In 2020, I wrote my first blog post on Medium.

I remember writing the post at my parents’ home computer and staring at it for a week, editing pretty much every section 3-4 times. I was fresh out of college, I had no idea what I wanted to do for a living, and I thought that maybe “being a writer would be cool”.

I remember flying out to California for a week to train and finally just hitting publish on the article while sitting on a mattress on the floor in a guy I barely knew’s house.

Then, we waited. That first article performed pretty well, actually, especially for a first article, and it motivated me to keep writing.

I didn’t know it at the time, but starting to write on the internet would eventually help me build my dream career, meet my dream woman, and build the life that I had always wanted.

I built a job that didn’t exist thanks to the internet, a writing habit, some good decisions and investments, and a tiny bit of dumb luck.

Today, I want to give you a simple 3-step process so that you can try to do it too.

First, you need to throw ideas into the world.

As someone who is not much of a planner and is more of a doer, this was kind of the easy part.

At the beginning, I didn’t actually have a plan for what I was trying to build when I started writing. I just wrote online, worked hard, and tried to put out as many posts per week as I could.

I lacked direction, but I was also at a phase in the game where I didn’t know enough about the game to take direction. Any direction I would have chosen would have likely been ill-informed about both the digital writing landscape and myself as a writer.

This is why, as a newer writer, you don’t want to overthink. You want to overdo it a little bit.

You will probably experience writer’s block, burnout, and maybe even the feeling that you want to quit, but this is just part of figuring out. If you manage to get through the first 2 years of writing and don’t feel like you want to quit even once, let me know what your secret is.

I would say that for the first 2 years that I wrote online, I was figuring things out. Experimenting. Trying.

Mostly, I was failing.

But I was consistent at failing, and that led me to the next step of my journey.

After you get your bearings, it’s wise to specialize.

Choosing to specialize — basically choosing to write a certain kind of content about a certain niche — does not mean that you’re stuck there forever.

I started writing about writing in 2024. I started writing about Jiu-Jitsu in 2023. I consistently share my ideas on other things online.

I just found that writing and Jiu-Jitsu are the 2 things that I always seem to have something to say on and the 2 things that I actually enjoy enough to build a business on.

This is kind of like being a young athlete.

When you’re young, it’s good to play as many sports as possible. Learn how to compete. Learn to train. Learn to love sports for sports’ sake.

But when you get older, if you’re serious about being an athlete, you will pick one sport and make that your focus.

We want to do the same with our writing.

Eventually, you’ll realize that writing is not just about writing.

In the beginning, I was obsessed with optimizing my content output.

I saw people like Tim Denning and Nicolas Cole and thought that the only way I could make a living with writing was to send 4 million emails and write 15 million posts.

But as I grew both my business and myself personally, I realized that a lot of the things that I thought I was supposed to do were wrong for the goals that I had for myself.

• Putting out 6 Medium articles per week

• Answering Quora answers every day

• Posting Instagram and Twitter threads every day

None of this was going to lead me to the life I wanted.

I realized that I spent a lot of time on “doing content” and not enough time on the business side of, well, the business. This is how I became a writer who, in 2024, put out more than 100 newsletters, probably 300 social media posts, wrote a book, created a course, and still didn’t make 6-figures with his work.

I had the idea of what to do, but I couldn’t yet execute it.

In 2025, I started to change how I worked and how I wrote.

And during this phase, most of year 3-4, I also started to notice that a lot of good was coming from my writing that actually had nothing to do with money.

I changed how I thought a lot. Not just about work, but the world.

It’s funny because I was beginning to shift my thinking about writing, and I met Mayra through Twitter. This was 2023. We were on “Jiu-Jitsu Twitter” together. My writing landed me on that side of Twitter, and it was in that community that I found the woman who, 2 months ago today, became my wife.

It’s a bit of a crazy story that we will maybe save for another day, but the lesson is that writing, for me, has brought me a lot more than just a career or a personal brand.

It’s brought me literally the most important person in my life.

Closing Thoughts

I did not start writing for any reason other than that I kind of liked it and that I thought it would be a good job for me to do while being able to still train Jiu-Jitsu every day.

When you strip it down, the goals were:

• Freedom

• Self-expression

• Creativity

In that time, my writing “career” has gone through many iterations.

• I was a struggling freelancer, slamming 2-3 cold brews a day and juggling 10-12 clients

• I was a rookie ghostwriter, writing articles about things I didn’t understand (namely, dating, at the time) and building the early stages of my newsletter on the side

• I was a more experienced but burned-out ghostwriter. Juggling 10ish clients and on pace to make 6 figures, but not happy.

• I was a struggling writing entrepreneur, writing 3+ newsletters and half a dozen social posts per week, and making tens of dollars to do so.

• I met my wife through connections in the community I built through writing.

• Now, I use writing for every aspect of my business. Whether it’s through teaching, instructionals, my book (and future books), my newsletters, and my social content.

Writing helps me make a living. It helps me think better.

It’s fair to say that writing is the basis of everything.

It’s not just a skill for me, it’s the foundational skill of a business that has changed my life and given me the ability to provide for my family.

Is it easy? No. Is it stressful? Very much. Can everyone do it? I’m not sure.

But I do know that for me, there has been no more fulfilling aspect of my life.

Writing and communication are pretty much the main skills I developed during Jiu-Jitsu that I am confident will outlast my competition years.

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This week, I wrote a social media post about leg locks.

In the section on defense, I meant to write about how one should “put weight into their opponent”, and for whatever reason, I wrote that you should “put weight into your apartment”.

I don’t know why I did that, but I did.

So far, 10.3 thousand people have seen the post.

Another time, a few years ago, I wrote my first ebook on Amazon, called How to Make Stage Fright Your Bitch. I reached out to a Pakistani guy on Fiverr to make the cover for me.

The fact that he’s Pakistani is important because English was not his first language.

When I messaged him to tell him what I wanted the cover of the ebook to be, I left out the “i” in stage fright.

While this is unfortunate as is, the real disappointment is that I didn’t realize that I’d made a mistake until about 2 hours after the book was launched and I’d blasted it all over social media.

I didn’t have much of a following at the time, but still, it was my first attempt at launching a paid product, and I completely botched it.

Or so I thought.

Today, we’re talking about typos, mistakes, and what to do when you make one.

I make mistakes all the time.

Of all the different things I know I have to improve on as a writer, making typos or silly mistakes is the biggest, easiest thing that I would fix.

The worst part?

There’s a simple solution to this problem. Slow down.

If you’re working too fast, not editing, and trying to just push out as much work as possible, you’re going to slip up. This is how you tell people that they need to put their weight into their apartment, not their opponent. This is how to release a book cover that has a spelling error on it.

This is how you make yourself look stupid.

But I guess the main point of all of these typos is that when I compare them to some of the biggest failures of my career in Jiu-Jitsu (getting armbarred in 20 seconds, nearly losing my apartment because I was so broke, taking damage in tournaments for free), spelling a word wrong isn’t really that bad at all.

Mistakes are a part of life. They’re a part of work.

We should always aim to be as perfect as possible, but if you want to write well and write a lot, just remember that sometimes, you might make a mistake.

Good writing with a typo is better than bad writing.

I read a book a few weeks ago about sports coaching that had a couple of typos in it.

Here are some other typos that are famous in literature:

• The Holy Bible (1631): For this printing of the bible, London printers omitted the word “not” from the Seventh Commandment, resulting in a Bible that commanded readers, “Thou shalt commit adultery.”

• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: In early UK first editions, the list of school supplies on page 53 features a double-entry error: “1 wand” is mysteriously listed twice.

• The Hunger Games: In the first edition, second hardback printing, a quote by Haymitch on page 117 reads, "You've got about as much charm as a dead slug, say Haymitch,” utilizing an incorrect pronoun.

My point here is that typos are common. Don’t let them allow you to change how you talk about yourself, think about yourself as a writer, or stop you from working altogether.

It might sound dumb, but I know so many writers who give themselves a hard time over these mistakes. As someone who’s worked in the field, making consistent typos was actually cause for losing your job.

But that doesn’t mean you should spend all your time worrying about it.

Closing Thoughts

One of my favorite online writers (I think it was Tim Denning, but I can’t remember for sure) wrote a post a few years back that went mega-viral online and had a typo.

Lots of people commented on the post, pointing out the typo. As a writer, there is no more embarrassing and annoying experience than people constantly pointing out the mistakes in your work — especially once you know they exist.

But this writer (again, I think it was Tim, but I’m not sure) did something interesting when the recieved these comments.

Instead of updating the post (something one can do with Substack or Medium), he chose to leave the typo in.

Why?

He said, “I think this is a good opportunity for people to learn that writing can still prove a point and make a difference, even if there are small typos in it here or there”.

In the online writing game, especially, it’s imperative that you put out a lot of work so that you can maximize your reach and grow your business. Typos are going to happen.

Just remember that when they do, you still are on the right path.

That said, I do hope there isn’t a typo in this article. That would be nice.

Can you find one?

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I started using AI to help me with organization in my business last summer.

It started with small things, and immediately, it escalated. It was like an addiction.

I’d ask for help organizing an article, I asked it to help me build my LinkedIn content calendar, and I used some of what it gave me and discarded the rest. I did this for a few months, and for a while, it was nice.

It felt like I had my own digital assistant.

Then, it felt like my assistant stopped assisting me in making my business better, and it started making me stupid. All of a sudden, I wasn’t able to work as deeply, I was struggling to come up with writing ideas, and I was getting “burned out” of writing despite hardly putting out any work beyond what I considered to be normal.

And so, I stopped using AI for a while until I could find a middle ground.

Here are the 3 easiest ways to stop AI from making you worse at what you’re good at.

Never allow AI to do tasks that yield a crappy version of your knowledge work.

I write about Jiu-Jitsu, and I write about writing.

While AI can help me organize a content calendar, make a to-do list, or even answer my silly questions about how to get the best performance out of my new Mustang, I never allow AI to do any of my writing for me.

I’m currently working on 2 big digital creative projects:

• A writing-focused ebook (it’s about halfway done!)

• A new online BJJ platform

While AI helps me organize the ideas I have for each of these projects, I never allow it to do the work that requires my specific knowledge.

This isn’t just because I don’t want to be replaced by an AI overlord, it’s because I want to remain competent (and I want to get better) at the work that only I know how to do.

Stop using AI to make your learning “too easy”.

Sometimes, when I’m reading a more challenging book, like Walden or Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I’ll use my AI to help me understand what I’m reading.

But I’ll never use AI to give me the main points of some complicated one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old book when I can sit down myself and read it.

AI can be a learning assistant, but it’s not your book. It’s not your teacher. It doesn’t do the hard work for you.

It doesn’t build your knowledge; it just helps.

One simple way that I try to keep myself disciplined with this is that I won’t use AI until after I’ve read the entire chapter of a book or an entire section.

Don’t miss the best part of learning because you’re obsessed with getting your robot to do it for you.

Learning needs to be hard for your brain’s capacity to grow. Don’t run away from challenges. Think of reading or studying as your “mental gym”. Think of AI as steroids.

