Medium is like a mad science experiment.
Maybe you'll end up creating Frankenstein, maybe a mermaid.
Happy Friday! The end of the week is a fabulous time to do an inventory of what has worked for you and what hasn’t.
I admit, I started this email a couple days ago and it accidentally morphed into a published story. It was about that very topic…..what may or may not be holding your writing back and how you can spice it up a bit.
You can read it right here:
Shortly after publishing that one, I read an article from another writer that made me pause and think for a second. He wrote about writers using Medium as their personal diaries, and how we shouldn’t expect to earn decent money if we treat it as such.
I agree and disagree.
If you’re here to make money, maybe he’s right. But then again, who’s to say your life isn’t that interesting? And interesting to whom? We can’t know what our audiences want until we either publish and fail, or publish and succeed.
A huge amount of content on Medium is based on personal experience (just like a diary) and we’re reading it, right?
For example, there’s an abundance of cat stories and I hate cats so I’ll never read those. But based on content in certain social groups, it seems I’m the odd man out on that one. Everyone loves cats!
What it boils down to is what people relate to. We don’t all relate to the same things but with an estimated 60 MILLION Medium readers (and that stat is from 2017) we’re bound to relate to a good chunk of them, regardless of what we write about.
I challenge you.
Take a thorough inventory of your past stories and really study where you’ve done better and where you’ve done worse. What can you find?
When I do my inventory of the last couple weeks I find that no one wants to read about cockroaches or church. And I don’t blame them! But I had to try to find out.
Those were my Frankensteins. Now, on to create some mermaids!
Here’s my quick funny for the week:
Thwarting small talk.
Perfecting the art of avoiding meaningless conversation.
Here’s my newest cultural experiment in a new publication: