What’s Your Proudest Piece of Writing? Here’s Mine

The folks who are in my most advanced Dream Team have built up substantial bodies of paid written and published work.

At some point, when you have been writing for a long time, you develop a sense of your best piece of work to date.

I say “to date” because, naturally, this changes the longer you write.

Even if a piece is not our proudest, sometimes the memory of writing it can stay with us for a long time.

But the label “proudest” piece of writing is significant in and of itself because it typically represents a breakthrough of some kind.

My proudest piece of writing to date would have to be the article I wrote for the March/April issue of Writer’s Digest magazine called, “50 Ways To Grow Your Platform in 5 Minutes A Day.”

This article was posted on WritersDigest.com at the tail end of 2011 and it has been very well received both by readers of the magazine, online readers, and professional colleagues. The piece was also republished in part on F+W’s Digital Book World site.

The piece I am most proud of is often improperly cited online in blogs. You will often see the article attributed to “Writer’s Digest” without my name as the author. I suppose folks who find it and like it are so excited about sharing it that they don’t take the time to notice who wrote it, which is forgivable, but something I still need to address. However, in case there is any confusion, the piece was written by me on an assignment for Writer’s Digest magazine.

The reason that this article was a breakthrough I am particularly proud of is because it was the first time an article I wrote for Writer’s Digest Magazine was based primarily on my professional expertise and not primarily on research and quotes from other writers. I used as many outside resources as made sense, but it was also important to me not to overwhelm the reader with extraneous information.

In writing the piece, I gathered up all of the expertise and experience I had accumulated up to that point and wrote the most helpful piece for readers that I possibly could. Naturally, I did the same thing in writing all three of my books for Writer’s Digest. But in this particular article, I got to go much deeper on one specific topic than I even usually have the opportunity to do in my books.

Happily, the pride that I take in this article was echoed by a reader of the magazine in a message she wrote to the editor:

I just read the March/April 2011 issue and am compelled to send my gratitude to Christina Katz. Her article “50 Simple Ways to Build Your Platform in 5 Minutes a Day” was so specific and helpful, I was moved to act right away. She saved me hours of research in a field that is pretty foreign to me.  ~ Karen Ashley, July/August 2011 Writer’s Digest ReaderMail

I feel that this article is one of the best and most helpful pieces I’ve written to date. This is a good feeling and one I am happy to share with all of you. I hope you will share your proudest piece of work with the world, as well. Consider this your invitation.

And now I’m wondering, what will my next proudest piece of writing be? Will I be working on it today? Maybe.

If I put that level of commitment into every piece I write, I just might break through to a new level today.

And if you put that level of commitment into your work, you just might break through, too.