Writing, Life Lessons, Mentoring

Empower Your Writing

Envy vs. Encouragement: What lights your fire?

I was nervous about joining the Medium Mentoring Community Program led by the editors I envied at Inspired Writer, but I was enticed to learn more about writing on Medium from successful, well-established, more experienced writers. I reached a point in my writing where I needed an outside push, guidance, and direction after six months of writing on the platform and needed to connect with writers on a deeper level.

The Editors of Inspired Writer

I admired Kelly Eden for her writing style and experience. I loved her bio, creative energy and felt she was a woman I could sit down and have a coffee with if we lived in the same neighborhood and country. I was already a writer for her publication, and now I wanted to become part of her mentoring program.

Ash Jurberg is a prolific storyteller and a 16x Medium top writer who makes me laugh — but it’s not because he looks funny. His witty, sarcastic sense of humor shines through his stories. His articles are well-written, entertaining, and capture your attention all the way through. But to be honest, I had a secret crush on Ash (he’s not funny-looking at all!), and I was excited to meet him and see that handsome mugshot in person via Zoom.

The Price Was Right

It cost $100 USD for a 6-week program, but the Slack group the editors created for the program is open indefinitely so that you can connect with the group members at any time.

Small Groups, Big Mentoring

My group consisted of 18 members from different parts of the world, such as Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Canada, and the US. For many, writing on Medium establishes a sense of community. Still, Ash mentioned the purpose of their mentoring group was to elevate that sense of community within a small group to make it even more cohesive.

Like many small-sized (less than 50 members) online groups, including my own Facebook Friends with Fitness Benefits Group I lead, typically half or less than half of the members participate regularly. My fitness group is built on encouraging and inspiring members to exercise daily. It works well because there are only between 10–20 active members at any given time and gives each person’s “daily exercise activity posts” enough space to be stand out. The members cheer each other on through our fitness posts, at whatever fitness level they’re at — because we’re working toward one common goal — bettering our health.

In our Inspired Writers mentoring group, about 10 members out of 18 participated, making it manageable to spend some time engaging with writers who were all at different writing and experience levels and work toward our common goal — bettering our writing.

Creating small online groups is a step towards building community and fosters friendships on common ground. Our small group enabled the editors and members to mentor each other and give attention, feedback, and support to their stories in a safe, reliable setting — without feeling pressured, ignored, or overwhelmed by a large number of participants.

The IW mentoring group is productive, engaging, and supportive — unlike the large-sized Medium Facebook groups I’ve joined in the past that hosted hundreds to thousands of members. These groups made me feel lost, unseen and forgotten. Members dropped their article links — and disappeared. On a good day, I’d receive one clap or a rare comment for one of my articles after I read, clapped 50x, and commented for 10–25 articles that were posted above or below my article. Ugh.

Tips & Tricks for Writing on Medium

There are hundreds of articles that provide tips and tricks for writing on Medium. Still, one of the great benefits of the Slack group was having one place where you can ask your questions and get answers within minutes or the same day or so — by either the IW editors or group members who had access to the information.

I learned about stats, algorithms, badges, curation, tips about submitting to various Medium publications, what certain relationships were like with various editors at different publications, and the latest news on Medium.

Giving Feedback to Other Writers

Although I made contact with each member, there were a handful of women writers within our group that I connected with on a deeper personal level — through ongoing active encouragement and feedback on our stories. While I don’t know these women personally, they invited me into their lives by asking for feedback on their draft articles.

It enabled me to see how their minds work behind the scenes, what they were struggling with during their writing process, and how vulnerable writers must feel during the feedback process by trusting me and others to read their stories.

Sometimes they needed help with titles and subtitles or suggestions for which publications to pitch or submit. Other times they reached out and learned that they needed to create more intimacy or detail in their stories to connect with their readers.

These were women I felt safe with who had either similar writing interests or had quirky personalities that I grew to adore through their Slack chats and stories.

They became more than just names on the screen.

Receiving Feedback on My Stories

I rarely seek feedback before publishing my stories, but there was one particular story that I needed fresh eyes to read. It was an emotionally charged article to write — and a difficult one to share. It was a story about facing racism during my childhood.

What I appreciated about the feedback was their honesty about how they told me it stirred up their emotions from their past and opened up conversations about their own experiences and reflections on racism. I knew when the members in my group were “talking about it” in the Slack group — that it was a sign for publishing the story because that’s exactly what I needed my readers to do — talk about racism — because talking is the first step in educating ourselves about it.

Envy vs. Encouragement: What lights your fire?

Most writers suffer from writer’s envy, whether you’ve published zero stories, 6 stories, or 600 stories. Although none of the writers in our group mentioned they experienced a stab of envy whenever they saw the newly published articles posted in the “Successes” tab in our Slack group, I’m sure many of them did — including me.

I’m a huge supporter of encouraging others to shine. Through my own Facebook Fitness group and the IW Mentoring group, I discovered that it motivates them to reciprocate when you engage with others and support them through claps, likes, encouraging words, or thoughtful comments or feedback.

