I Plan to Make $1000 This Month — By Getting Naked

If this was an episode of Vampire Diaries, I’d recap exactly what happened previously that led me to this point. There’d be a lot of “how to make money writing online” articles referenced. A few brainstorms and a few more breakdowns. A lot of crying involved. And the entire credits would be dedicated only to a Miss Takes (because I made a lot of them).

But I’m not going to do a recap, because my journey has been pretty copy and paste. It’s the same journey we all venture on, the same potholes we plummet down and traffic jams we find ourselves trapped in. We’ve all been there. Some of us (*gestures at entire self*) still are there. It’s a rite of passage, and this passage is overgrown, barricaded and has crappy signal. I can’t even watch Draco Malfoy TikTok videos to pass the time.

Clearly I’ve got a long way to go yet.

365 days of 2020’s apocalyptic year has left my bank account as nothing but a barren wasteland. But I can’t blame a pandemic for such poor landscaping when me and my love of biscuit-and-book buying were the wrecking ball that tore the place apart, years prior (ever noticed that Emily is an anagram of Miley? It’s no coincidence).

I made less than $1000 last year. Much less than that, actually. And I don’t just mean from platform writing either. A couple loose and finite writerly income streams turned out to be more “income leaks” if anything. A drip here and a drop there. Oh no wait sorry, those are my stress tears.

But my point is, I made practically nothing. And yet? I learned everything. Which is a total exaggeration however, this little empiphany I had felt like secrets were finally being revealed. I could see the jet fuel behind the stats of those writers who were rocketing in writerly success and actually guzzle a gallon of that myself.

Finally, I had something I could go on.

Turns out that the only way to make any sort of income is to strip off.

That’s right, I said it. You want to make it? Get naked.

Woah woah woah, Stephen, no. You can keep your boxers on Mr King, that’s not what I meant. I don’t mean show skin. Sure, that ass of yours is pretty damn iconic but in this case, it’s best use is when it’s parked right there at your desk. It’s not your nips but your fingertips that will direct you forward here.

So what was this fantastical realisation of mine? To write. Right? To pull your finger out of your butthole, dip it in some ink and get to bloody work. Obviously. But if that was my only piece of advice, it’d be like a doctor telling an ill guy, “hey man, you’re ill. So get better.” You can’t prescribe somebody a goal. You need to hand them a couple doses of an actionable, swallowable solution.

So I’m not suggesting that you just write. I’m suggesting that you write about the hard stuff. The itchy things. The memories you’ve suppressed. The thoughts that made you wince. The feelings you don’t want to feel again. I’m telling you: you need to write about them.

You need to strip off, peel it back, remove one layer of clothing at a time — only, in this case, “clothing” means whatever it is that might be stopping you from sharing your darkest, deepest, dirtiest stories.

Perhaps you’re worried about being judged. Or unsure how to voice the times when you felt voiceless. Or maybe you don’t think the life you’ve lived qualifies as a life worth sharing (PS, you’re wrong. You’re the most interesting person on this planet, I promise you). The likelihood is that whatever’s been holding you back thus far, it’s a branch of our good ol’ nemesis: Fear™. But, like the Avengers will tell you, you have to face him if you want to defeat him. You have to suck it up and open up.

You have to be naked and afraid.

Sure, those thighs of yours might be meaty, but it’s your own experience, your life’s story, you that’s needed to flesh out your work here.

Every inch of the meagre cash that made last year came from my rawest content.

Some of my best performing articles came in the form of a little splurge of my own self-deprecation turned self-improvement. Tales about my saddest thoughts and loneliest emotions and pain, just pure pain:

Each of these articles was born from personal experience, people that mean a whole lot to me, feelings that I had to pry out of my soul like an existential splinter and yeah, I bled a little. They hurt to write. They also felt good. Cathartic, healing, and most importantly: real.

Your rawest, deepest, most human moments — those are the ones that readers relate to the most.

(That last link might seem a little out of place but it’s actually the piece that garnered me the most views. Because it’s me, peeling back the excessive layers of eyeliner and letting you have a good ol’ rummage at what’s beneath).

Anybody can chat about the generic stuff. How to get up earlier, how to explore Japan on a budget, how to tell your sister that actually no, Poppy, I don’t like avocado and I never have now please stop smashing one onto my toast. But it’s the stories that some of us are too scared to tell, too unsure how to express, or feel like we’re too alone for anybody else to care — that’s what we want to read.

Tell me about that time you broke your boyfriends heart. I want to know how you battled anxiety by working at a theme park. Teach us how to see our own beauty by detailing the time you panelled an entire room in your house with mirrors. Let us into not just the large and towering corners of your life — the Big Emotions like heartbreak and hope and fear — but also the tiny moments. The thirteen minutes you spent crying at a bus top. The awe you felt when staring up at the Eiffel Tower. The perplexity of that ladybird somehow swimming about in your cereal.

Show us what it means to be human by stripping it all back until you’re left with nothing but you and your humanity.

Just for a moment, rid yourself of the “productivity hacks,” unbutton your desire for a good listicle, shave off society’s conditioning of what is and what isn’t worthy of being shared — and bare all.

Let us see you, the real you, for all that you’re worth. Because the chances are, you’re worth way more than a measly $1000.

I know I am. Which is why I plan to give this a proper good try. I’m going to mount that stage, strip off my literary layers and let the world ogle my nude soul. I’m going to use my blood as ink, my skin as paper, and every inch of my being as the stories I tell. Let’s see what happens, eh?

Maybe I won’t make what I made in an entire year last year in one month this time round. Or maybe I will. Either way, I’m not doing it for the money — I never have done. I’m doing it for the readers. I’m doing it for myself. And if I eventually earn enough cash to buy an in-house vending machine? Well. We all know I’d get naked for snacks.

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Oh hey, whilst you’re here: why not put the “em” into your “emails” and lob your name onto my mailing list for weekly em-bellishments on my rose-tinted, crumb-coated lens of life. It’s the equivalent of the reduced section in the supermarket (low value Weird Crap™ that you didn’t know you needed).