Can You REALLY Write Well Enough to Get Paid?

Let’s find out. Medium has left the building.

Let’s talk. Those of us who do this for a living, who really do know how to write, and who thought we had found a home on Medium, here goes.

I will likely still do some stuff on here for the sake of folks who are kind enough to care about me and who want to follow where I go next. I’ll keep you apprised. Meanwhile, here are some articles about where you and I might want to start pointing our work:

The third one may well be badly outdated. Always double check before you go to the trouble. They did some updating but given Covid, it serves to find out for whom there were services at their burial.

As it is, Medium might wanna plan a will.

From that article, this is a proviso that goes for all of us all the time:

Note: The site will generally only accept native English authors and those with a track record of high-quality work in English.

Folks, if you cannot write well in the language of business, then you absolutely MUST get an editor and proofreader. This isn’t negotiable. NO site wants to inherit anyone’s sloppy writing, and they will NOT weigh in and correct all our grammar. It’s not a crime to not be super-proficient in English. It is, however, foolish to submit articles to English-speaking outlets without having them checked. And it’s insulting to your editors. That’s a good way to never get work from anyone. Nobody signs up to do more work on poor work.

Before you get all “het up” about that $500, kindly, no matter how many followers you have on Medium, no matter how many articles you “published,” those don’t make you a coherent writer.

Writers are professional, they are committed, they take classes, are brutal about their sentence format and grammar, and we know we will never be good enough even if we win prizes. I have, and a lot of times my stuff still sucks. Because that’s part of being a writer.

A goodly part of my work will ALWAYS suck. Not good enough to line the bottom of the birdcage. The difference is that I damned well know it.

I have seen plenty of folks on Medium with plenty of followers and their stuff is worse than a farm full of pig shit. I wouldn’t recommend making any assumptions that editors are slavering for your stuff if you haven’t really been published where it counts, gotten paid for it, and earned the right to call yourself a writer. Fellow writers get my meaning. I don’t mean to insult. Clarity is a fine thing, and knowing where you really stand in terms of your facility with words is even better, especially if you harbor the conceit to jump ship and take your shit to greener pastures. Your shit needs to be good enough to fertilize their profits.

And last, because I like the comments which are useful:

Our opinion about how well we write is useless. All that matters is whether or not an editor thinks what we write is valuable. Pros pick lanes, they do the work of pitching stories, and they put the time in to write good material. And they understand that writing is a business, and that you goddamned well need to learn to sell yourself.

Don’t wanna sell yourself? Hire an agent. AND. No agent will represent crap writing because nobody will ever work them after that .

What you might want in your bookcase. You do read, yes? I mean, a LOT? To that:

Okay, Stephen King, fine. Better yet, please see:

and get:

By the way, you might also want his short, sweet, succinct (the title of which I want to tattoo on a shit-ton of Medium folks’ heads including my own).

Why I love Pressfield:

The difference between an amateur and a professional is in their habits. An amateur has amateur habits. A professional has professional habits. We can never free ourselves from habit. But we can replace bad habits with good ones.

He’s brutal. He’s right, if you wanna write.

Nothing wrong with being an amateur. A LOT wrong with being an amateur and posing as a pro, and getting paid for shit work and thinking that proves how good you are. With a nod to buddy Gillian Sisley, all that does, as with Goop and idiot-in-expensive-clothing Gwyneth Paltrow, that any fucking fool with a following can dupe a great many others. I love how she calls then out.

But your stuff is still shit, and on the stage of real professionals, I wouldn’t suggest putting that pap up for comparison.

If you cannot handle that kind of honesty you cannot write. I thrive on it, and I can write, albeit never ever to the level I want.

Then there’s this:

One of these guys was my father’s English teacher at Cornell. If these aren’t your library, I guarantee you that your writing may well suffer. I invite ALL my peeps to offer their favorite how to write books, classes, etc.

You can get away with a great deal of not only mediocrity, but you can make money for pure shit. That is NOT an indicator of your writing ability but of three things:

1. You’re good at grabbing eyeballs with clickbait titles
2. People can be stupid. And they like looking at outrageous shit. That just underscores that it’s shit.
3. Making money off that kind of thing might work for you, but it don’t in no way shape or form make you a fuckin’ writer. You are a huckster, a con and a cheat posing as one. (and YES, Gaslighters Anonymous, the colloquial English was intentional)

Most sites that pay demand excellence.

That’s not Medium, not any more, not for too many. Which, by definition, means that they aren’t writers, in that elevated way that I am choosing to use the term.

I said at the beginning of this year, long before Covid, that I always got the heebie-jeebies about submitting to publications. I have done it. I mastered that sucker, and I am getting long form articles published. Now I need to do more of it in more places. Medium has forced my hand, and if you’re out there looking for one to pull you forward, this article is for you.

And because I love humor, here it is:

Thanks Bebe Nicholson. I needed that.

I invite those of you on Illumination, in other pubs, if you are tired of pushing your pen for pennies, and then having said pennies pulled out of our collective pockets, check out these sites. Please share what you found and update us. I have a lane to swim, work to do. I am tired of waiting for Medium to figure out its shit and right the ship. They may. Or not. I think they are in death throes, and if not, it’s still going to take a lot more hard damned work to fix what they royally fucked up.

Lotta good people doing stupid shit, shit that they know better than to do. They are neither bad nor evil. But they are being stupid right now.

Meantime I am going to spend a goodly portion of my life and time focusing on my professional writing career.

Reports welcome. If you find something that works, please share. If you find that these links have whiskers, update us. But kindly, write, write well, write proud, edit without mercy or bandages, and be brave enough to walk away if this ain’t working for you. I am doing just that every thing, until such time that Medium has decided who it serves, what it showed up to do and why, and is willing to do whatever it takes to live up to that original lofty promise.