Four Deadly Writing Mistakes I Discovered After My 94th Article

Kill me with a sword instead.

It was already late. I knew I had messed it up! But it might still be renewable.

It all happened when I published my 94th article. I suddenly started seeing a new trend, a new format, I had been making writing mistakes all along.

I thought to myself, what’s happening here?

It immediately felt like I was new on Medium. After running some checks myself. It turned out I have wasted over 100000 worth of words on Medium.

Not directly so, but I have undervalued them myself. They always say it’s you against you, I never believed it, but now I do.

The sham of grief

It felt like all my efforts were flushed down the toilet.

I imagined how many viral articles I might have had, how many engagements I might have had, and how many people would have seen my work and thought “Wow! That’s a brilliant writer.”

But then, there was a clause. I knew all that time that I wasn’t ready, let alone serious about becoming a writer.

I wasn’t ready to take the bull by the horns. I never owned my writing. I only wrote 4–5 articles in a month.

I took writing as a hobby rather than a gift or part of me that I wanted to harness all its richness.

So I know that if I was serious about writing, especially on Medium, I wouldn’t have made those mistakes.

Mistake 1: Taking a breather before executing

If there is one thing I did all my life before writing, it is to be a good observer.

I was always the one who would smell a stake right before it burned. I was the one who gave advice and drew strategic life plans for certain friends in grief. But like every cow, it turned out I was able to scratch for others, but not myself.

I never took the time to properly observe what I was getting myself into when I wanted to start writing.

If any new writer is reading this now, please stop whatever you are doing and go read or watch every piece of content you can find about writing on Medium.

That is what has made it so long for me to realize my writing mistakes here.

Mistake 2: Drawing a map

If I could turn back the hands of time right now, I would go to a particular day.

April 19th,2020.

That was the day I published my first article under the paywall. I would have stopped that from happening. I would have checked and observed well, then make a plan for myself on Medium.

I know you might think things like that are necessary for only writers who want to earn from Medium. But have you ever thought about recognition?

Who knows. What if scouting is a thing in writing! What if you are honored by a popular magazine to come to write for them. I mean who knows! Right!

If I could turn back time. I wouldn’t make that mistake anymore. I will draw a plan for myself.

Here is a plan I would have drawn.

1 — Write three self-published articles and 2 articles for publications in a week.

2 — Read and genuinely comment on 30 articles per day.

3 — Follow honestly! Emphasis on honesty! (I currently have 1.4k followers, and only about 50 of them are following me genuinely).

That would have been my plan, and I know by now, I would have had a better recognition (Meaning; impacted more lives), and I would probably be earning more.

Mistake 3: Learning the ropes

That is the basis of this article. I suddenly just looked at myself and said, “Boy, you are a few articles away from the 100 published article mark.”

Do you know you have never been distributed? Not even once.

I know the greats always have things hard for them before they break the jinx. But if there is one thing, I don’t want to be like Thomas Edison who tried more than a hundred times before he got it right with electricity.

I was shattered when it dawned on me.

Wow! So I have never for once been seen by Medium. Not even once!

I then decide to check out what my mistake might be. I read almost 20 articles about getting curated.

I copied and accessed some writer’s articles (I know that’s crazy, but I was eager to know what happened).

After much personal CIA-ing, I discovered that I have been formatting wrongly.

• I always used an all-caps title, regardless of infinitives or the regular APA guide for title writing.
• I never used the second T in my subtitles.
• I only used the alt text a few times on images.

That was a huge mistake. I have only been creating some beautiful nonsense.

Learn New Writers! Learn!

Mistake 4: Understanding writing karma

I am one of those people that does not believe all that much in karma. I always felt it was a hoax.

If I had known, I would have taken karma seriously. Especially writing karma.

How do I mean?

Upon not having genuine followers, and unintentionally not formatting my articles. I still did what no writer should do. Drop your articles and zoom off.

Who the he** will read your articles?

You might indeed get some real readers, that’s if you are chosen for further distribution.

But what if you are not? That means you have to at least rely on your genuine fellow readers and writers to earn some dough and recognition.

I made these writing mistakes for at least 70% of the whole 94 articles. I only published, I never read any article. Okay, a little. Probably I dropped some fake 50 claps, but they were never genuine.

But now I have my full gear on, and I am ready to make no more mistakes. Okay! Maybe a little, so I can learn some more.

But I am happy and good with where I am. Still no distribution yet, and this is my 116th article. I only see it as my 16th. I would get there, I know it.

Notice!

While editing this story, I got chosen for further distribution in my 113th article. And what other way to do it than with a writing story.

Let me know if I made more mistakes in this article.

Thank you so much for reading my article today. My gratitude towards you knows no bound. I would be publishing another article very soon.