Finding Myself: 10 Months on Medium, 43 Years in Journalism
Every writer on Medium, from novice to pro, has her own path — this might help you find yours.
I’ve been feeling my way around Medium, trying to understand its customs and culture since April when I published my first piece. I am a stranger in a strange land, late of the planet Old School. I’ve won awards for my writing. But, here, I am a novice, desperate to grok this community and the landscape it inhabits.
Grok means “to understand,” of course, but Dr. Mahmoud, who might be termed the leading Terran expert on Martians, explains that it also means, “to drink” and “a hundred other English words, words which we think of as antithetical concepts. ‘Grok’ means all of these. It means ‘fear,’ it means ‘love,’ it means ‘hate’ — proper hate, for by the Martian ‘map’ you cannot hate anything unless you grok it, understand it so thoroughly that you merge with it and it merges with you — then you can hate it.
Part of me kicks and screams every day about Medium. I’m blown away by the sheer numbers. One publication has over 8,000 writers. I have no way of proving this (I tried in vain to Google it), but 8,000 might have been the number of all writers everywhere when I wrote my first piece for New York magazine decades ago. Even more daunting, there are just as many publications.
I recently heard of a similar platform, Substack, which promises a better future for news.” I’ve yet to explore it — I’m too busy trying to navigate Medium — but I can’t help wondering, is that a better place for me?
Like most people, I don’t enjoy — indeed, I sometimes resent — being at the beginning of a learning curve, especially after spending years honing my craft.
But I push ahead. After all, I’m a journalist. I don’t know what else to do.
Where I’ve been before
I started writing for magazines in the late 70s, authoring and co-authoring books in the early 90s. I earned good living as a writer.
In 2014, I became a writer who (mostly) didn’t get paid.
I didn’t see it coming. In 2008, making last-minute changes to the final galleys of Consequential Strangers, I added “Twitter” to a sentence that already included Facebook, YouTube, and — a name now relegated to oblivion — MySpace. A relatively new concept when I began the book two years earlier, “social media” was already beginning to increase the number of casual acquaintances we could “know.”
Months later, in a prepublication meeting with a roomful of editors and marketing people eager to promote the book, I was told I should “establish an online presence.” No one actually knew what that meant, but everyone had a theory.
I nearly killed myself trying to make my 13th book “go viral” — but at least I lived to write about it. Publisher’s Weekly — the trade magazine read by publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents — ran my piece, “The Audacity of Hype,” in its venerable back-of-the-book opinion feature, “Soapbox.” Scant consolation — and of course no compensation.
It was then that I began to reckon with the phenomenon of “writing for exposure.” Translation: We will publish you, but we won’t pay you. If you haven’t already seen it, Harland Ellison’s famous pay-the-writer rant says it all:
I went along with the new normal. I had no choice. And I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I was flattered in 2014 when my next book was published and an editor at Huffington Post asked if I’d write an advice column— allegedly their first. She suggested the title, “Dear Family Whisperer.”
For the next two years, I answered parents’, grandparents’, and even children’s questions, giving advice from a “whole family” perspective. In theory, the column would promote the main idea of the book: Nothing is simply “between parent and child.” You must look at the entire ecosystem. I was not paid by Huffington Post, nor did “Dear Family Whisperer” boost book sales.
Huffington Post has since closed its “contributor’s platform.” Apparently, they’re now paying some writers. But I can tell you, no loyalty comes from not getting paid, especially if your profession is writing!
What now?
I took a two-year break in 2016 to join the Board of Directors of a condominium in south Florida and apply my skills to encourage “better communication” in the building — an impossible dream, as I would learn.
When I returned to writing, I naturally wanted readers. Writers need readers. To that end, I had to be where the eyeballs are: online.
The old routes to getting published still exist. I pitched an article in late 2018 to New York magazine about eye health, a subject I’d covered for them in the past. To my delight, I received a warm and personal rejection from the editor, who started there as an assistant years ago and has since worked his way to the top.
I’m sorry to be late in getting back to you. I was indeed away when your first email arrived.
Am afraid we have to pass on this. We have less and less room in our feature well, and the natural home for the medical coverage we do do — our Strategist section — is booked up for most of fall.
I hope you find another home for it (have you tried Times already?) because I do think it’ll find a lot of readers, myself included. And please think of us for other stuff. I know you’ve contributed a lot to this place in the past.
I was euphoric for days. He remembered me. He took the time to write three, thoughtful paragraphs. But the “less and less room” stuck with me, too. I haven’t pitched since.
I’m not afraid of rejection. Years of back-and-forth with editors have given me a thick skin. But the traditional process of submission is arduous — the careful crafting of a query letter, the weeks of waiting in between, and, if accepted, the inevitable tweaking that results in a piece I never intended to write. Mostly, I’m impatient.
Why Medium?
All this to explain what attracted me to Medium in the first place: immediacy, independence, and readership.
And still, the challenge is getting someone to pay attention! Eyeballs.
Rereading my now 11-year-old piece in Publisher’s Weekly, I’m struck by what hasn’t changed. Maybe we’re now in “Hype 3.0” — and the world is even “noisier,” as a book publicist once put it.
Call it Hype 2.0 — this notion that we just need the right combination of social media to connect with readers. Blog it, and they will come. Legions of Web sites and new media mavens fuel the frenzy, advising authors to be self-starters and, at the same time, inveterate connectors. They admit it requires “work” (read: every waking moment), but look at Kelly Corrigan, a newbie whose self-made publicity blitz for her 2008 memoir sold 80,000 hardcovers and 260,000 paperbacks. I hear her story and think, I can do that. (The old guys in Miami who comb the beaches probably felt that way when the amateur “metal detectorist” discovered a million-dollar treasure trove under the sand.)
