Reflection after Writing 100 Articles

Best Article Tips for Published Writers

Writing on Medium can be better than randomly submitting your work elsewhere.

Make no mistake about it: After writing a hundred articles and six months into medium this guy has learned a lot, a real lot!

Boosted!

First and foremost, I’ve had a few stories boosted.

Hard work that was!

Here are the ten most useful tips I can offer after this feat.

To be sure, I’m not a beginning writer, so if you are, write on.

My writing experience goes back over two decades with marginal success.

Published Stuff

In the early 2000s, I wrote articles for the Desert Sun and Palm Springs Life.

At the Desert Sun, I was a columnist for a few years, penning weekly travel stories in One Take Trips.

I went on to write religious profiles for the paper for one year, 52 different religious and spiritual institutions in the Coachella Valley.

I wrote books, too. Eleven of them — all about photography and Photoshop.

Unpublished Stuff

Only just a tad of what I wrote was published.

This is where my medium adventure began — with the writing I’ve saved for over twenty years that was not published, including a poorly written novel with lots of errors titled Bienvendio a Miami.

Did I learn anything from all of this? Yes…so here is the scoop.

Ten Tips for Writing on Medium If You Have Some Experience Writing

1. Save everything you’ve written in Cyberspace. I use Google Drive and external hard drives.
2. Never toss your thumbdrives or external hard drives. There might be documents you authored that can be revised into articles. I have tons of writings scattered about my bedroom under my night table for easy access, much of which I’ve uploaded to Google Drive.
3. Recycle, recycle, and recycle. Take your old stuff and make it new again by turning your writing into articles part by sensible part. On my hard drives and on Google Drive, I have rejected book proposals that I’ve rewritten into articles. I have unfinished articles that I’ve refreshed and dozens of article ideas written and saved — all game for possible medium articles.
4. Save your photos, all of them. I have over a million.
5. Rename your photos and photo folders by photography types and/or what’s contained in them so that they are easy to locate to match them up with your writing. I label mine street, mid-century, graffiti, autos, art deco, furniture, signs, landscapes, etc…
6. When writing on medium.com avoid links in your articles. Use references instead and/or links at the end of your article. I’ve found that using links takes your readers out of your stories. They probably won’t come back, causing you a loss of read time and income.
7. Use Grammarly to check for spelling and grammar errors. It’s free and much better than the Word spelling and grammar checker.
8. Revise, Revise, Revise. Sleep on your work. I copy and paste parts of my article to make it easier to read. I revise while I’m writing after I finish a paragraph, and after the story is finished.
9. Honor thy editors. This is a biggie. I incorporate just about all of their suggestions without hesitation and right away. I’ve found that the more effort editors put into your stories/articles, the more likely they’ll be boosted.
10. Be yourself. I find that my personality, character, sense of humor, personal experiences and honesty work best in medium articles.