From Broke Medium Writer to a $1.7 Million Dollar Book Advance and Publishing Deal by Age 34

Currently Glowing Up

James
4 min readFeb 10, 2024

Like many of you, I began to stretch my legs as a writer right here on Medium. It’s been a wild ride since and I’m so grateful for all of you and every second of my journey. I’m here to tell you that if I can do it — you can do it — and that dreams really do come true.

From Broke Medium Writer to a $1.7 Million Dollar Book Advance and Publishing Deal by Age 34” isn’t just a clickbait title — it’s my current reality.

A million dollars is life-changing money. I don’t care how expensive life has become post-pandemic; a million bucks is still “holy shit” money. That many zeros can still solve a lot of problems.

And truth be told, it’s honestly quite daunting at first. I would compulsively reload my account daily for several weeks after cashing out in fear of my funds magically disappearing.

I’m not used to seeing so many digits in my bank account.

Not unless the balance is negative — that I’m used to. Debt and I are good pals. Before the big payday we never spent much time apart. Whenever he’d go a while without hearing from me, Debt would nudge his secretaries to give me a call. He dubbed them his “debt collectors.

Pretty clever.

Our conversations were often my favorite part of the day. Admittedly, we had a very healthy relationship. I would tell…

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