Celebrating 100 Published Stories 🥂But Why Should it Matter?

I believe in marking and celebrating every milestone

Welcome to my 100th story published on Medium.

But is it really so special? I find myself asking…

“What’s the big deal? Who really cares?”

Because let’s face it — writers write all the time. 100 articles is a drop in the ocean for many.

Yet, for new writers to any platform, it is a big deal. It’s a milestone that seems an age away when hitting ‘Publish’ for the first time. It did for me yet, at the same time, I wasn’t actually focusing on reaching this number as a goal. I was only focusing on putting one foot in front of the other and publishing the next story that materialised from my head and through my fingers.

But, now that I am here, I wanted to mark this moment.

Not just having published 100 stories but everything else that has happened along the way.

A learning journey explained

To be clear, these 100 stories have been published in a relatively short space of time. 93 of them were published during an 83-day period.

Publishing, on average, more than one story per day probably sounds counterintuitive to most people. But it can work in your favour in a couple of significant ways.

1. Getting seen

No one is going to read that many stories by one author, are they?

Well, probably not. However, there are some keen followers of mine who are reading every story at the moment. It might not last forever, but new ones will hop onboard when others get bored.

Meanwhile, I have keen followers who are catching up with my stories every few days. And, with a following that increases daily, that amounts to more and more reads per day.

The other aspect to this is that with each new story, new followers flock.

New followers also check out other recent stories of yours. The more of your ‘good’ stories that you pin on your profile, the more you get to exhibit your better work and the more overall views and reads you receive per day.

Ultimately, the combination of increased stories, followers, and views results in a gradual compounding overall of the ultimate goal — an increased amount of time that readers spend reading your work.

But can’t this happen with publishing less often yet focusing more specifically on quality?

Yes, it absolutely can, but there are a lot of variables. You may spend a week writing and polishing to perfection a really well-thought-out, well-structured piece about a really important topic. But that doesn’t guarantee that many people will even see it.

Unless it is not only chosen for further distribution but also featured by Medium — a new aspect to the distribution system — it may still fail to reach many people. And there’s nothing more gutting than putting your all into this one article that you’re sure is destined to be The One That Goes Viral, only to hear crickets.

But, do you know what does guarantee views and reads? Having already grown an engaged viewership and readership.

And the best way to do that? Keep pumping out content that speaks to your audience and engages them, while sharing valuable insights and information.

2. Exercising your writing and creative muscles

Writing every single day for a significant period of time will, ultimately, result in content creation becoming easier and easier.

Eventually, it can feel almost effortless to fuel new ideas and turn them into a well-written and engaging article. And I am even talking about long-form articles becoming almost effortless.

But you don’t even need to stick just to the long, detailed stories.

Imagine what happens when you then pepper in a few short-form stories to give your readers bite-sized nuggets of your creativity, wisdom, and humour to chew on, in between the longer, more thought-out compositions?

These can just feel like fun, light-hearted additions to the general flow of words coming from you, and give your readers a little interlude from the more involved pieces.

Short-form content has a valuable place in the Mediumsphere, so don’t overlook it.

It can be an engaging snippet of your work that people will want to click on because of the ease of reading. Rather than detract from the overall quality of your work, it can simply help to keep engagement constant, while offering a little teaser to the bigger picture of what you offer to your readers.

In summary, writing daily, channelling ideas daily, and creating a continuous flow that includes stories of varying lengths will become second nature over time.

But what’s next after this first hundred for me?

Will I take a break or keep going?

This is a no-brainer. I have no good reason not to keep writing. Even when it feels like my writing brain feels tired, another wave of inspiration will hit me out of the blue and off I go again.

I will likely take it a bit slower this month since December is a busy family month with 2 birthdays and Christmas 🎈🎉🎄 But I will still write daily. However, being someone that loves to understand her audience and their habits through data, I am looking forward to continuing to publish through the holiday season and watching what the numbers do.

So…watch this space!

All in all, I am proud of having reached this milestone, and I am ready for the next one, whatever it may be.

I hope this inspires others to keep writing something every day, and getting those stories published. Your followers and readers are waiting in excited anticipation!

So, if you do nothing else…just keep ̶s̶w̶i̶m̶m̶i̶n̶g̶ writing!

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