Encouragement builds confidence, and for writers on Medium — it builds their visibility and engagement on the platform.

Working together, encouraging, and cheering for each other creates strength, hope, and support. It fuels inspiration.

Working against each other creates weakness, sadness, and loneliness. It fuels desperation.

When you turn envy into encouragement, you start winning your internal battle against envy — inspire each other and thrive together.

I’d rather light a fire by encouraging others to shine than douse their light with negativity and envy.

My talented writer friend and sister of another mother, Hollie Petit, Ph.D., who I met on Medium, but outside of this IW group, described creative writers perfectly with this beautiful quote in her article, Establishing a Sense of Community on Medium.

As creative people, we have a fragility that needs to be strengthened, not weakened. — Hollie Petit, Ph.D.

Kelly Eden expresses what writers think when they experience envy, but in a powerful poetic way where it uplifts the writer rather than negating her — with this quote in Kelly’s love letter article.

…I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I’m jealous that your work is such a perfect expression of my thoughts and feelings when it’s me that felt and thought them. I’m jealous that you’ve managed to do that magical thing that I fumble to do in my amateur way when I’ve been doing this for so long and shouldn’t I be able to express myself better by now? — Kelly Eden

In that same magical love letter, Kelly Eden writes something that we all need to hear from our readers. Believe Kelly when she says her love letter to you will be the confidence boost you need.

What you do is meaningful and I respect you for it: I respect your voice, your bravery, your rawness. I have respect for your pain — placed out there, arranged so beautifully when it could (and should) look raw and ugly because those feelings are raw and ugly. — Kelly Eden

This Happened to Me

During the six weeks of the program, the program empowered me in the following ways:

1. It elevated my writing efforts

I typically publish only 4 stories per month on Medium. For June, I set out to publish my usual 4 stories, and for my June Challenge, my goal was to publish 16 photo stories in SNAPSHOTS. Two of the photo stories were chosen for further distribution, Dragonfly on a Stick and The Dance of the Pigeons.

This was a struggle because pumping out those 4 articles usually takes up most of my writing energy and time between my day job, parenting, and fitness routine. Announcing my goal in our Slack group and getting encouragement from our members made me accountable and gave me an extra push to write more stories.

In the meantime, I noticed that my “Top Writer in Parenting” badge disappeared because I hadn’t written any parenting articles recently, but I earned a “Top Writer in Photography” badge due to the 16 photo stories I published.

2. I submitted to bigger publications

One of my writing challenges was to submit and get published into bigger publications. For the first time, after three rejections from The Ascent, my story, “The Click Moment of Exercise: The click is sudden, but when you get it — it’s empowering,” was accepted and published by The Ascent and chosen for further distribution (CFD).

I published my second piece, which was also CFD, How I Became a Superhero Kid: The cost of winning in P.S. I Love You because my goal was to get at least one more story in before the publication closes down at the end of June.

I took a chance and submitted writing samples to Better Humans, Fearless She Wrote, and An Injustice and was accepted as a writer in all three publications.

3. I self-published my first story

I find that self-publishing on Medium is scarier than submitting and publishing on a publication. I self-published a story for the first time, The Power of White: Undoing white power to embrace my Chinese skin. It was chosen for further distribution, received great views, reads, and the largest number of claps than any of my other articles published in Medium publications, excluding my “high jumping” About Me Story. It has since been published in An Injustice.

4. My views increased

My views increased from an average of 600–900 views over 30 days to 1,000–1,450 views. I’m guessing it’s because I published more frequently and gained more readers and followers over the last two months with the additional support of our mentoring group through claps and comments.

What I learned during the program

1. I learned more about writing on Medium from more experienced writers and editors, Kelly Eden and Ash Jurberg, but also from the experience of other writers of all ages and writing levels in my group. This included a bright, young writer just starting on the platform who I’ve been competing against in a friendly online typing contest in which I hope to kick his butt someday— to a well-experienced fiction author of 16 novels.
2. I received guidance, direction, and feedback within the group with questions about writing.
3. I got the extra push I needed to focus and write more stories, publish in bigger publications, became braver to submit and share.
4. I practiced my editing and feedback skills and learned that writers appreciated and valued the individual edits and suggestions I provided.
5. I connected with writers on a deeper level and expanded my writing community.

My writing mentors, Kelly Eden and Ash Jurberg, and team members inspired me to try harder, write braver and helped foster a greater sense of community on Medium within our group.

I found what I was looking for at Inspired Writer.

If you put forth the effort to connect with others, you will find a home and a more profound sense of purpose in your writing. — Hollie Petit, Ph.D.

Grateful for your reading time, Mary Chang Story Writer.

About the Author

Mary Chang is an award-winning short story fiction writer, memoir writer, and blogger. She’s also a parent, fitness enthusiast and loves making people laugh.

Fueled by cartwheels, laughter, and encouraging others to shine. Read her blog at www.marychangstorywriter.com.