4 Ways to Start Your Creative Reading Adventure Today

Ditch Medium’s homepage and choose your own path.

What do remote work, space, gadgets, true crime, psychedelics, and self-driving cars have in common?

They are all specific topics people write about on Medium!

Did you know that? Or are you stuck in the same old boring homepage reading rut?

I recently climbed out of my rut when I finished my 21-day Medium reading challenge. The challenge was simple: find a new-to-me writer here on Medium for 21 days and fully read three of their articles.

It unearthed the magical world of what I call a creative reading adventure.

This is a fancy way to describe the process of finding articles to read. Hint: you don’t just roll out of bed, grab some coffee and read the headlines fed to you on your homepage.

Creative reading choices happen when you have adventured a little to find the pieces you read: when you exert effort to find the goods yourself rather than let the algorithms do all the heavy lifting.

The creative part is the act, the journey of finding inspiring articles.

Try one of these methods below if you’re tired of reading the same old things from your same old homepage. *Note: all suggestions are for the desktop version of Medium except for the one directly below.

Read new topics (for Medium app)

Let’s get back to those psychedelics, gadgets, and self-driving cars. These are all specific topics available for you to search in the Medium app. From your homepage, just select the little search icon in the upper-righthand corner. Then you’ll see a blank search bar appear with the “Explore topics” option below it.

This search method guarantees that you’ll tap into plenty of articles about subjects other than your usual suspects. The list currently has 104 topics.

So get to reading and expand your horizons!

Change up the writing genre

This is sort of along the same lines as the suggestion above, only it’s really more about the type of writing rather than the topic.

Mid-way through my 21-day reading challenge was the only time I became aware that I read zero fiction on Medium. I had not known that authors published fiction on the platform since I was never spoonfed it on my homepage. So I explored. That’s when I made another valuable discovery — a vast terrain previously hiding from me like the shy Medium writing it is — erotica.

Erotica is some of the hottest fiction on Medium (pun intended).

There is probably a type of writing hiding from you too — poetry, short stories, comedy, memoirs, technical writing, etc.

Branch out and see what you can find!

Find new-to-you writers

This is my favorite way to take a creative reading adventure on Medium. I like finding different personalities and experiencing the depth of the human experience. And I love to read people’s real-life stories.

Many of us are programmed to read something based on a topic of interest because of how we can benefit from it. Or worse, because of a snazzy headline: aka clickbait.

But what kind of way is that to learn new perspectives?!

There are a plethora of tremendous writers on Medium pouring their hearts and souls out to us. And they sometimes hide in little corners that are hard to find, probably due to those pesky algorithms. So in my February reading challenge, I took the following creative journeys to find amazing new-to-me writers.

Pick a random name

This is actually quite fun, though it will exclude people (any search will, of course). But it is a great place to start as this is just about branching out beyond your usual homepage to the wide, wide world of Medium.

Simply go to your search icon bar at the top of your homepage where it says “search Medium” and enter a name. Let’s use “Jen” for now. Then select “people” and — boom — there are more Jens than you could ever handle. The search will yield any derivative of the name Jen: whether in the first or last name of the writer such as Jenna, Jennifer, Jens, Jenny, Jensen, Jenkins, Jennings, Jenée, Ai-jen, Jen, Jenni… you get the point.

Then you can read through the bios to choose a new writer. For even more fun, just close your eyes, scroll, and randomly click! Commit to reading 3 articles from your chosen writer.

A to Z

If picking a name or a part of a name doesn’t seem like it’s broad enough for you, choose a letter instead. It will come up with a lot more search results. For instance, if you choose “Z”, you will find all the names of writers whose first name or last name begins with the letter Z.

From there, choose writers the same way as above.

Read comments

I found a great new-to-me writer by reading the comments section of an article I enjoyed. Lo and behold, one writer made a comment that deeply struck me and made me curious to read what else he had to say. So I clicked on his profile and started reading his work. I’m glad I followed that instinct! Now I found another writer that may have otherwise stayed hidden away in some Medium pocket.

Go to a tag and discover archived stories

I don’t particularly like searching by tags because they only bring up the most popular stories that everyone is already reading.

C’mon Medium. I’m on an adventure here! I want to get to the off-the-beaten-path stories, thank you very much.

Luckily, there is a way to do this, too. Start your search the same way, let’s say you search “food”. Then select the option for Tags all the way to the right-hand side of the search results and then select “food” again. You’ll only see 5–10 of the recent Top Stories in the food tag listed.

Boring! I want the under top 10 stories. If you do too, then toggle over to “Archive” where you’ll find many more. Don’t be afraid to go back a few years. It’s not as if words expire. Something said in 2017 should not be erased forever as it may still have validity.

Some tags go back many years. This could take you on an endless journey where each new turn unfolds a new writer with a fresh voice. So, explore for yourself and see what you find!

Conclusion

Take a break from the same old boring Medium reading choices delivered straight to your homepage hot off the algorithm press.

Use your creative juices for more than just writing on Medium. Since many of us are still being very COVID-careful with travel, why not use this platform as a way to virtually adventure?

I promise it will, at the very least, bring you to someone or something you had not seen before on the platform.

A big thanks to Ann James for participating in the 21-day reading challenge. Ann shared her creative reading methods with me (she did the A-Z profile method!) and she inspired me to write this article.