So there was me thinking that starting a writing habit was hard, but after seven months on Substack I find myself having published 70 articles, many on topics that I would never have thought I had any business writing about.
That means about a hundred thousand words, which is basically a whole book’s worth. Proof if it were needed that you can write a book (or at least a draft) in half a year, without it needing to dominate your life. I fit writing in around everything else in life, as I’m sure most of us do. An early hour a couple of times a week, an hour on a train if I’m on my way somewhere, and usually a bit of editing and publishing on a Saturday morning.
It would be a relatively simple endeavour to turn all of these articles into an actual book, around the general theme of self-improvement, although absent a drooling agent or a ravenous audience it would be nothing more than a vanity project. Maybe I’ll just run off a copy or two for when the Machines decide to take us all offline so I can prove to my descendants that I existed.
So here’s what I’ve learnt so far.
Find your niche by writing, not thinking about it
When I started The Cathode I had intended for it to be a resource for practical positivity. It would be a place where high-flying or aspiring professionals would come when they were feeling demoralised or were lacking direction. Creatives would draw on its wisdom to guide them through writer’s block or periods of doubt over their direction. And anyone else could dip into it for tips on how to recalibrate their life in a slightly more positive direction when things have drifted off track.
To a large extent, that’s still what it is, although in spite of reading numerous guidance documents about how you must find your niche, narrow it down and pursue it mercilessly, I have manifestly not done that. I tend to write about the entire gamut of topics that pop into my head.
If you’re considering starting writing but are put off because you’re not sure yet what your niche is, just start writing anyway. Unless you already have a deep and esoteric set of skills, you’re not going what will end up being your niche until you start writing.
I still can’t confidently say that I have a clear niche – but that’s partly because I’m now consciously broadening out my writing rather than trying to narrow it down. As well as Substack articles I’m working on book drafts, on educational email courses and on better social media content. It’s all writing, each platform needs something different and each style teaches you something different that helps the other writing styles you might be working on. And it’s all fun.
Write everything, publish some of it
Of the articles I’ve published on this Substack, about a third have followed the original purpose of general professional capability and positivity (how to be more effective while enjoying it, basically).
Around 20% have been about running, which was meant to be an occasional diversion but actually I consistently get the most engagement from my running articles (maybe there’s a book there too, who knows?)
The rest are a collection of articles about travel, reminiscences, general views on life – most of these start from a simple idea, an observation, something that occurs to me when I’m trying to make sense of work, life or the world.
I’m well aware that while The Cathode is a running blog, a positivity blog, a professional coaching blog and a memoir, by being all of those it’s none of those (and won’t be categorised as any of those), because it gets distracted and goes off doing other meandering avenues.
But I knew that when I started and while it’s probably hindering my ability to land a diehard, dedicated audience of fans (whatever that is), it’s making it far more likely that I actually write on a regular basis. I don’t want to be maintaining six different blogs, I don’t want to be thinking that I’m now ‘allowed’ to write something because it doesn’t fit into the niche I’ve dug for myself.
Be clear who you are, and who you’re not
Something I definitely felt quite acutely early on was that I should only be writing about things that I’m ‘qualified’ to write about – by which I think I meant areas where I have a large amount of direct and significant experience. This is another unhelpful restriction on writing that holds back many people from writing as freely (and hence as well) as they could.
A writer shouldn’t overstate their knowledge or claim expertise – but you are perfectly entitled to write eloquently about a subject of your choosing. You don’t have to claim to be the world’s expert, and you don’t have to compete with the world’s experts. But you might just have an insight or a perspective that your readers haven’t considered before. Never forget:
You know more about some things than some people.
The more you write, the more you find to write about
What I do have is a highly dependable process for the actual writing. A lot of what holds many people back from writing regularly is the thought that they have nothing to say, or that they will run out of ideas after a few articles – their audience of thousands will then surely drift away in disappointment.
But I can rely on having several ideas a week, each of which will be a stub for an article – it can be a quote, a reflection, something that happened in my week, a reminiscence, anything at all really that pops into my head. And I’ll then do one of two things – either just sit down and start writing and see what happens, or otherwise hammer out a series of bulletpoints that will ultimately form the structure for an eventual article that I can continue later.
This idea process and the fleshing out will often happen in meetings at work, unfortunately – those moments where you’re not speaking (or have already presented) and you only need half of your attention to keep up with the remaining conversation.
I increasingly feel like being mindful is the opposite of being creative – if I’m focussed on something then I’m much less likely to find the inspiration for anything else. Whereas if I let my mind wander, particularly while doing something physical or practical at the same time, the ideas flow.
In terms of scheduling, I managed to maintain three articles a week for the first 19 weeks, thanks in large part to a significant reserve of ideas, drafts and article frameworks that I built up in the couple of months of daily writing before I started publishing.
You need less time to write than you think
You don’t need many hours to start a really productive writing habit. If you can find five, or seven hours in your week, that’s more than enough to get you there. You don’t need to free up your entire day, or week. Even bestselling novelist Richard Osman said recently that he can’t write for more than two hours in one go.
I’ve cut myself a little slack in 2025 and am now aiming for two articles a week. Three is doable, but it doesn’t leave room for much else creative and it was unnecessary stress around the process through my own self-imposed and arbitrary deadlines.
Don’t worry about the numbers
Early in the Substack journey I did find myself getting a little grumpy that my audience wasn’t growing exponentially day by day. Why didn’t I have thousands of fawning readers salivating over my every word? Where’s this passive income everyone told me about?
Now I’m much happier that writing is a process for its own sake – it’s something that I enjoy doing, that I find useful as a way of organising my thoughts. It’s practising a skill.
And I‘ve now got a much better idea of the kind of writing that I enjoy. I don’t want to write about politics or current affairs. I don’t want to write endless descriptions of something without an aim. I know that I don’t like doing detailed, deep research, it feels like homework. It’s okay to not like it all.
Write what you enjoy writing to build the habit
All of this certainty has come from actually writing – it’s only when you get into that habit that you start to recognise and identify which subjects are lighting you up and which feel like a chore.
At the moment, Substack is my portfolio, it’s my sketchbook. It’s where I can write with freedom, unhindered by the expectations of thousands of dedicated fans, and therefore liberated by my obscurity.
It’s a collection that I can come back to in future if I do want to add any of those to a book, use what I’ve written in a different context, or just to remind myself what I thought about a particular topic at a particular time. It’s also a useful body of work to be able to point to if I’m trying to demonstrate that I’m a writer (rather than someone who is thinking of taking up writing).
Consistency is everything
So keep showing up, and focus on writing before you worry about how many people are reading or how much of a difference it’s making. Deadlines and targets can be good, but focus on the process before the goal – it’s better to have a goal of writing every day for a month than it is to insist on publishing a set number of articles a month. The process leads to the goals.
Publish the good stuff, save the rest – no writing is ever wasted and you never know when something you wrote previously might just need parking and revisiting later.
Just write, with freedom – don’t worry about your level of expertise or whether you’re ‘entitled’ or ‘qualified’ to write. You definitely have something to say, but you’ll only discover what that is by writing.
So stop reading this and start writing.