It can help you get the thing done, but it doesn’t replace the hard work that you need to do yourself.

Have periods where you disconnect completely.

I recently bought a Brick, and it’s one of the best tools I have gotten for making myself less stupid.

I’m not sponsored by them (Brick, if you’re reading this, I do take bribes), but the Brick is basically just a really simple tool that you can use to block yourself from the apps that you overuse.

Typically, once per day, I:

• Brick myself out of all social media

• Brick myself out of my email

• Brick myself out of AI

It just reinforces the idea of valuing your focus, which, if you’re a writer or some sort of knowledge worker, is essential.

Closing Thoughts

The real point of today’s article isn’t really even about AI.

It’s about focus. It’s about how overusing AI (or really just overusing any tool — particularly digital tools) can take away from your focus and make it much harder for you to find those deep thoughts that will really push you into being the writer that you want to be.

“Efforts to deepen your focus will struggle if you don’t simultaneously wean your mind from a dependence on distraction.” — Cal Newport, Deep Work

You don’t focus better by just “trying harder” to focus better. You can’t will yourself to brilliance or profound ideas.

The real way that you improve your mind and your ability to learn more effectively is by creating an environment where deep thinking is celebrated.

I chose AI today because it’s something that I’ve struggled with recently, but we could equally be talking about social media, video games, or anything else that distracts you from the work you should be doing.

There’s nothing wrong with AI or any other distraction or escape, but just remember that that is what it is: a distraction or an escape.

It will not give you the results you want. The only way you get those is by showing up every single day, getting in the trenches, and putting in the work.

So here’s to putting in that work and building the life that you want.

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When I use social media too much, my brain feels fried.

It’s kind of strange to feel this way when you think about it because, well, when you’re scrolling, you’re not really thinking at all. You’re doing the opposite of thinking (you’re being mindless), and yet you feel like you’ve been thinking important thoughts and making hard decisions all day.

I particularly notice it when I try to read or write after nuking my attention span for a day or 2. The worst writing sessions typically happen after a long day in an airport, staring at my phone. It’s impossible to appreciate good literature when you’re scrolling through time.

The only way to make your brain stronger is to use it. It’s like a muscle in that way.

It’s honestly a little ironic for writers.

I write a lot of things that I share on social media, but if I consume too much on social media, I can’t do it well anymore.

On the flipside, I do the stuff that I’m supposed to do:

• Limit screen time

• Stop asking AI to think for me

• Walk daily

• Read

• Meditate

And pretty much everything else that seems right, I might not write viral hits overnight, but at the very least, the feeling in my mind that I can produce “depth” returns.

Let’s talk about creativity, problem-solving, and the internet.

You actually need “writer’s block”.

Feeling like you’re not able to write is just part of writing.

It is a part of our craft.

It’s a part of anything.

In anything you do, you’re supposed to get stuck sometimes. You’re supposed to feel like you don’t know what’s next. For clarity to have value, we need periods without clarity. It’s good to feel lost sometimes.

I think the problem is that a lot of people make those periods of no clarity their entire personality. People romanticize having writer’s block just as much as they romanticize being writers.

Although it’s a little uncomfortable, it’s not really remarkable. Pretty simply, anyone who does anything is going to struggle at some point. That’s what makes something difficult worthwhile.

The point is that every writer has that period where they’re like, “What the heck am I supposed to talk about?”

Every writer also has the inverse period, where they’re like, “I know exactly what to talk about.” That’s probably why you became interested in writing in the first place.

The key is to remember that both of these aspects of our craft are a part of the process.

When you feel lost, you have the freedom to attempt.

Feeling lost and confused about what to do next is the antidote to burnout.

See, at times, my writing is very structured. A little too structured. I’m supposed to do The Grappler’s Diary on Mondays, this newsletter on Wednesday, back to The Grappler’s Diary on Friday, and a few social media posts and work on whatever project I plan to release next done throughout the week.

It’s a pretty set schedule.

It doesn’t change very much unless I choose to change the schedule or remove something.

And in that lies the beauty.

If I do make a decision like removing something (recently, I’ve not been writing much on social media and have been focusing more on my newsletters), I feel lost for a bit. I stagnate for a bit. I try to force myself to do anything except for what I’ve been doing.

Recently, in Jiu-Jitsu, I’ve been thinking and writing a lot about the constraints-led approach, and in creative work, constraints are an essential aspect of overcoming “blocks”, recreating depth, and improving our ability to work.

So I guess my point is that when you have those periods where you don’t know what to do, worry less about what you need to do and focus on what you can’t do.

Constrain yourself so you can solve your problems in new ways.

Closing Thoughts

When I first started writing, I didn’t write for anyone.

I did this for so long that nowadays, even though I’m lucky enough to have a few subscribers who read my work, I write like no one is going to read what I say. I don’t actually think about it until after the fact.

The truth is, I don’t think it’s fair to the reader to try to anticipate what I can do for them. It’s not the best way to write, at least for me.

Good writing is a strange balance.

It’s about writing something that makes both you and the reader happy. It’s about telling a story but also solving a problem. It’s about being human, but also being ambiguous.

We as writers can hide behind our words, but they also reveal, in a way, who we are.

That’s a scary thought, but it’s also a responsibility.

Use your responsibility wisely.

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As much as I love writing online, what made me fall in love with writing online was actually reading online.

Long before I was posting articles myself, I was lurking on Medium, reading every Twitter thread my favorite writers ever posted, and subscribing to dozens of newsletters.

Doing this helped me learn a lot about the digital writing game and how I could become a better writer. It also helped me realize what traits I needed to cultivate as a digital writer to be more consistent, write better stories, and hopefully, make a little bit more money.

These are the 5 traits that every successful digital writer and entrepreneur has.

They’re obsessed with improvement.

I’ve been down and back on the self-improvement rabbit hole too many times.

I’ve read all the books, done the cold showers and saunas, tried tons of different meditation routines, and then burned it all down and started over again.

Why?

Because I want to be a little better than I used to be. I want to be stronger, faster, more thoughtful, and more focused.

As much as I try to embody these qualities, the writers whom I look up to seem to do it way better. They’re more focused, more intelligent, and more thoughtful — or at least, that’s how I see them.

Either way, the best writers have a fundamental obsession with improvement, both in their lives and in their craft.

They’re constantly learning.

The hardest part about writing is not sitting at the keyboard and trying to make a story work.

This is hard, yes, but it’s not the hardest part about what we do.

The hardest part about writing is sitting at the keyboard, going for a walk, or reading a book, and just trying to figure out what exactly you’re going to write about. Trying to make a story work is hard, but trying to conceive of that story is 10 times harder.

So how do you do that?

You need to expand your knowledge. You need to learn and study.

To be a better writer, you don’t want to sit and wait for ideas to come to you. You need to go out into the world and find those ideas. You need to put in the work, both in writing and in idea generation.

They’re studying trends, but maybe not following them.

The trend nowadays is to use AI to think for you.

Fry your ability to have deep thoughts by putting shallow ones into a cursor on a screen that spits back dopamine and just organizes your thoughts.

My favorite writers are against using AI to write, but many of them still use it.

But it’s not really about whether AI helps you organize articles or think, it’s about the fact that they’re not just diving straight headfirst into replacing the supercomputer that is their brain with a shallower one that is the little app on their phone or computer.

It’s even deeper than that, really.

It’s about not mindlessly following all of the trends you see in the world today. It’s about at least trying to think for yourself.

They put themselves out there.

I’ve always loved competing in sports. Just competing in general.

When I played wiffle ball with my friends, I couldn’t just play for fun in the yard. I couldn’t just try martial arts to learn self-defense; I had to try to compete at the highest levels of it.

Writing is the same for me. It’s similar to being “the man in the arena”, but instead of the arena being a little mat or a sports field, it’s hitting the “publish” button at the end of your articles or posts.

Writers have to put themselves out there, constantly.

You have to test ideas. Stories. Formats. Business models.

To be a writer is to risk being seen as either a clown or a genius. The risky part is that, unlike a live performance or a speech, the person who’s judging is sitting on their phone or their computer or under a tree in a park with your book.

And when the thought of a stranger judging you gives you anxiety, think about how amazing it is to be on the stage.

They fail.

I only really only know about the failures that my favorite writers have talked about.

I’ve had many failures in my career as a writer. Times when I couldn’t get clients. Times I’ve tried to sell things that I couldn’t. The time I published my first paid ebook, I literally had a spelling error on the cover page.

Mistakes happen. Failures happen.

Kafka failed to overcome his crippling anxiety and hardly published any work in his lifetime. Bourdain published several books before Kitchen Confidential became a wild success. Charles Dickens was obsessed with theatre but couldn’t write a play that people wanted to see. Stephen King was so high that he doesn’t remember writing Cujo.

These are some of the authors that I’ve found to be inspirational over the years, and yet they failed in so many areas.

Failure is part of the process. Never forget that.

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I first started writing in 2020.

I wrote mostly for myself for months at first, but eventually, the desire to publish became too strong. I went from writing drafts on my Medium account to submitting to publications and committing to at least 1 article per week every week for 6 weeks.

I haven’t gone more than a week without posting since then. It’s been nearly 6 years.

But at first, no one would read anything I wrote, and I had to find other ways to earn money with my words.

At the time, the easy thing to break into was social media copywriting, so as a 22-year-old with a Communications degree, a Medium blog with 32 followers, and a burning desire to prove that I was a “writer”, I started trying to get clients on Fiverr, UpWork, and word of mouth through my friends and family.

This was my first writing business.

But I made a lot of mistakes during this time, and I struggled a lot to scale my business. As I transitioned to ghostwriting, these mistakes followed me.

Today, I’m going to tell you the biggest mistake in the writing business, and how I’ve been working to fix it.

My biggest mistake.

I was always terrified to charge more money.

What was I scared of?

I guess, in hindsight, I was just scared that people would say “no”.

But you know what’s funny? People always say no. They say no, even when you feel you’re charging too little, because sometimes it’s not the right time for them. They say no when you add 10 dollars to the price.

So my biggest regret in my writing business was charging too little, to the point where I couldn’t actually earn a living with writing.

I was uncomfortable talking about money, I was nervous about it, and I was scared to ask for it.

This isn’t going to turn into one of those self-helpy “you must ask for the money you seek” kind of things, but there’s definitely some benefit to that.

I didn’t learn this from the writing business; I learned it from Jiu-Jitsu.

Let me explain.

What makes you different?

I’ve talked a lot about how writing has helped my Jiu-Jitsu, but there’ve also been some benefits the other way around as well.

See, in writing, you have to think a lot. In Jiu-Jitsu, you have to just do it. You have to be active. Mobile. Asking for opportunities.

I always hear people say “closed mouths don’t get fed”, and I wish I heard this more in the writing community from people who want to earn money.

A lot of times, the reason you’re not making money isn’t that you don’t deserve it; it’s because you haven’t asked enough people to find your crowd yet.

I don’t know if “anyone” can become a great writer, but the thing holding you back is probably not your writing skills alone.