So what am I doing to “learn” Medium?
I read other writers — predominantly, those who take on politics and the pandemic, the human condition and humor. I follow the ones I like. But because I’m feeling my way, I’m naturally drawn to pieces about writing.
Reading how other writers describe their own process, I’m reminded of how difficult and demanding a path we’ve all chosen. I’ve learned that I probably need to create a bio page for myself with links. And every day, I learn more about the Medium ecosystem.
Still, most of the advice about writing — however sound it is — I already know. As I recently commented after reading a superior piece in this genre, “Did You Write This Crap?” by Britni Pepper:
Right on, Britni. Thank you for your wisdom and honesty! This from a “seasoned journalist” who started writing for Medium last April, after 15 books and over 200 articles, many in print. “Seasoned,” as you might surmise, is a euphemism for “old.” I admire your thinking and your writing. IMHO, the best part about writing, especially when you do it because it’s what you do, is that it gets better with age.
I am reminded of a scene many years ago, watching tennis “grand masters” — another euphemism — men who had been playing for 50 to 70 years. I marveled at what seemed like effortless skill (hard-earned, of course). One of them told me he no longer had to think about how to hit the ball. His body just knew. He only had to decide where to place it, as if he was playing pool.
It’s the same after years of writing for a living (hard to believe, but there once was that!). At a certain point, you know how to use words and craft sentences, but the trick — always, no matter how good you are or how experienced — is knowing how to put it all together. You do!
I also joined a Slack group for writers of Illumination and another on LinkedIn for writers of Nerd Tech. I’ve learned of Facebook pages for Medium contributors as well. Undoubtedly, many other such venues exist, each sponsored by one of the other gazillion publications.
I enjoy these exchanges with other writers. Their experience helps me decide which of the many publications is a good fit for me and what are its rules? What’s curation — and do I want it?
After uploading fifteen or so pieces, and now having several publications to chose from when I do, I decide to offer up a “draft” to the amorphous Illumination writer’s group. Their comments are few but helpful in small and important ways.
In one of these private back-and-forths, a generous fellow contributor tells me he’s read my piece-in-progress “several times.” He’s offering another read, so he might better respond to my questions. I am grateful at his willingness, but I respond:
Please don’t read it again! One thing I learned in publishing, nothing does well by the light of multiple readings. My agent would say, “Are you sure it’s ready for me to read,” meaning you don’t get a do-over on a first read. (I think I’ve got a piece here…”)
The conversation reminds me of my years in print magazine and book publishing when I had an agent, when I actually met with editors in person, when I’d sit in the offices of New York magazine as it “closed” the issue in which my piece would appear. This was its final incarnation before going to press. It took hours for layout, design, and other departments to weigh in. Each change, each new addition of a photo, required my cutting yet another “widow” (a single word or phrase that ends up alone at the top of a column) or, worse, an entire line or paragraph. But in those hours I’d nursed and nudged my baby into existence.
If I happened to take a taxi to a magazine or book publisher’s office in those days — and mention in transit that I was a writer, the driver would inevitably respond…
- “Boy! Do I have a great idea for book.”
OR
- “You should write my life story.”
OR
- “Hey, I’m writing a book, too.”
Today, all those cabbies have Medium. So do students, world travelers, mothers, fathers, ex-cons, refugees from corporate America, clergy, cleaning women, spiritual seekers, entrepreneurs, therapist, social media experts, and, well…I needn’t go on. If you’re reading Medium or you’re writing for it, you know what I mean.
Is there a “secret” I have learned from all this?
I’ve been asked by several in the Medium community what I’m looking for — followers or money? I wouldn’t mind either.
Other writers have varying opinions about what that takes to write, package, and market yourself:
I’ve seen some writers who have about up to 100k followers over medium and a great audience over LinkedIn. I think the reason for their tremendous growth is that they publish 2–3 articles on the weekly basis.[Medium publication owner]
Getting curated is often a roll of the dice...even though I’ve been curated, I don’t have a single “runaway” article. [Writer]
The only stories I’ve had distributed were the ones I wrote about film and books. To be honest, even after curation/distribution, I didn’t see an immediate rise in metrics anyway...[Writer]
Don’t get me wrong. This is not a lament about the new world of publishing. The world changes, and we must change with it.
Also, the so-called good old days were no picnic either. It wasn’t easy to get started nor to be well-published. And while editors were often creative and helpful, they changed jobs frequently in search of better positions and pay. If one left while a piece was in progress, and the new editor was not as enthusiastic, the freelancer would be given a 10% “kill fee” — a pittance compared to time already invested. Writers have always been at risk.
And now cut to 2021: Medium is there, waiting for me. The cost of membership is minimal. I can upload a piece whenever the spirit moves me. It might be curated, seen, and liked by thousands — or not. Either way, Medium has inspired me to write again.
And this brings me back to the followers vs. money issue. It’s more than that. Medium rewards me with claps, followers, mentions, highlights, comments, retweets, and the $5.63 deposited into my bank account last month — up from 19 cents the month before. They all keep me coming back for more.
It’s the Las Vegas Principle, a kind of conditioning psychologists call intermittent reinforcement — only some, not all, occurrences of a behavior are reinforced by the trainer. Think of a slot machine. One 20-nickel reward comes pouring out, and you’re willing to sit there for hours, pouring in another 2000 nickels, hoping for that next “hit.”
Robert Hernandez is right: the key is to just keep writing. I will continue to read other writers’ experiences and advice, but I also know that the “best” route for me is simply the best route for me. Like any “path” in life, I ultimately have to find it and navigate it on my own.
And believe me, I’m thankful that there is a “Medium” and a “Substack” — platforms that, however imperfectly, are at least trying to “pay the writer” something for her time.