It’s very hard to be a professional writer and earn a living from it, and it’s certainly not recommended to work that hard when you have health issues such as yours. Nothing wrong with trying, though, I’ve tried locked stories as well but it’s better to write for content mills if you like working for peanuts.

Besides, locking stories actually hurts your reach because when you share them on social media, people get frustrated when they cannot read and would have to pay to get access. Not everyone is a paying member or interested in becoming one.

I wanted to include some of the Medium posts as references in my book but decided not to due to the above stated reasons, so while these writers could have gotten so and so many new readers via the book, that ain’t gonna happen now because their stories are locked.

And, please take advantage of what the free stories can give you — you can build your email list, ask people for funding, link to Patreon or wherever else and this, in the end, can be a lot more fruitful that locking the stories for a few cents per month.