You do need to practice your craft, but you also need to put yourself out there enough in order to sell your skills at your craft.

Ask yourself:

Why am I different from any writer who is just as experienced or skilled as me?

It’s not about how good you are at writing, how prolific you are, or how many words per minute that you can type. It’s about what you can do for a client or customer.

How Jiu-Jitsu helped me build my first 6-figure business.

In 2025, I made 6 figures from Jiu-Jitsu education alone.

• Writing

• Teaching

• Books

• Online courses

• Merchandise

In order for this to happen, I had to have a few key things go right for me.

I had to get lucky. I had to be competent. I had to build something worth buying. I had to be unique.

And finally, I had to be willing to charge more of a premium for my products and services than I had in the past.

I increased pricing for my seminars. I increased my rate for lessons.

To build a business that actually can pay your bills, not just generate income, it’s not just about selling things people want to buy. It’s about creating experiences at varying tiers.

• For $15, someone can buy my book

• For $79, someone can watch a video course of my best BJJ moves

• Private lessons

• Seminars

And the price keeps going up as I offer more and more personal access to me and my knowledge about this random little sport that I fell in love with 11 years ago.

Closing Thoughts

I’m just sharing the business model that I’ve been using for writing and Jiu-Jitsu over the last few years, but I didn’t invent this strategy.

Like any artist, I stole it from people who are smarter than me and adapted it to fit my own situation.

Because the reality is that back in 2021 and 2022, when I first started this creator/athlete/writer business lifestyle that I’ve been living since then, there wasn’t really anyone in the martial arts space doing exactly what I was doing.

I’ve learned a lot from some notable people in Jiu-Jitsu, like Keenan Cornelius and Nick “Chewy” Albin. I’ve also read and studied a lot from some of the top digital creators from the last 10 years, like Tim Denning, Nicolas Cole, and Dan Koe. I also try to stay true to people whose work has inspired me over the course of my life in non-business ways, like Anthony Bourdain and Friedrich Nietzsche.

And when you put everything that I’ve read together with everything that I’ve experienced, you end up with the business and work that I have here.

Hopefully, today you were able to learn a bit of what I wish I had known when I first started.

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I didn’t fall in love with writing because of the way people talk about the craft.

It’s usually pretty overly romanticized, often incorrect in my experience, and usually pretty unhelpful.

I fell in love with writing because I love stories, I love the challenge, and I like the process of trying to get better at it. Writing well requires discipline, hard work, and it’s a lifelong battle to improve at it.

So when I find good writing advice — or at least writing advice that I keep going back to — I try to remember it.

Here are 5 pieces of writing advice that I always come back to when I’m trying to find inspiration.

Write drunk, edit sober.

This isn’t the original interpretation of this piece of advice, but I’m really a huge drinker, period.

It’s not about drinking, about the point.

Even if you don’t actually get hammered when you write, good writing sometimes starts raw.

Sometimes, the passion-fueled ramble that starts as a note on your phone on the subway is going to become a really strong piece of writing. It just typically needs some refinement.

Good writing is not about literally being drunk; it’s about being passionate and expressing yourself.

Just make sure you also edit and refine to make it good.

Simply show up every day.

I’ve had periods of intense discipline with my writing, and periods where I’ve struggled to stay consistent.

Periods where I feel “uninspired”. March actually was a really tough time for me as a writer.

What I’ve found is that for the most part, inspiration is more about consistency than anything actually happening. Ideas don’t strike me in the middle of the night 99% of the time.

Ideas strike when I wake up and write in my journal. They strike when I go for walks every day. They strike when I’m constantly reading interesting books.

Writing is just as much about showing up as it is about writing.

When you write for everyone, you write for no one.

In my other newsletter, The Grappler’s Diary, I write for people who are interested in improving at Jiu-Jitsu and the way they think about Jiu-Jitsu.

In this newsletter, I write for people who are interested in getting better at writing, making a living with writing, and using writing to improve their lives. Every article I write here touches on one of those main ideas.

If I just write articles about “writing” and throw things together, it’s hard to really gain any practical insight from it.

If you’re struggling with writing ideas, try thinking of specific problems you have had in a specific endeavor.

Today’s article, for instance, was for the writer I was when I first started out — someone who consumed a lot of content on the craft but wasn’t sure what was helpful and what wasn’t.

You need to do the non-writing stuff to write well.

To me, my writing habit and my Jiu-Jitsu practice are very similar in levels of ways.

I love to write, and I love to train Jiu-Jitsu.

In Jiu-Jitsu, I have to do things off the mat so that I can train Jiu-Jitsu more, better, and for longer. I have to do cardio so I don’t gas out. I have to do strength training so I’m strong and don’t break down. I have to eat well, sleep, and recover so I stay fit and healthy. I have to study the sport and study practice design so I can keep learning and growing on the mat.

In writing, thankfully, the extra work that you have to do is a bit less physically demanding, but it’s still there. You need to read. You need to have conversations. You need to go for walks. You need to live in order to write.

Doing this stuff makes good writing easier.

Writing, at times, is miserable.

Another way that writing is like training is that sometimes, the practice sucks.

It’s not fun. Growth is slow or non-existent. Writing articles to “stay consistent” feels more like checking boxes than anything else. Editing feels exhausting. AI is getting so good anyway, so what’s the point?

This quote from George Orwell paints a fair picture:

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”

It doesn’t always feel good to write. There are more mornings than I’m proud of when I sit at the keyboard and just try to think of things I can do besides writing.

I can take the trash out. I can walk for a coffee. I can twiddle my thumbs. I can watch YouTube.

I can do all these things, but if I don’t get the work done, life is a little harder the next day.

Closing Thoughts

I’ve read a lot of books on writing. I think I’ve read 3 books that are literally called “On Writing”.

In my time spent both in this craft and studying the craft, I’ve found it to be true that doing writing is always more important than talking about writing. Writing about writing (even an article like this) is only so valuable.

I can give you all the tricks, a bunch of inspirational quotes, or tell you the best platforms to write on in 2026, but none of that will help you build an audience, think more clearly, and use writing to create a life with more freedom quite like sitting down at the keyboard and doing it for yourself.

If you want to be a writer, you need to write — as much and as well as you can — for as long as you can.

And that is my absolute best piece of writing advice.

Thanks for reading another edition of The Modern Writer!

If you liked this post, share it with friends! Or, give it a ❤️ so that more people can discover it on Substack :)

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The Modern Writer has been on hiatus for the last few months.

That’s my fault. Life has been insane. I somehow managed to keep writing and posting consistently during my trip to Europe. Things were busy, but I only missed one week.

But in March, shit hit the fan.

We lost a family member, I was traveling constantly, I was trying to train as much as possible, I was struggling with my health — sickness, infections, injuries, and more — and I just got burned out. We were planning a wedding, and we’re now planning a move.

I got burned out of writing, Jiu-Jitsu, and pretty much everything for a bit. I feel like I’m still picking up the pieces.

It’s funny how this works.

I’m in one of the happiest phases of my life personally. I just got married, and we had a beautiful wedding with all of our closest friends and family.

On the flipside, I’ve been having a really hard time with my career. Writing has been a grind. Jiu-Jitsu has been hard in terms of trying to stay healthy, develop skills, and find competitive opportunities to display those skills.

And I guess in times like these, I realize how much I need writing and how much I have missed it.

Why do we write?

There are lots of reasons to write.

I didn’t start writing just because I like it or to express myself.

I started writing because in school, I was decent at it, and I thought that I could earn a living with it.

The reality, of course, was more complicated and challenging.

Years of freelancing. Graduating to ghostwriting. Ghostwriting for some really successful founders. Burning out and trying to do my own thing. Chasing Jiu-Jitsu professionally. The rise of AI content. Wondering why to keep going.

I reached a point where writing was making very little money compared to what Jiu-Jitsu was earning me.

The Modern Writer has never actually made me a dime directly, unless you count the few times I used these articles as a writing sample for a prospective client a few years ago.

The point is, you don’t write just for money. You don’t write just to express yourself. You don’t write just to document your journey.

All of those things are valid, but they’re only one component of the writer’s journey.

We write because we are writers.

Everyone is a writer today.

If you write social media posts to your Facebook friends, you’re a writer. If you write text messages, you’re a writer. If you write emails for work, you’re a writer. If you keep a journal, you’re a writer.

Writing is just a part of who we are.

Even writing prompts for AI is writing (although it is one of the only kinds of writing that will, from my experience, make you worse at regular writing).

The point is that we write because writing is a part of being human.

I would even argue that not being able to write is a person. You’re trapped. Not being able to read is a prison. You’re trapped by your own limitations.

I believe this to be true, and I believe the inverse also to be true.

To write well is freedom. To read extensively is freedom. To be able to experience the world through words, to share ideas, and to learn ideas is a kind of freedom that not everyone gets to experience.

We write not just for stories or to understand things, but for what those things give us.

We write for freedom.

Freedom from ourselves. Freedom from what we used to be. Freedom from what we know and freedom from what we don’t know.

Closing Thoughts

I’m hoping today marks another long return of The Modern Writer.

I write this newsletter to help me understand writing better. This is the newsletter that I wish I had read when I first started writing online. It’s a place where you can learn to write, think about your craft, and hopefully get a little bit better at it.

Recently, things have been unclear for me. I’ve found myself often questioning what’s next and questioning myself for questioning.

Typically, I struggle with finding clarity more when I am not writing as much. That’s just how it is.

Sometimes, life is more fun when I’m not writing.

But the longer breaks I take, the more I struggle. The harder it is to find peace.

And so with that, we’re back.

Hopefully, “we’re back” helps me get back to “we are so back”.

One foot in front of the other, we’ll get there eventually.

Thanks for reading another edition of The Modern Writer!

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Some days, you wake up, get to the computer to write, and you get hit with the realization that you don’t have anything to say.

You don’t really want to say anything.

But you are a writer.

This is your job.

You have to produce writing.

This is how you live — both financially and spiritually. Writing is a part of who you are, and if you can’t write, how can you truly live?

We’ve all been there.

Or at least, I’ve been there a lot. I hope I’m not the only one.

Luckily, after a few years in the writing online game, I’ve found a few ways to cheat the system and get myself to come up with writing ideas when I don’t actually have any.

Here are 5 of the easiest ways to come up with never-ending writing ideas:

Ask people.

This only works if you have an existing audience, but I’ve used it a lot on social media.

If people find your work helpful, they probably are tuning in every day, expecting something.

You have an idea of what they might be expecting, but you can’t be 100% sure unless you ask.

Don’t ask all the time, as this is how you remove all the soul and passion from your work, but every now and then, when I’m struggling with the dreaded “writer’s block”, I just do an Instagram story and ask my followers what they want to see from me.

Even if I don’t use exactly the ideas they have for me, I usually at least get some good stuff to think about.

Do internet research.

One really easy trick that I have been using with my Grappler’s Diary Instagram page has been literally just stealing headlines.

Sort of.

I go to TopMediumStories.com, and I read through the headlines of the top articles. Some of them do not apply to me at all because they’re about computers or dating or something else that I don’t write about.

