My Writing Plan for November

Nov 05, 2024

Hi there,

How is your November going?

For me, it’s been a bit of a bumpy start.

But before jumping into my November plan, let’s talk about my challenges first.

Here are 3 problems I’m aiming to solve this month.

Problem #1: I can’t pull traffic off Medium.

I got suspended on Medium, and it taught me the value of email lists the hard way.

Well, my problem is I can’t pull my readers from Medium to Substack.

Here are three reasons:

The problem might not cause trouble now, but it will be a big mess if my Medium account gets suspended again.

Problem #2: I’m a grain of dust on Substack.

On Substack, there are a lot of marketers and big-league creators.

It makes me feel like I’m a 3-year-old kid fighting Muhammad Ali.

Sure, they’re better than I am, but nothing can stop a writer who writes to fulfill an internal drive like me.

So, I might start as a grain of dust, but with the level of challenge, it excites me at the same time.

Problem #3: I don’t know what people on Substack want.

Content is king, but context is God.

When we land on a new platform, we have to learn new:

Sure, it’s hard to ask directly what people want.

It’s easy to write and receive feedback.

That’s why I have to keep writing on Notes.

I have to re-engineer my whole writing process to make it more effective.

I tried to draw many writing pipeline scenarios and found it hard when I separated what I was doing on Medium and Substack into 2 pieces.

But it’s way easier to organize if I start from notes and then turn those notes into:

So, this month, my priority will be Substack Notes.

Regarding my writing goals, I will cool down my Medium part and then increase my focus on Substack.

Here are my goals:

Deliver two newsletters a week (I used to send them every Monday—now I will send them every Tuesday and Friday).
Write at least 5 notes a day.
Write at least 1 story on Medium.

My workload is doubled, which means my writing infrastructure should be better to handle the load.

Sure, I won’t forget my punishment.

But I will start my punishment after November 11 because I’m in the research phase now and then come back to a full writing phase.

After spending over 10 hours researching, here are the tactics that help people get noticed super fast on Notes:

Write something like “I’m new on Substack—follow me, and I will follow back.”
Write something like “Accounts under 1,000 subscribers, let’s introduce ourselves.”
Copy Tim Denning’s notes and paste them.

I used to be one of those people, but my journey on Medium helped me realize it doesn’t matter how many people know you.

It matters how well people know you.

Happy writing.