to do.

What You Can Kind of Control

I can sort of control my ability to pivot. I say sort of, even though, of course — I can pivot anytime I want to. I have less control, though, over whether a pivot is a good idea.

Even taking on this experiment at all is a thing I can only sort of control, right? Because I have no idea whether or not it will work. And at some point in the next year, I’m sure I’ll step back and evaluate and have to decide whether what I’m doing is working or not.

Am I pivoting to try something new too soon? Am I waiting too long? It’s so hard to know, and that can be maddening.

Sticking with something too long, just because it’s what I’ve decided to do, can be a big mistake. Switching gears too soon and too often can undermine my efforts. Ugh.

Another thing I can sort of control is making sure my work keeps improving. Of course, I have total control over my willingness and desire to improve. But I have less control over whether I actually am getting better. I can only try to do my best.

What You Can’t Control

I can’t control whether or not people buy, read, or enjoy my work.

That’s hard. It’s so hard. I want to control it. I want to be a bestseller, damn it. I want everyone to love me and my work and all my stories. But it’s not up to me. Once I put my work out there, either it’s going to hit or it’s not.

All I can do is go back to the beginning and start all over again with what I can control — which is the work.

The Rest Will Take Care of Itself

So. We can control our work. We can sort of control what we do with it. And we can’t control at all whether or not other people want to read it.

If we focus on the work and on what we have at least some control over, then I really believe the rest will take care of itself. Eventually. It might take some time. It might take some hard pivots and difficult decisions. It might take longer than I want it to.

But eventually the rest will take care of itself.