But now and then, there’s a headline that translates perfectly to my audience, and I find a way to make it work.

Good headlines are good for a reason. Study writing, but also study the art of getting people to read your writing.

Read nonfiction.

I read fiction and nonfiction.

At night, when I’m trying to wind down, I read some fiction. Currently, I’m reading Billy Summers by Stephen King.

But during the day, when there’s time to read and time I should be writing but can’t think of anything, I read some nonfiction. Philosophy (it’s much better than self-help in my experience), I like history, and I also enjoy reading about sports.

I then do the same thing with the nonfiction I read as I do with the Medium article headlines I steal — I find ways to relate them back to something I’d like reading about, and my audience would also enjoy reading.

You find a match made in heaven this way.

Write a response to someone else.

I’ve been reading a lot of work on Substack of late.

There are a lot of good writers on this platform. Read the things they write.

Then, think about what they’re saying. Try to learn. Learn what works and what doesn’t.

Write a response as an article. You don’t even need to reference or show them if you don’t want to. It’s not that serious.

Although most writers I’ve found are flattered to be used as inspiration.

Have conversations with interesting people.

A lot of the things that I have written about in the last few months are direct lessons from my coaches, training partners, friends, and my fiancée.

We have conversations every day about different things in my sport, in writing, in life, and more.

When you have these conversations, you start to think about the world in a new way.

If I struggle with writer’s block, it’s probably because I am spending too much time sitting at home on the computer and not nearly enough time in the world engaging with it. I’m spending too much time trying to create work and not nearly enough time living.

When I’m living well, the writing ideas tend to take care of themselves. The only thing I have to do is sit down and get to work for a couple of hours each morning.

Closing Thoughts

Your ability to write comes from practicing writing.

Your ability to generate writing ideas generally comes from your ability to think.

For me at least, writing itself doesn’t involve a lot of thinking.

Planning articles involves thinking. Outlining a book involves thinking. Researching and finding ideas involves thinking.

I do all these things so that when I sit down to work, it’s just a stream of consciousness. I want it to feel like a conversation.

Eventually, you get to a point where you have so many ideas outlined and so much work you could do that you’ll have the opposite problem: too many ideas and not enough time.

We’ll get to that eventually, but’s that for another article on another day that I haven’t outlined yet.

Thanks for reading another edition of The Modern Writer!

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I’m writing this newsletter from home in Austin, Texas.

It’s the first piece of writing that I have done at home since January 28, before I left for Europe.

We’re only about 8 and a half weeks into 2026, and I’ve already been on 13 flights, taught 10 seminars, competed, and gained and lost about 20 pounds. I’ve written 20 articles on Substack this year already, shared a lot of content on social media, and there is much more to come.

Outside of work, it’s been a crazy year so far as well. My wedding is just a few months away. We tragically lost a young family member last week. We’re moving soon.

February has had some of the most thrilling highs and also some of the most agonizing lows.

Personally, I dealt with a lot of stress, anxiety, and even several health issues myself.

Now, I’m home and trying to pick up the pieces and rebuild.

Here’s what I focus on when I don’t know exactly what to focus on.

Focus on what you can do today.

I’ve got a lot of projects on my mind right now.

I want to start working on my next book. I want to start building a new online Jiu-Jitsu platform. I want to start planning to open my gym that I want to open next year. I need to get back to writing consistently, building my Substack, and also working on the social media content, especially for Instagram and X.

My business doesn’t work unless I work really freaking hard. Unless I am disciplined. Unless I am, for lack of a better phrase, locked in.

So what did I do today? I cleaned the house.

This is sort of where the internal war starts.

I want everything done, and I want it done perfectly. I want to write and compete and teach and train and run a business and do all this stuff, but I forget that you can only do one thing at a time.

But if the house is dirty, you can’t do any of that. You can’t build a castle when you’re sitting in a pile of mud.

You’ve got to move the mud first.

The only task that you can complete is the one that’s right in front of you.

Never forget that.

Remember your why.

When I was on vacation, I started to remember what was really important in my life.

This is why I wrote the article a few weeks back about “wasting time”. It’s not really time wasting if you’re doing the most important.

When tragedy strikes, you also can’t help but remember what is important.

I felt really focused on what was important in my life when I was traveling and doing seminars in Europe, and when I got home, tragedy struck our family. I just felt like it was tripled down.

I figured out the “why” for me, but the next step is zooming in and focusing on the individual tasks that will help me build the life that I don’t just want, but need for the loved ones that I am now responsible for.

I guess this is part of why I get so obsessed with all these little projects.

Every project is part of the pathway to the “why”, which is being able to provide for my family by doing what I do. To be able to send my future kid to college. To build a community for them. To build a community for my bride-to-be. To make sure we have a beautiful wedding in the storm that has been 2026 thus far.

I don’t really have a lot of monetizable skills besides writing and grappling. I am a good teacher, a good athlete, and a solid writer, but other than that, I don’t really know what I should do.

Focusing on what’s really important is good, but it’s only really helpful for prompting action.

In the end, you’ll do things that seem useless to focus on what’s really important.

You’ll write an essay like this one. You’ll play a video game with your family members. You’ll walk the dogs. You’ll go to the gym.

Based on my “why”, these things seem irrelevant. Yet when you really think about it, they make all the difference.

Closing Thoughts

If you write, compete, train, or even just live, you’re going to have hard days, weeks, and months.

That is par for the course.

What’s really important is not that you have them, it’s how you respond to them.

Do you get back on your horse and keep going? Do you lose your sense of self? Do you become someone who allows their circumstances to dictate the course of their life?

I’m sure you can see how this might not be good.

There are really only 3 things you can do when the going gets tough:

• Focus on putting one foot in front of another

• Remember your why

• Stay consistent

This month was not all bad for me, but it was all pretty challenging.

Challenges can be good, but sometimes, they’re just challenges.

When the going gets tough, something that I tell myself that always seems to help is this:

If I were 3 years in the future and were to look back on this situation, how would I want myself to have responded?

Try to act in the present like you’d want yourself to in the future.

Thanks for reading another edition of The Modern Writer!

If you liked this post, share it with friends! Or, give it a ❤️ so that more people can discover it on Substack :)

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Here’s the original post, if you’re interested in checking it out. Fair warning, this post talks about mental health, suicide, and other topics that can be sensitive. If that is triggering to you, you may want to skip this one. I have made a few updates for context (changing some numbers on time, adding 2-3 sentences, etc), but it’s largely unedited from the original version. It probably sounds a bit different from how I write these days.

I hope you enjoy reading it :)

I tried to “stop reading the comments” like how everyone says you’re supposed to, but that’s hard to do.

Curiosity gets the best of me. I want to know what the people are saying, especially when it’s about something I wrote.

When I first started writing on the internet, the positive comments I got from complete strangers fueled me to keep going. I still get comments every day from people who tell me their opinions of my stories and articles.

This was a strange thing to get used to.

For the most part, the comments are kind and supportive. Even the commenters who disagree with me are usually pretty kind. It’s very rare that I run into comments from actual “haters” — people who hate me just because I am living and breathing.

Even when this happens, these comments are just keyboard warriors projecting their insecurities. I can deal with that. It doesn’t bug me.

Usually, it’s fine.

One day, however, it was not fine. I didn’t feel fine.

You can’t let them know.

The irony of writing about mental health is that if someone says something that affects your mental health, it’s best if you don’t say anything about it.

You aren’t supposed to give them leverage.

Once, when a commenter said I should “kill myself”, I couldn’t respond the way I wanted to. Instead, it was better for me not to say anything at all.

If I had decided to engage with this random stranger and talk about how what they said was both problematic and deeply upsetting to me, they would just have fuel for their fire. They would win because they knew that they had gotten under my skin.

Writing about mental health is great, but writing about mental health and talking about mental health are not the same things.

Writing about mental health is for everyone. Talking about it is for you.

You have to remember when to keep things private.

Thank God this wasn’t 10 years ago.

6 years ago, I was dealing with a rare mental condition called “derealization”.

I was in a constant state of anxiety, dissociation, and “unreality”.

The world was a scary place. I didn’t feel safe in my own body or my own skin. I hated everything about life. I was very miserable.

I wanted to be dead.

Mentally and spiritually, my back was up against the wall. I didn’t feel like there was a way out.

Over time, I found a way out.

Today, I’m pretty peaceful and happy, for the most part.

So when I get a comment like this now, it makes me think a bit more than if I was just getting hate on the internet for my character or my writing abilities. Comments like these make me think about the entire scope of my mental health experience.

The comment isn’t really “triggering” for me, but it does show me how far I’ve come.

Now, when someone tells me to kill myself, I think it’s empowering in some twisted way because I know I won’t.

I didn’t always have that luxury.

Writing on the internet changed my life.

I feel like the clichés about how writing on the internet can change your life are romanticized and embellished a bit.

I make money from my writing, but it doesn’t make me rich. Writing didn’t change my life in that sense.

I still drive the same car I did 2 years ago, and a good majority of my income still comes from teaching people Jiu-Jitsu, not selling books or Substack subscriptions.

What writing online did teach me goes beyond the scope of cash in my pocket.

I’ve never had to lie when I write stories about life and mental health, and the result of “telling the truth” has been incredibly empowering. Writing online made me feel seen for the first time in terms of mental health, mindset, and personal development. It made me feel like my mental struggles were valid and that in overcoming them, I was becoming stronger.

It also made me feel like I wasn’t the first person to struggle with anxiety or derealization. I stopped feeling alone, or like I was “special”. Something about realizing that you’re just another face in the crowd can have a calming effect.

Writing online gave me a community that I felt connected to, and now, I don’t feel like I want to harm myself. I haven’t for years.

So when I read comments that tell me I should kill myself or jump off a bridge or stop writing and die in a hole, I don’t feel scared anymore. I feel sad for the people on the other end of the keyboard, because they’re projecting their word vomit onto me, and I’m going out for coffee and a walk in the sunshine.

One of us is doing a lot better than the other.

Closing Thoughts

When I first started writing, I doubted every single aspect of the experience.

I thought that if I wrote about things that I struggled with, people would invalidate them.

I thought if I wrote about being anxious or depressed, people would tell me to “shut up and deal with it”. I thought that people would use the same weapons that my anxiety does to invalidate me and make me further doubt myself.

What I realized through writing is that the only person who really wanted me to stop writing was the voice in my head who couldn’t stand the thought of me growing into the person I’ve always wanted to be.

99% of the comments I receive from other people validate this way of thinking.

That’s why I feel sorry for the reader who told me to kill myself.

Thanks for reading another edition of The Modern Writer!

If you liked this post, share it with friends! Or, give it a ❤️ so that more people can discover it on Substack :)

For most of my life, I’ve had this burning in my soul that stems from the fear that time is running out.

It first started when I was wrestling in high school. I realized when I first competed in the varsity lineup as a sophomore only had 2 more years to make something of myself in the sport. I realized early that I wasn’t going to wrestle in college and that my days in wrestling would end soon.

I felt this way about time with school friends in high school as well. Then, I felt it in my first years in Jiu-Jitsu.

