Does Writing Abundantly Give Me Credibility?

How much are you writing?

Are you reading a lot also?

Are you writing volumes of “stuff”?

Does it make a difference?

A quiet Saturday afternoon here in Spain. The sun is high, the hum of life is a gentle murmur outside, and it feels like the perfect moment to sit with a thought that’s been rolling around in my head for a while now. It’s a question I see a lot in writing communities, a ghost that haunts the corners of our creative minds:

“Does writing abundantly give me credibility?”

It’s a loaded question, isn’t it? On the surface, it seems simple. We see authors who release a book every year. We see bloggers who post three times a week, without fail. We see content creators on a relentless treadmill of production. The message we absorb, consciously or not, is that more equals better. More output equals more authority. More words equal more credibility.

And to a certain extent, there’s some truth there. Practice makes you better. A large body of work shows commitment. But I think this question, this obsession with abundance, is leading a lot of us down the wrong path. We’re chasing a metric that might not have anything to do with why we started writing in the first place.

For most of us, the pull to write isn’t born from a desire for credibility. It’s a deeper, more primal need. It’s the same need that compels a painter to pick up a brush, a musician to hum a new melody. It’s the fundamental human urge to take the chaos of our inner world, our thoughts, our stories, our observations, and give it form. To create something where once there was nothing.

This act, this personal, sacred ritual of creation, has nothing to do with an audience or a publishing schedule. It’s for us.

We live in a world that wants to quantify everything, to turn every passion into a side-hustle, every hobby into a brand. And under that pressure, we start to believe that our creative output is only valuable if it’s consistent, frequent, and, well, abundant.

But what if we redefine what “abundant” means?

What if abundance isn’t about the number of articles you publish, but the richness of the one you spend a month perfecting? What if it isn’t about writing every single day, but about being fully present and creatively alive in the moments you can write, even if they are few and far between?

Your life, my life, they aren’t empty vessels waiting to be filled with writing time. They are already full. Full of jobs, families, commutes, chores, friendships, love, loss, and the simple need to rest. For some, a lifestyle and a set of goals might allow for massive, visible output. And that’s incredible. But for many others, a “huge step” is finishing a single, heartfelt poem. A “huge step” is carving out one hour on a Saturday afternoon to write a few hundred words of a story that might never see the light of day.

And here’s the secret: those small steps are just as valuable.

The feeling of stringing together the perfect sentence is the same whether it’s for a viral blog post or a private journal entry. The thrill of discovery, of figuring out what your characters want or what you truly think about a subject, is the real reward. That feeling, the simple, profound joy of being creative, is the core of it all. It’s the fuel.

Credibility is a strange beast. It’s external. It’s granted to you by others. It’s fickle. It can be built up over the years and torn down in a moment. But your connection to your own creativity? That’s internal. That’s yours to nurture and protect. It’s the voice that whispers to you when you’re quiet, the style that emerges when you stop trying to sound like someone else.

When you focus on that, on your own unique voice and process, something magical happens. You start to connect with the people who were meant to hear you. They aren’t drawn to the volume of your work; they are drawn to the authenticity of it. They recognise a piece of themselves in your words because you wrote them from a place of truth, not from a place of pressure. Your voice shines through and connects with the people that understand it, whether that’s an audience of ten or ten thousand.

So, does writing abundantly give you credibility? Maybe. But perhaps a better question is, “Does writing in a way that honours my own creativity, my own life, and my own needs give me joy?”

Because if the answer to that is yes, you’ve already found something far more valuable than credibility. You’ve found the reason you started in the first place.

Until Next Time