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Cat's avatar

Lovely article. I hope we find out what that secret writing project of yours is because I am immensely curious. I do love me a good secret project.

Something I learned a decade ago on my YouTube channel and then in my film school days was just that persistence is the key to any amount of success no matter how small. If you post or keep doing stuff consistently and with persistence, you will get people who like your stuff and come around. I've got 33 subscribers but several months ago I thought about giving up because I had like 10. But I kept going, persisted, and now have triple that!

I really really appreciate the message of this article, Alex. Great job.

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Alex Antra's avatar

Thanks Cat. Persistence is such a great term. I considered doing a section on consistency but it didn’t feel quite right but persistence is a much better term and you nailed it.

My secret project is not as exciting as it sounds!

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Cat's avatar

Projects don't have to be "exciting" to be interesting and for me to be interested in it.

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Harrison Polites's avatar

This is awesome Alex! I’d add two things:

Consistency > Quality: Next to having an existing personal brand or a marketing budget, being consistent is the best way to grow. Life can absolutely get in the way, but don’t be stifled by perfectionism!

Where you can, write for the audience you want, rather than what you have. You never know who is reading, and your archive of content will become an asset if you let it. This can conflict with my earlier advice, but striking a balance between the two is the way to go.

I’ve also been experimenting taking a break and using older content to fill. Rather than just stopping altogether. I’ll post a note about the results of this when I’m back to writing!

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Alex Antra's avatar

Great points

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Katya Ryabova's avatar

Needed this today. Thank you so much.

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Pixel Fix's avatar

So many great points and rock solid advice for every writer here.

And not even a course to sell at the end of it! Amazing.

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Alex Antra's avatar

I’m shit at selling anything. It’s why all my projects end up being free and open source

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Emanuel Garcia's avatar

Thanks for the article, Alex, and thanks for encouraging the community! The article spoke to me a bit since I stopped writing in Substack for a while, though, for reasons that benefit my professional career and mental health. But the article helped me set a reminder for the near future to keep contributing a tiny bit to the game dev community. Thanks again!

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Dylan Cornelius's avatar

Love the article and appreciate the encouragement - to myself and to others. Cheers, Alex.

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Piotr Weber's avatar

A refreshing take among the many articles pushing Substack newbies to churn content.

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