I only had a few years to make something of myself in Jiu-Jitsu before I had to grow up and become a real adult.

It’s funny because now, I get to do Jiu-Jitsu full-time. I’ve sort of dodged that inevitable end longer than I could ever dodge any other, and yet the fear of time running out hasn’t gone away. Nowadays, I’m trying to overcome the fear of retiring from Jiu-Jitsu and not reaching the level I know I can.

These fears are found everywhere for me. I’ve come to believe that the fear of time running out is just a part of trying to do anything in life.

The result of this fear has been the development of a strong work ethic. A desire to leave no stone unturned. A desire to maximize everything I can from myself - even if it means pain, struggle, and sacrifice.

But I’ve also come to wonder at times if it’s really necessary. Maybe you don’t need to live your life trying to maximize every single moment. Or at least, not in the way that you might think.

Today, we’re talking about productivity, hard work, and life enjoyment.

The antidote to serial productivity.

Right now, I’m getting toward the end of a 2-week European seminar tour.

First, it was a few days in Wales to compete, then a few days in London for a seminar, then the same in Ireland, Prague, Switzerland, and finally Germany.

Traveling is eye-opening, but not always in the way you might think. There’s something humbling about being a tourist in a new country that makes you realize how little you actually know about the world. You realize that a lot of the beliefs that you have about the world are not created by you. A lot of what you think, do, and believe is merely a product of your environment. Sure, you can stimulate your mind to experience new things through reading, watching films, or learning about other cultures, but the only way to truly get out of your environment is to, well, get out of your environment.

My life on the road is inherently chaotic. Today, for instance, I don’t really know what the schedule is going to be.

There will be Jiu-Jitsu at some point, but I’m not sure what we will eat, if there will be time to look at this article again, or what I’ll even really feel like in a few hours. This is in stark contrast to the life I lived for the last 6 weeks of training camp for my last competition, where everything was regimented, I was weighing my food for all of my meals, getting on the scale every morning, and making sure that all of my training sessions were intensely structured. My writing was obsessively planned out. I created to-do lists for each day, week, and month for the next 6 months.

I’ve had these to-do lists in my phone, but I haven’t actually looked at them since I’ve been in Europe.

The version of myself who lives and works in America wouldn’t understand that. How could you let yourself down like that by wasting time?

But that, I am starting to realize, is balance. The rigid structure of my training camp brings out one side of me. The extreme looseness of travel brings out a different side of me.

It’s important, I think, to have both. It’s important to throw every ounce of yourself into your work, but it’s also, I’m learning, important to “waste time”.

The art of wasting time.

In preparation for a competition or in running my business, nothing can be wasted.

Every word I write needs to be as deliberate as it can be. Every technique or system or game that I share needs to be as intentional as possible. Every training session needs to be optimized.

Why? Because it can always be better. A key part of good training or good work is aiming to work better.

The American in me is always obsessed with finding ways to do things just a little better. Supplements to help me sleep better. Tools to help me perform better. Scheduling tools to keep the content engine running. Books, podcasts, and even music are designed to help me produce more.

This is very different from the person I’ve been the last few weeks in Europe, where I literally just sat on a train and stared out the window at mountains for 20 minutes.

I’ve come to find that the need to obsessively optimize everything eventually becomes a waste. The more complex you make something, the more specific it becomes. Eventually, it becomes so specific that it’s largely irrelevant.

Would it be better for my health, for example, if I were to weigh my food, check my weight daily, and make sure I slept 8 hours per night every day while I was traveling? Perhaps it would.

Yet doing this would also make me feel drained, strung out, and annoyed. There’s something to be said about the value of looseness.

The fact that I feel just as good while sleeping 5-6 hours per night, having a beer or 2 for 3-4 days in a row, writing when I feel like it, training a few times per week, and walking 15-20k steps per day, as I do when I am living a regimented athlete’s life, is telling. Balance is essential for longevity, and longevity is essential for truly maximizing your performance.

Although living this way isn’t the best way for me to reach my goals in the long-term, unplugging for a short period of time is essential for being able to continue the never-ending marathon that is trying to be the best version of myself.

It’s good to waste time because it helps you stay in the game.

Closing Thoughts

There’s a little bit of shame in writing an article like this.

It’s maybe a bit different from the kinds of things I normally write. I’m not actually telling you how to get more views on your writing or how to make a living with your words.

But I guess that’s what learning is. You change your mind. You think one thing and go back and think another.

Trying to be the best also requires trying to stop caring about being the best for a bit. It requires hard work and discipline, but also looseness and presence. At times, you will focus heavily on the short-term, and other times you will focus so much on the present that the long-term future becomes extremely clear.

Travel like this, for example, solidifies a few things for me:

• How much I love my fiancé

• How grateful I am for the life that Jiu-Jitsu has given me

• How much I want to open my own Jiu-Jitsu academy one day

• How ready and excited I am to write my next book

The long-term is clear. The short-term is changing.

But that’s what happens when you think a lot and write a lot. You evolve. You think.

Thank you for thinking with me today.

Thanks for reading another edition of The Modern Writer!

If you liked this post, share it with friends! Or, give it a ❤️ so that more people can discover it on Substack :)

I’ll see you next Wednesday!

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Sometimes, I imagine a future version of myself who’s completely “chill”.

He’s like the version of me in this picture.

He doesn’t worry about anything. He doesn’t get stressed. He never struggles with his sleep or worries about money or asks himself if he’s “got what it takes”.

He’s the ideal expression of the man I ought to be. I love the idea of this man.

But I also hate him.

I don’t think I want to be completely “chill”.

The chill version of myself has no ambition. He doesn’t take risks. He’s playing it safe. He’s content, and because of that, he’s nothing. He fades into oblivion.

He’s not a good writer. He doesn’t live an interesting life. He doesn’t ruthlessly audit his life and try to improve it

He gives up when it’s a good idea to. He works just enough. He doesn’t drink too much caffeine.

His life is full of order. His office is cleaner than mine. He reads casually. He probably writes some digital marketing shit with AI.

He sucks.

It’s not that I’m great now or perfect now, but at least I’m trying.

I want to be the ideal version of me, but I also don’t.

What the hell is wrong with me?

What is wrong with us, people who write?

The tortured artist trope.

The tortured artist trope isn’t very fun, but it’s so common (and it’s even been studied in academia) that we have to admit that there’s some truth in it.

Recently, I was listening to a lecture about American culture and drinking, and it discussed writers and their struggle with alcoholism. I don’t personally struggle with alcoholism, thankfully, but it is something that my family has struggled with over the years. Every time I drink, I do it fully aware that more is not going to make me better.

Some incredible work has been produced by writers who don’t even remember writing it. An example of this is Cujo, by Stephen King. Another is Naked Lunch by William Burroughs.

Another example of a book produced in a drug-induced frenzy is On the Road by Jack Kerouac, though Kerouac claims to at least remember producing the novel.

Tons of great writing (American and abroad) have been produced in drug and alcohol fueled efforts.

But it’s not even just drugs and alcohol. In many cases, it’s just pain that powers great work.

JK Rowling famously wrote the first Harry Potter book on napkins while on a train between London and Manchester. She was on the dow at the time.

People who are struggling are often compelled to do things, and sometimes, these things are great.

But does this mean that you need pain?

It’s hard to say.

Like most things, you require balance.

I always joke that a balanced approach to anything in life will never catch on.

In a world that sensationalizes prodigies, extreme diets and routines, and of course,

It’s not really interesting to read the daily routine of someone who wakes up at 7 am, goes to work, does their hobby, comes home, winds down, and goes to sleep. Contentment is often viewed as the enemy of the ambitious mind.

And yet at the same time, many of the best writers in history attribute their success to consistency, hard work, and discipline. They attribute their best work to things that are byproducts of stability.

I’ve found this to be the case myself.

When I’m traveling the world, doing exciting Jiu-Jitsu tournaments, and out of my routine, my work suffers. Recently, I’ve been proud of a lot of the work I’ve put out both on this newsletter and my others, and the real key has been a predictable routine.

I wake up every morning and write for 2 hours. I read nonfiction in the afternoon. I walk our dogs, and while I do it, I think a lot. I text ideas to myself. I write to-do lists. I eat healthy.

But here’s the kicker, I think:

After a while, routines get dull. You get bored with doing the same thing every day. It’s not so interesting.

You need inspiration. A spark.

You need to break character and break your routine and enjoy a bit of that “chaos”. Find a story worth telling.

And after that, it’s back to the discipline.

Closing Thoughts

A writer’s life isn’t for everyone.

At times, I wonder if it’s even for me.

But I guess that’s kind of the point. To write well, you need some melodrama, some magic, and some spark, but you also need the grit and discipline of being trapped at your desk and forcing yourself to pull some magic out of your booty.

You need the long writing sessions that lead nowhere and the walks afterward where the ideas hit you. You need to read fiction and nonfiction.

So I guess the real point here is that being a writer isn’t just a career, it’s a lifestyle. It’s similar to being an athlete, actually, because all of your habits affect your performance in writing. Eventually, everything bleeds through.

If you drink heavily, don’t sleep, and live a crazy life, your writing will be crazy. If you’re disciplined, that will show too.

The key is to find the perfect balance that works for you.

If you love writing and want to learn how to do it better in the changing digital world, I’m in the process of building a 28-day writing “training camp” to help you learn to write more consistently, more clearly, and to share more work with the world.

This will launch this spring.

If you’re interested in learning more about how you can be a part of the first installment of this program, hit reply to this email.

Thanks for reading another edition of The Modern Writer!

If you liked this post, share it with friends! Or, give it a ❤️ so that more people can discover it on Substack :)

I’ll see you next Wednesday!

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Every time I open a writing-related social media app (like Substack, X, or LinkedIn), I see the same posts being recycled.

AI this. Short-form that. Try to make a few bucks this way or that.

The writing game has changed a lot since I first started.

When I started, I literally just published articles on Medium and prayed that people would read them. I linked my newsletter at the end and said, “If you like, subscribe to my newsletter!”

I didn’t really make much money this way, but it was a different time. It was a bridge between writing on blog sites and writing on social platforms. AI was the next stage in writing evolution, but we couldn’t see it at the time.

Twitter threads were becoming a thing. Substack was in its infancy. LinkedIn? Well, LinkedIn, I feel, has always been kind of less fun than the others, but valuable in its own sense.

But either way, this year is an interesting year for writing.

We’re just before the AI bubble. Will it burst this year? In 12 months, will we have mega-AI agencies generating creators millions of dollars per year? Or will we have AI overlords controlling our minds? Or will it not change that much at all?

It’s hard to say.

But either way, here are 5 writing trends I’m paying attention to in 2026.

AI as a co-creator, not just an assistant.

AI has been helping creators for a while now, but in 2026, the phrase “AI assistant” will take on a bigger role in our creative work.

AI can help writers share stories better. It helps them catch mistakes. It helps go deeper into ideas. I use it for research quite often.

