2021 Medium Writing Contest
3 of 4 MWC Winners Took the Money and Ran
They are not engaging with the rest of us
“Winning and losing isn’t everything; sometimes, the journey is just as important as the outcome.”
The Medium writer’s contest (MWC) winners have caused a lot of angst within the Medium community for various reasons. This article is not about the complaints of eligibility. This article is about my wanting more from the winners.
Three of the four writers who won the big money have written nothing on Medium since winning. Of the four winners: Meera Vijayann, Sarah Hawthorne, Randi Ragan, and Hal H. Harris, only Hal H. Harris continues to write consistently on the Medium platform. I am disappointed both because the winners did not join our community, and the community did not embrace them or their winning articles. This was not what I expected would result from the MWC. I guess I am an eternal optimist.
#MWC Space ($10,000)
For the prompt #MWC Space, the winner was Meera Vijayann. Meera has 915 followers. Like many of us, Meera is a stop-and-go writer on Medium. She has articles from as far back as June 2015.
She put up five in 2015, eight in 2016, four in 2017, nine in 2018, four in 2019, twenty-two in 2020, and five in 2021, including the winner. The winner is a heart-tugging personal 12-minute read with 4.6K claps and 46 comments.
The winning article is about her turbulent relationship with her mother and how they sometimes connected over cooking together. Since winning the $10,000, Meera has not posted a single story on Medium under her name.
#MWC Re-Entry ($10,000)
The winner in this category was Sarah Hawthorne. Sarah has 215 followers. She wrote a rough and tumble article about being disabled and accepting that you will never get well, so deal with it.
It was a well-written 16-minute article with no pictures and no subtitles. After it won, an image was added. The story has 3k claps and 41 comments. A little hard to read because I’m used to easier formatting. Sarah joined Medium to win the contest. She wrote one story for each of the four prompts and a fiction piece. That was it — no more. Since winning the $10,000, she has posted no new stories under her name.
#MWC Death ($60,000)
The winner in this category is Randi Ragan. Randi has 820 followers. The story opens with her grandmother’s horrific suicide after her mother’s death. It is heartbreaking. It took me two tries to read the entire story of a very dysfunctional family.
The article is a fifteen-minute read with 11K reads and 160 comments. Randi joined Medium to win the contest. She wrote the winning story. After winning, she wrote another article thanking Medium for the money. That is it. No new stories under her name have been posted.
#MWC Work ($10,000)
The winner was longtime Medium writer Hal H. Harris. Hal has 951 followers.
The title of the article, like many of Hal’s articles, speaks for itself. The article is a well-researched well thought out 16 minute read that has 3.3K reads and 36 comments. Hal is a prolific Medium writer. He has an article list so long that I stopped counting.
Hal wrote four related essays for the contest prompts all of them associated with Black Survival. He has a long-running series, ‘Black on Both Sides,’ at Volume 21. Since the contest, he has written many thought-provoking and serious articles about the real life of Black people in America.
No Community Interaction
My first disappointment derives from the fact that I enjoy reading writers on Medium. There is a diversity of voices, styles, and cultures. We have fiction, non-fiction, and poetry written by people who have put skin in the game. There are humorous and heartbreaking pieces. I read articles from people I do not agree with to get their perspective.
One of my favorite things to do is sit down for ½ an hour a day and read and clap for as many voices as I can fit in. The platform is a community of writers, some happy, some angry friends, and a few feuds. We even have our own group of Medium trolls.
I normally do not read or write articles that are longer than ten minutes. In ten minutes, I can read 3 three-minute articles and a poem in that same ten minutes but obviously, based on the winners, Medium is encouraging us to write longer articles.
Three of the winners, Meera, Sarah, and Randi, have stopped writing entirely. Two winners of the MWC did not join the community. Randi and Sarah came to get the money. They came, they wrote, they won, they left. Meera is a long-time Medium writer, but she has not posted anything new this year since winning.
Three of the winners, Meera, Sarah, and Randi, have stopped writing entirely. Two winners of the MWC did not join the community. Randi and Sarah came to get the money. They came, they wrote, they won, they left. Meera is a long-time Medium writer, but she has not posted anything new this year since winning.
I Would Love to See More
Because the winners are not writing, I cannot learn from them. I would like to read more articles from each of them. I will follow, read and clap. Right now, I have read their winning articles, but I have not followed Randi and Sarah because I need more from them to follow. I follow Meera to catch whenever she posts again. I read Hal when he posts.
The second disappointment is the community support shown to the MWC winner, Hal H Harris, who won and is writing on our platform. He is one of us: writers struggling to write relevant and significant words each day. His writing reflects his wanting to make life better for everyone in America, not just Black people. I don’t always agree with him, but I support him. He should be seeing our appreciation of his writing skills reflected in his followers and reads. So far, he is not.
It is what we would have wanted had we won. Let us be gracious and do unto others as we would have them do unto us. In the meantime, I’ll keep writing, reading and posting.
Toni Crowe retired as the Vice President of Operations to pursue her dream of being a writer. Toni has written six books, two of which won the 2019 Reader’s Choice Gold Awards. Her bestselling business book, “Bullets and Bosses Don’t Have Friends: How Do You Manage A Man Sitting With His Dick in His Hand?” was one of the winners. Her first book, “Never a $7 Whore” was the other.
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