But this year, we’re going to see the rise of hybrid workflows between creators and AI. Terms like “vibe-coding”, basically just plugging words into AI so that it can code for you and help you build things, will lower the bar to entry in a lot of areas.

The irony is that they used to tell writers to “learn to code”, and now coding is being replaced by writing.

Not only does this mean that writing is more valuable, but it also means that clear writing is more valuable. You need to be able to prompt well in addition to thinking and writing well.

AI is here to stay. You can either use it or you can be influenced by someone else who’s prolific with it.

The resurgence of long-form.

A few days ago, X announced a 1 million dollar prize for the top article this month.

Dan Koe will probably win it, after he nearly broke the internet with his article “How to fix your entire life in 1 day”, which has gotten over 166 million views and counting.

A million dollars is a lot of money, and while I don’t know if these writing contests will become commonplace, Koe’s article (and the performance of it) does show a desire both from consumers and platforms alike for deeper, well-thought-out, long-form pieces of writing.

I think it’s pretty clear that this is the pushback to AI taking over our digital world.

In the old days (like 2 years ago, lol), writing online was more about speed than deep ideas. The explosion of platforms like Substack and the increase in popularity of long-form articles on X are indicators that people still care about human-to-human ideas. Long-form is the resistance.

Personally, I’m finding myself reading more physical books than in past years. More paperbacks, coffee-table books, and magazines. I really like the magazine from WarKitchen and have a few copies on my table.

An emphasis on trust.

The desire for long-form content is not just that people love reading long-articles.

Twitter is kind of replacing newspapers, and they’re reading the articles on the site like “columns”, but the real reason the long-form stuff is working is that people want writers they can trust. They want to read writers who feel like people.

As AI begins to outpace us in our ability to put content out, the need to mitigate bias, check your facts, and be honest with your audience will be essential in building trust with readers.

In a world full of creators who literally might be robots, consumers will increasingly want human-centric storytelling, verification, and transparency.

Monetization will become more direct.

Substack is probably going to keep blowing up.

Because of that, it’s going to become harder and harder to stand out on Substack. The last point should help you there.

In terms of business, creating digital products — like ebooks, courses, or subscriptions — will be the driving force for building income as a writer. The focus for monetization is likely to be more direct-to-consumer than done through partner programs like YouTube or Medium. People want to know where their money is going, and they want to pay the value.

This is sort of a Web3 idea that will exist in our Web2 digital ecosystem, and I expect this trend to continue with the rise of AI.

In a land of big business, big creators, and maybe soon, big AI, it’s going to be 1 person businesses that thrive.

Hyper-personalized content consumption experiences.

We’re not there yet, but in the future, the writing that you are reading could change based on your browsing history or your profile.

The messaging on a sales page could change depending on whether you clicked the link from a profile of a 22-year-old female college student or a 34-year-old male office worker.

Now, we can create multimodal experiences with articles, videos, ebooks, and more.

You will be able to read an article and watch a video that goes with what you’re reading. You’ll be able to read poems that are converted into visuals. Content will have a “choose-your-own-adventure” element as this form of storytelling becomes more popular.

It will start with companies like Google and OpenAI and trickle down until someone makes this accessible to the masses.

Closing Thoughts

These are 5 trends that I think will become massive players in the writing and storytelling world in 2026.

Some, I honestly hope, are wrong. If I could play God, I’d try to make everything long-form. I think we’ve blasted our attention spans so much from social media that we need more long-form, deep thought, and deep conversations with each other, both online and offline.

I also like the idea of direct monetization, both for myself and for consumers. I don’t love the idea of Amazon making money off every book I sell. Last I checked, Substack only takes like 10%, which is better, but again, the craving I think of a lot of people is direct communication with their favorite creator.

We don’t want to feel like cogs in a void. We don’t want AI overlords. We don’t want to read AI slop.

We want connection.

So go pick out a new paperback, read some long-form, and have a conversation with someone in person.

The world will still be ending, and AI will still be taking over when you get back to your phone.

If you love writing and want to learn how to do it better in the changing digital world, I’m in the process of building a 28-day writing “training camp” to help you learn to write more consistently, more clearly, and to share more work with the world.

This will launch this spring.

If you’re interested in learning more about how you can be a part of the first installment of this program, hit reply to this email.

Thanks for reading another edition of The Modern Writer!

If you liked this post, share it with friends! Or, give it a ❤️ so that more people can discover it on Substack :)

I’ll see you next Wednesday!

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Whenever I have a random question these days, I typically ask ChatGPT.

If I’m calculating my daily calories, I just plug all the food that I had for that day into ChatGPT and get a pretty accurate number. I used ChatGPT to help build my fiancée's and I’s itinerary for our upcoming trip through Europe. I use ChatGPT to help work on organization in my business as a writer and athlete.

Is ChatGPT perfect? Is everything you read from AI true?

Absolutely not.

Sometimes, the information it gives me is just plain inaccurate. Sometimes, it’s telling me what I want to hear. Other times, it’s telling me what I want to hear, even though I am asking it to tell me not just what I want to hear.

But while all this is true, AI has essentially become a better tool than most search engines in just a few months.

It’s not replacing us, but in a few years, AI is going to become an essential part of how we work, think, and write.

It’s still a great time to be a writer, but it’s never been a worse time to be a “content creator”.

My first job as a writer was to write about guns.

When I first started writing online in 2020, the first gig that I landed was a “ghostwriting” gig I found on UpWork, where I had to pump out gun reviews.

Despite living in Texas, I’m not much into guns, and I had certainly never shot any of the guns, scopes, or bullets that I was reviewing.

It was bullshit, but I was 22 and needed the money.

After that, I worked my way up to writing social media for small businesses. Digital marketing companies, trucking companies, a few restaurants, and one software integration (I didn’t even know what that was at the time).

This was more enjoyable because I was working a little bit more one-on-one with business owners and actually doing writing for people instead an “editor” on a screen, but it was still a tough gig. It wasn’t really a self-actualization of my writing journey to be writing about the “5 Reasons Why Truckers Get Burnt Out”.

From there, I started to gain some traction on a site called Quora, which isn’t really as prevalent for writers as anything. From Quora, I got my first true ghostwriting client — a client that paid me more than all the other clients combined and enough for me to quit freelancing and focus on writing for a while.

It was ghostwriting that taught me about the true power of the internet.

AI is a tool for content, but it can’t replace everything.

After I moved on from my first ghostwriting client, I found my way to a new kind of content mill. Essentially, a higher profile one.

I was ghostwriting for some pretty big clients. Some of these clients already had tens of thousands of followers, and a few were already in the hundreds of thousands of followers.

In addition, I learned a lot during this time. I learned how to write viral hooks, I learned which ideas tend to blow up online, and how to craft X threads and LinkedIn posts that resonate on these platforms. I learned how to write with AI, I learned what AI is good at, and what you can’t rely on AI for.

We even had specific prompts we’d use for iterations upon iterations of content.

But the hard truth has always been that no matter how good the AI content is, it’s incomplete. It’s not as good as the finished work that has a human touch.

It doesn’t make you laugh, cry, or think in the same way.

AI content just fills your mind. It’s just word vomit.

Even now, if I ask AI to tell me about a sport, nutrition, or training, I get a lot of words, a lot of “it’s not ____, it’s _____”, and “you’re thinking about this the right way, let me just explain it a little more deeply”. But then it just says more words.

AI is only as smart as the user or the prompter. It might make you aware of certain things you haven’t thought about yet, but it’s not changing the game in the way you think.

The way you win with AI is you use it to build a system.

The question isn’t:

“Will AI replace writers?”

It won’t. AI can’t replace humans in something that is inherently human — storytelling, thinking, and social critique. AI isn’t even social.

The real question for writers and businesses is:

“Can you leverage AI to build a writing system you can actually sustain?”

After years of writing (and ghostwriting for large creator-led businesses), what I’ve learned is that writing doesn’t fail because of technology. Your prompts aren’t the problem, and it’s not whether or not you have the most expensive AI.

Writing fails because the creators never build a repeatable process. The best writers are systemizing everything, whether it’s with Claude, ChatGPT, or just their old notebook and pen.

AI can help you break down ideas, repurpose long-form work, and speed up execution, but it can’t replace the human element of writing.

Because in the AI world, we don’t need more “content”, we need more work that makes people stop and think. We don’t need more posts like “X habits from Andrew Huberman that will make you live to be a zillion years old”; we need to know who you are. We need to know why your lived experience is valuable.

AI isn’t destroying us, it’s pushing us to change.

Closing Thoughts

I came up in a creator economy where you could make lots of money just by writing a lot.

Now, anyone can use AI to write more than you, no matter how hard you try.

But does that mean that the heavier producer wins? If so, writing is dead.

But in my opinion, the AI revolution is the beginning of a change in values in the way we consume. We’re slowing down now, finally, after all these years.

App blockers are in now. Reading books on 2x speed is finally being considered silly, not productive. People who can’t put their phones down get made fun of. We’re realizing that it’s probably not a good reflection of us that our Netflix series are designed to be watched while we’re scrolling or that we can’t sit and read books in silence anymore.

People want the world back. People want their minds back.

AI is a great tool for learning, work, and productivity, but it’s not great for the health of the consumer.

We don’t want content anymore. We don’t want “5 Reasons Why _____”.

We want culture. We want poetry. We want art.

The challenge for founders, business owners, and thought leaders of the future is to stand out in an economy where doing what we’ve done for years will be considered “AI slop”.

And honestly? I’m glad it is.

It’s a challenge we need to be pushed in the right direction.

Thanks for reading another edition of The Modern Writer!

If you liked this post, share it with friends! Or, give it a ❤️ so that more people can discover it on Substack :)

I’ll see you next Wednesday!

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I’ve always viewed my writing practice as an extension not just of myself, but of my athletic career.

They say how you do anything is how you do everything, and I guess for me, that means I do anything and everything like an athlete.

In the beginning, I think this was because I thought my athletic dreams were fading into the abyss. I thought a day was going to come soon at the time when I wouldn’t be able to play sports anymore, either due to physical or financial reasons.

I’ve since learned this is not the case, but the impact that sports have had on my writing is undeniable.

Creative work is hard, it’s not always fun, and it can make your life very unpredictable. Funny enough, sports are the same way.

But within that madness, what we as writers (and athletes) need to find is direction.

Writing like an athlete is about discipline. It’s about focus. It’s about goal-setting.

This is my approach to viewing creativity through the lens of high-performance.

It makes no difference what you feel like.

Some days, I show up to the gym eager to train. I greet everyone with a smile. Sometimes, my introverted self can even be extroverted at Jiu-Jitsu practice or in the weight room.

Other days are not so nice. My body feels heavy. Things hurt. My body gives me the subtle reminder that I won’t be able to train and compete forever.

Writing is the same way. I have good days and bad days. I’m writing this article on a bit of a bad day, to be honest. I am in the middle of a journey from Austin to Baltimore that forced me to wake up at 4 in the morning.

But on the good days and the bad days, it doesn’t matter what you feel like. It matters that you show up. Put in the reps. Go through the motions. You can vary your intensity, you can have light days, and you can even schedule breaks, but you cannot fail to keep the promises that you make to yourself.

A book doesn’t get written without showing up every day for months on end. Some of those days will be good and others likely not so much.

It makes no difference what you feel like.

This is principle 1.

Writers, just like athletes, must train.

The publishing of an article, book, or product is like competing.

It’s a measurable activity where you will either succeed, fail, or end up somewhere in between.

Sure, not all flops are failures and not all bestsellers are successes, but the same is true in sport. A win where you perform like crap is not going to make you as proud as a loss where you perform excellently.

The iterations, reps, and edits that happen in the process of sharing the work are the “training”, but there’s more to it than just showing up. In Jiu-Jitsu, I go to practice yes, but I also have strength training work, I do my cardio work, and I have my recovery sessions.

For a writer, this might look like:

• Writing draft 1

• Editing

• Reading

• Listening to a lecture

• Going for walks

• Talking to interesting people

• Journaling

The practice of “being a writer” is not just sharing finished work. That is but a brief moment in your existence.

So, really, there are 2 lessons here.

First, you can’t just love publishing work that people love if you want to be a writer. That alone won’t sustain you. It’s the 7 things that I have listed above (or whatever other iterations of them you find) that are going to really sustain you for the long haul of the writer’s life.

And the second lesson is that there is a lot of supplemental work that must be done to make you better at writing. The practice of putting words on a blank page is just one of the many components of great writing. To be a good writer, you must be a student of the craft.

Writers must be resilient.

I don’t think I’ve ever been a natural at anything in my life.

In my first year of wrestling, I won just 4 matches and lost 14. In my second year, when most young athletes start to make improvements, I got worse. I finished with 4 wins and 28 losses. It wasn’t until year 4 that I really started to make strides, and by then it was too late for me to contend at the higher levels of wrestling.

In BJJ, I didn’t have crazy early success either. I won a few white belt competitions because of my wrestling background, but I also lost a lot. In my first year at blue belt in BJJ, I lost most of my matches. It took about 4 years of obsessive training for me to start competing at a high level and about a decade to really make a living doing it.

When I first started writing, I didn’t immediately blow up either. I didn’t share a couple of articles online and have Penguin Random House at my door offering me a multi-million dollar book deal.

Instead, I have gradually experimented and built my writing career over the last 5 years. The article you’re reading now is one of close to 2000 that I have written, not to mention tweets, Quora answers, and other short-form posts.

But luckily, I am stubborn.

And if you want to write, you need to cultivate some stubbornness too. We ought to flatter ourselves a bit and call it resilience.

You need those long nights where you sit by yourself at your keyboard, wondering what the hell you’re doing. You need to push yourself. The feeling of being lost and full of doubt is a part of the journey for everyone, regardless of level.

My goal for you is just that you’re able to reach your goals in writing with a little less confusion than I had.

Closing Thoughts

Whether your goal is to make buckets of cash with your writing, build an audience, or finally finish your debut novel, the foundation of all writing is to have the qualities of an elite athlete.

Stephen King is known to write 2500+ words every single day when working on a novel with no days off. Most elite writers have similar word counts (or even higher). This is like their “training camp”.

When I prepare to compete in Jiu-Jitsu, I build a camp for myself. I follow specific training routines, I modify my diet, and I take my work off the mat seriously.

And when I am working on a book, building a new project, or looking to take my writing to the next level, I do the same thing - just the writing equivalent. I read specific books that will help me. I go for more walks. I triple down on my journaling. I live the writing “training camp” lifestyle.

Writers, just like athletes, need concentrated training blocks.

Stop being a tortured artist.

Write like an athlete.

Thanks for reading another edition of The Modern Writer!

If you liked this post, share it with friends! Or, give it a ❤️ so that more people can discover it on Substack :)

I’ll see you next Wednesday!

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Every year offers the opportunity for new beginnings.

The chance to build something new.

And in 2026, it’s perhaps one of the scariest times to become a writer. Is AI going to take all the money? How can you compete with a computer that spews out thousands of words per minute? Did more famous creators take all the money? Is the creator economy ending?

That’s why you need a road map. A step-by-step program to help you be your best.

What exactly should you do if you want to make this year your year? What are the steps that you should follow?

I’ve taken many different paths in my writing journey over the years:

• I’ve ghostwritten on Twitter for some pretty well-known creators

• I’ve written books and ebooks

• I’ve run a paid newsletter

• I’ve gotten sponsors for my free newsletter

• I’ve written on sites and been paid by their partner programs

• I’ve been a freelancer

There are a lot of different paths that you can take in building your own writing career.

If I were starting out, here’s what I’d do:

Step 1: Pick a topic (or 2)

When I started writing on Medium in 2020, I wrote primarily about self-improvement, mental health, and Jiu-Jitsu.

In the last few years, I’ve pivoted and focused entirely on writing and Jiu-Jitsu. Pretty much everything I write has something to do with one of these 2 topics.

In 10 years from now, I hope I am not the same writer that I am now, writing newsletters a few days per week about the same 2 topics. I hope I grow beyond writing ways to become a writer or how to land your first clients.

And I will, because in time, I’ll do more.

The best writing advice I can give is to write what you know and don’t stop learning.

So for now? Just pick a damn topic.

Pick a topic and start writing. Every day that you waste meandering between topics and newsletter names and colors for your Substack website is a day that you get closer to being replaced by a robot.

Just pick something to freakng write about so we can move on to the fun stuff.

Step 2: Pick a platform (just one at first is fine)

One mistake that I made when I first started writing was that I tried to be everywhere.

This offered some benefits:

I learned what I was good at. I learned what I needed to work on. I learned what platforms paid and what didn’t. I learned that it’s bad to chain your entire audience to one platform.

So if I were you and I were trying to become a writer in 2025, I’d choose one of these platforms:

• Substack (can also work with X)

• X (can choose Substack with this one easily)

• LinkedIn

• Instagram

Write on this platform daily. Grow there.

Step 3: Pick a newsletter platform

I’ve been using Substack for years now, and I like it.

I don’t plan to change any time soon.

However, there are plenty of options when it comes to email automation.

If I were you and I were building in 2026 from scratch, I’d choose one of these 3 platforms for my newsletter:

• Substack

• Beehiiv

• Kit

And I would publish there at least once per week. For some perspective, I share about 3 pieces of writing per week on Substack. I share one piece every Sunday with my subscribers via Kit. I also use Kit for product drops and other promotions.

One thing I recommend, whatever newsletter platform you choose, is creating a free ebook or email course and using this to help grow your audience.

“Download my free ebook” hits a little lighter than “please subscribe to my newsletter”.

Step 4: Leverage AI

Maybe ChatGPT and Claude aren’t good enough to write all your tweets or LinkedIn posts yet (they are doing it for many top creators out there, however), but you can still use these tools to help you break your long-form writing into shorter bites.

You can use AI to help you build a content calendar. You can use it to track your highest-performing posts. You can use it to help you outline longer-form content.

A writing business is fairly simple:

• Create content

• Share it

• Drive readers to your newsletter

• Offer your products and services

• Repeat and iterate

The reason it doesn’t work for a lot of people is not that they’re not good enough; it’s because they don’t put the time in to really see if they’re good enough.

AI is an incredible tool that can help you speed up the process.

Step 5: Create products or offer services

When you really simplify it, there are only 2 business models that writers have to follow:

• Offering services

• Selling products

I’ve tried both and found success with both, but I tend to enjoy building my own products a bit more than client work. This is the business model I focus on.

But you might be different from me.

The easiest service you can sell as a writer is, well, your writing. You can write for other people, you can write as other people, and you can help others build what they want to build.

You can also create a wide array of different products based on your specific knowledge and the ideas you write about in your newsletter and your social content.

You can create:

• Courses

• Books

• Cohorts

• Paid newsletters

And more.

Once you have your products, your services, and your content engine, you now have a writing business.

The only thing left to do is to get to work.

Closing Thoughts: The Final Step

The final step of the digital writing beginner program is building.

Doing the work that is necessary to help you reach your goals.

It’s creating a product that flops and pushing forward anyway. It’s having an unsuccessful launch and using that as data on what you need to improve, not as a basis for your failures as a writer. It’s getting praise and hate for your work, but not letting either of them affect you. It’s consistent effort, day in and day out, for years.

This is how you really become a writer. This is the secret sauce.

It’s sitting at the blank page every morning until it’s not blank anymore. It’s embracing the grind but also loving the work. It’s questioning yourself, but still hammering out more words.

It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to take a second.

The final step is just being okay with that.

Thanks for reading another edition of The Modern Writer!

If you liked this post, share it with friends! Or, give it a ❤️ so that more people can discover it on Substack :)

I’ll see you next Wednesday!

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Some days, I wake up very motivated to write.

I have an idea for an article, a post, or a book segment already in my head when I pop out of bed. Some days, it’s even the writing ideas that wake me up.

These days are nice because the work on these days is easy to do.

It’s just like training Jiu-Jitsu or fitness, really. Some days, I wake up excited to train and to get after it. Other days, I wake up, and I’m sore or tired, but I can get through it.

But then some days — both in writing and on the mat — I wake up, and I feel like crap. I don’t want to train. Sitting at the computer is exhausting. I have no writing ideas. I go through the motions.

Yesterday was one of those days.

But I got through it, and we’re back today.

Here’s what to do when you’re unmotivated.

First, simply try.

Writing is part of my job.

I need to put out work to keep being a writer. The reader doesn’t care how you feel; they just want something to read.

If I don’t put out work, I will struggle more in the long run. Furthermore, writing is easier to share the more you share it.

In the few times over the last few years when I’ve taken a few days off sharing writing, it’s always harder to get started again.

This is similar to competing in Jiu-Jitsu for me. When I take a longer time off from competing, I struggle more with anxiety and ring rust. It goes away eventually, but it’s definitely there.

That momentum is very valuable, and there is also objective value to being more consistent, so when I feel like I don’t want to do the work, I push back on that initial feeling. I fight it a bit.

I don’t like to give in to laziness.

Usually, on an especially bad day, I promise myself to get through the day and that if I still feel the same tomorrow, I’ll take the day off.

The day off rarely happens.

Then, I seek inspiration.

You know how they always say that motivation and inspiration are bullshit?

They are wrong. Sort of.

Inspiration and motivation are good, especially when you need them. The real problem is that a lot of people rely on motivation and inspiration to do even the most basic things.

The good thing is, I think, that we live in a world where sources of inspiration and motivation are plentiful.

You can just go read one of the best books ever written and draw inspiration from that. The best creators in the world today are giving away their knowledge for free on the internet, which you have access to 24-7. There are so many incredible resources out there that won’t cost you a thing to consume.

So for me, when I’m having a tough day, I take advantage of the fact that we live in a time when you can find inspiration on your phone for free at the touch of a few buttons.

Discipline is essential, but on days when you’re really struggling, I don’t see a problem with seeking motivation elsewhere.

Finally, if nothing is working, I take a f*cking break.

Rest days get a bad rep.

People often think that taking days off means you’re either weak, lazy, or not very good, but I don’t think that’s true.

Some days, you’re on fire. Other days, you need the fire to get lit under you.

If I’ve been struggling to work for a few days now and I’m tired and the work is just not coming, that’s probably a sign that I need a break. Burnout is real, and sometimes, you need to rest to avoid being run into the ground.

I am all for embracing the grind, but eventually, you learn that there are times when you actually shouldn’t grind. There are times to rest.

Here are a few signs that you need to take a break (besides just not wanting to work, which could be a sign of laziness):

• Your work quality has depleted

• Your work passion has depleted

• Your attention to detail has faded

• Your mind is wandering

• You’re struggling to think deeper about important ideas

Work is hard sometimes. If it weren’t, it’d be called leisure.

What’s important is knowing when to push and when to break. Work in seasons.

But more on that some other day.

Closing Thoughts

We’re approaching the phase at the end of the year where motivation is tough.

It’s the holidays. It’s cold. A warm drink (Abuelita hot cocoa, anyone?), a blanket, and the new season of Stranger Things honestly sounds more fun to me than getting at the ass crack of dawn, hitting a workout, getting in the sauna, and then going home to work on writing again.

But if you can keep the momentum going through the holidays, you’re in a great place to start the year ahead of everyone who’s taking it easy right now.

That doesn’t mean you have to push all the time.

Enjoy your hot cocoa, watch Stranger Things, but also, do the work that you need to do right now to get where you want to be early next year.

It might be uncomfortable now, but I promise it’ll be worth it.

Thanks for reading another edition of The Modern Writer!

If you liked this post, share it with friends! Or, give it a ❤️ so that more people can discover it on Substack :)

I’ll see you next Wednesday!

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Recently, I’ve been receiving more criticism on my writing than in years past.

This is, I guess, a good thing, but it’s also not easy. You tend to think about what people are saying, and I try to decide if it’s true.

I generally try to take criticism on the chin. In sports, despite being stubborn about trying to win, I’ve always prided myself on being pretty coachable. I make many mistakes, but in time, I learn, and I stop making those mistakes.

But writing (and art in general) is not always like sports.

Yes, I do try to “write like an athlete” (I use this idea in reference to being disciplined with my practice), but your critics in writing are not your coaches. You’re not supposed to bend to their every will.

Regardless, the criticism that I’ve received recently in a few places is that I contradict myself often.

I’ve thought about this particular criticism a lot because, in many ways, I think it’s true.

Everything I write is true to me in the moment, but I’ll be honest: I do change my mind a lot.

But does that make me a liar?

Today, we’re trying to find out the truth.

The problem with practicing in public.

I don’t write for a newspaper.

I don’t even write for websites besides my own and social media platforms anymore. There’s just not enough time for me to write in any more places than those I write in now.

What this means is that nothing I write actually gets printed, besides the book I wrote.

But even that book I edited once after the release to fix 2 typos that were caught (if you bought the book on its initial launch and can find the typo, email me, I’ll send you a free Grappler’s Diary coffee mug!).

The point here is that everything I write can be edited. At the very least, it can be deleted and then reposted. I can fix things, I can learn, I can change my mind, and then I can change it back.

But the point is that sometimes, I feel a certain way about some things, philosophies, or ideas, and other times, I change my mind.

The problem with sharing articles every week is that my life changes. The way I think about things changes. Some weeks, I have a good week, and I’m on, and other weeks I’m trudging along, and it shows in the work.

This is perhaps a problem with doing “content creation”, but it’s one of the games I’ve chosen to play. I’ve chosen to place myself in an environment where I will contradict myself at times.

Why I don’t really feel bad about it.

The beauty of being able to change my mind is that it allows me to grow.

But there are 2 problems with it as well:

• It could mean I will regress

• It can make it seem like I don’t believe in anything

I can’t promise that I won’t regress (although I will work tirelessly to ensure it), but I can promise you that I do have beliefs. The problem, I guess, is that I really do try to learn as much as I can.

Here are a few instances where I know I have contradicted myself (I’m sure there are others):

• I used to think CLA in BJJ was stupid, but now it’s all I use in training

• I used to think Twitter was “a cesspool,” but nowadays I love writing there

• I sometimes think you need to embrace the grind, and other times I think you need to not try too hard

But I’m not the only writer who’s changed their mind. If anything, the things I have changed my mind on are mild compared to:

• George Orwell, who worked with the Imperial Police in Burma and eventually rejected imperialism and authoritarianism entirely

• Leo Tolstoy, who began as an aristocratic novelist in Russia (and someone who “lived without faith”) but eventually became so spiritual that he was excommunicated from the church

And now, of course, I can hear my critics saying that I am comparing myself to Orwell and Tolstoy. I am not doing so in any way, besides the fact that we all have changed our minds.

The point I am trying to make is that it’s normal to change what you write about as your life changes. It’s normal to struggle with your beliefs. It’s normal to be unsure at times.

So my closing idea to you as a writer in this essay about me addressing my own haters is this:

Your attempt to find the truth may make you seem like a liar to others. But you are not lying until you are lying to yourself and deliberately deceiving others. You may be incorrect right now (if anything, you probably are), but this cannot stop you from trying.

Please, keep trying.

Closing Thoughts

I change my mind a lot.

But I don’t really think of it as definitively changing my mind. I’m not anti-grind one day and in love with the grind the next. It’s more complicated than this and yet also simpler.

I wrestle with ideas. I think. I study. I learn. I consume work from others.

But that’s why I write “The Grappler’s Diary” and not “The Grappler’s Bible”. I am simply learning and reflecting on what I learn along the way.

The Modern Writer is the same. I’ve been doing this newsletter for nearly 2 years now, and much has changed in the space since I started.

In the time that I have been writing on the internet, much has changed about the way I think, learn, and write. I read differently now. I care about different things now. I’m not a 23-year-old kid living in a studio apartment in a kind of sketchy neighborhood in Chicago anymore. I live in a nice apartment in Texas, and I am getting married soon.

My life is changing, the way I interact with the world is changing, and most importantly for our piece today, my writing is changing.

And on your journey, your writing will change too.

Thanks for reading another edition of The Modern Writer!

If you liked this post, share it with friends! Or, give it a ❤️ so that more people can discover it on Substack :)

I’ll see you next Wednesday!

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One of my heroes as an artist has always been Anthony Bourdain.

What Bourdain did was travel, write, cook, eat, and tell stories. It was a pretty neat gig, no matter who you ask.

But Bourdain wasn’t a good storyteller because he was a good cook. He wasn’t Auguste Escoffier (a guy who I just learned about because I googled “the greatest chefs of all time), he was a good chef.

Some would even say okay.

But he was incredible at telling stories. He wrote bestselling books and transformed travel entertainment. He was the people’s champ of food, travel, and lifestyle. He told the stories of the people who normally had no story.

Chefs, kitchen-folk, and the restaurant industry, but without the “foodie” bullshit.

Perhaps it is dangerous to say this because of how Bourdain’s life ended, but in many ways, I have tried to imitate and learn from Bourdain as a writer and human.

Of course, I didn’t know him, and all of my assessments are based on nothing but his work and films made about his work, but here are a few things I have learned.

You have to be willing to be wrong to be right.

If you don’t take chances, you will die a slow death.

A spiritual one that will long precede your physical body.

When I started writing online, one thing that I decided to always do was to be as authentic as I could. I would rather be wrong and myself than simply trying to imitate the other self-help slop that you see out there today.

This is perhaps why I have never been able to grow on LinkedIn. It doesn’t really suit me anyway. My writing always seems to suck if my heart isn’t in it. Come to think of it, this is true of everything I do.

I could probably figure out a way to crack the algorithm or something, but the reality is that it would distort my attempts at authenticity and creativity, which is the main thing I love about doing my work.

It reminds me of this simple quote from Bourdain:

“I’m not afraid to look like an idiot.”

I don’t mind looking dumb if it means I don’t look like everyone else. I want to do the best work I can — even if it’s a little different from how everything else looks.

That leads nicely to the next point.

You need to be a storyteller, not “a writer”.

I created The Modern Writer because I wanted to help people learn to write online, and I wanted it not to cost thousands of dollars like the other digital writing resources I have used.

And we’ve done that a lot in many of the articles in this newsletter.

But the reality is, all I can give you with this educational content is strategy, some tips, and perhaps a few lessons that can help your technical ability as a writer.

But I can’t make you tell stories that make people stop scrolling. I can teach you how to batch content, how to create a good posting schedule, and even how to create some headlines that are better than the average, but I can’t make you tell the story that people want to hear that you’re scared to tell.

Everyone wants to think of themselves as “a writer”.

I used to think this way.

I wanted to be in Thailand, Bali, or Paris, printing cash from my computer and driving sports cars, but I didn’t want to talk about the crippling anxiety or severe depression I overcame. I wanted all the good without facing the bad.

But it’s those stories — the bad ones — that make you a better writer. A better storyteller.

So don’t “save your stories” either. Just tell them, and then tell them again.

Finally, you need to do it for the love of the game.

A lot of people know Bourdain from Kitchen Confidential and it’s wildly successful aftermath, and most people think that this was his first book.

In fact, Bourdain started writing in the mid-80s.

Kitchen Confidential became a NYT bestseller in 2000, 15 years after he started writing. It was his 3rd book and his first nonfiction title.

Most people know the first book and the stardom that followed, but none of us were there for the 15+ years of struggle, failure, writing, and re-writing that made him a successful author.

Today, everyone wants to make a full-time income online in 6 months. No one is willing to suck for 15 years to be great.

The other thing is that while his other books are solid, Kitchen Confidential is the only one that’s really considered “great” or “groundbreaking”.

The point here is that writing a good book is really hard. Building an audience is easier, but still hard. Failure is part of the process. You will have highs and lows, ups and downs.

You need to just play for the love of the game. Everyone who wins loves the game. If you do it for the wrong reasons, you’ll get exposed when the going gets tough.

The only thing you’re guaranteed is that you get to play. You might as well play something you enjoy.

Closing Thoughts

The most important lesson of all is that to write well, you must live.

You need adventure, failure, triumph, challenge, love, and heartbreak. You need the things you’re proud of and the things you’re ashamed of. It’s not about success, money, or fame — these are just byproducts that happen to some people who get lucky (or unlucky, depending on how you look at it).

You need to stay humble, but you need to be honest. You need to confront yourself.

I don’t know if this is how Anthony Bourdain saw his own work, and sometimes the way that he ended his life makes me worry that I’m wrong about all this, but I guess that is the irony and dark beauty in art and writing.

Once you publish something, it’s not yours anymore. It’s whatever the audience needs it to be.

For me, someone who found Bourdain’s work when I was young and lost and just wanted to belong, I saw someone who gave me hope that I could make it in this world just by being authentic, working hard, and loving what I do.

And while I’m not a bestselling author at the time of this writing, I’m proud to inform you that this approach has not failed me yet.

Thanks for reading another edition of The Modern Writer!

If you liked this post, share it with friends! Or, give it a ❤️ so that more people can discover it on Substack :)

I’ll see you next Wednesday!

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