How Gameful Approach to Writing and Publishing on Medium Can Help You See That You Can’t Do It Wrong

You design your project and activity games for yourself, so only you can define what is best for you. All you need to do is to enjoy the process.

Initially, I wanted to write an article advising one or another way to design your stories gamefully. I wanted to tell you to write simpler stories with not too many details and perspective angles. I wanted to argue that the simple and very brief gameplay loops were the best and got the best-engaged response from their players.

But the more I planned on writing that, I realized how much nonsense lies in that advice.

Who am I to tell you how to design your “Writing and Publishing on Medium” game? You are the designer of your self-motivational games — aka projects and activities turned into fun games — not me.

I can “only” design my games. And I certainly don’t want anyone to design my self-motivational games for me. Not even my past or future self. I want to have the most fun now. So the choice is mine for myself, and the choice is yours for your games and your experience of fun.

A sophisticated gameplay loop does not mean bad game design.

As I gave myself time to contemplate the content for the original idea of this article, I recalled a game titled Terraforming Mars. It has very sophisticated rules, and it takes a long time to learn them. The first time my husband and I attempted to read through the game’s description, I fell asleep. I must admit it was a late evening, and I was already exhausted from a long workday.

We took the game with us to our summer vacation last year. We had our first week without our children ever, so early in that week, we started learning the game’s rules before lunch. We managed to play the game, and we wanted more. We played another round on the same day and played it until late into the night.

We played again one another day that week and also found time to play it at home after the vacation when our children were in bed.

We don’t play it often, but I love playing Terraforming Mars, and it taught me a great lesson on complexity. Complexity and sophistication can be elegant, enticing, and engaging. After having played the game, I feel like a member of a certain elite of players.

I love playing short, sometimes “explosive” games, but it is also fun to take time and play something that draws you into a magical story of a more complex board game where you build worlds, which you transform or save.

Medium as a space for both — simplicity and sophistication

My love for all kinds of games — even if I still consider myself being a non-gamer in a classical sense — reflects why I enjoy writing and publishing on Medium so much. There is so much diversity in terms of topics and the length of the stories to publish.

There are publications requiring short articles, others more substantial ones. Some publications don’t set any requirements on the topics you address, and some provide a long list of criteria to fit their message.

Other publications set out to help new authors make their content visible and publish their content quickly or even accept published articles. In contrast, others take time to edit the article together with the author to shine as other gems in their collection.

Then, there is a possibility to create your own publication. Either for just your stories or to create a community of authors to contribute.

Or you can write and publish the stories to appear on your Medium page.

Just like on Roblox, you can both play quick and long games created by others, and you can create your own.

How to play the perfect game on Medium

None of the above and other possible approaches are wrong. All of them are perfect. For various circumstances. Even for the same person at different times and circumstances.

I invite you to try all of these and look over the shoulders of the successful “players” (=authors) of this fantastic platform.

There are two “errors” you can make here:

• Not to play “writing and publishing” here.
• Taking one approach — either someone else's or one of your previous ones — as carved in stone and stop trying something new.

I’ve put the word “errors” in quotation marks above because they are not really errors. Whatever choice you make is perfect.

You don’t have to write here. You can as well enjoy just reading here. Many do it. Some read or write and publish for a short time and then give up. Or they give up and come back.

Here’s how I “play” Medium now

I have never played Roblox and may never try. I don’t know. All I know I am not drawn to do that now.

But I know that I want to continue “playing” the writing and publishing game on Medium. I must admit that I prefer reading books to articles on Medium, and for a while, I felt guilty that I published here more than read. But my gameful attitude and studying myself non-judgmentally, as anthropologists do, helped me adjust my Medium “game” so that it is most enjoyable for me now. Because if I enjoy what I do, only then my stories have a chance to be enjoyed by others.

Right now, I publish not as often as I did at the beginning. I use writing and publishing here mostly to create content for my books. And this urge happened almost by itself. I observed myself creating chunks of content on the same theme or topic. That happened to my book Gameful Mind, the content of which shaped up after I wrote many articles last year on the gameful nature of our subconscious.

The content of the article you read now will also go into a book, a book about how to approach blogging on Medium gamefully and the most enticingly for yourself.

So you could say that I blog my books here, even if I initially didn’t intend it. And the readers on Medium are ones of the first to see what I create for my books.

I also publish now mainly in my publication Gameful Life or others, which accept published articles or don’t have many requirements on the topics of the stories. I don’t try to submit my stories with hugely successful publications anymore. I might someday, but I don’t do that now because this is not what I enjoy doing. I realized that chasing uncontrollable goals was stressful for me, and not fun, not gameful at all.

Instead of molding myself into a copy of other authors here, I started playing other “games” in my career as a writer. I now spend more time working on my books, publish more often on my blog, issue my newsletter weekly instead of monthly, and as an avid book reader, I started throwing my dice more often on Goodreads.

The daily landscape of my writing and publishing games might change as other projects and activities games come into the daily mix. And my Medium game will change too with time. I know how I enjoy it now, and I encourage myself to consider every little step in it as successful. I give myself points and badges for each level I reach.

You can’t do it wrong if you enjoy the process.

The way your Medium “game platform” develops is solely up to you. How you enjoy it is solely up to you. You are both this game platform’s designer and player.

Only you as its player can say whether you enjoyed the game you played and whether you as its player have suggestions to its designer — also yourself — on how you want to develop it further.

Whether you try to submit to massively popular publications or not, whether you write short or long pieces or all in-between, whether they contain simple messages and are clearly structured, or whether they flow as a mystery novel with an unknown outcome, and so much more — is all up to you, at any given moment.

You might have a taste to write about a technical topic one day, and then about a romantic story you read another. Don’t judge yourself for where your interest and intuition guide you. Trust them. Trust yourself.

You are the best project, activity, and life’s game designer for yourself. Never believe the opposite.

Others don’t do it wrong either.

Before I say farewell in this article, I would like to emphasize something.

Don’t judge others for the game they play, either. Instead, try their “designs” out. Learn from them, borrow the elements of their Medium “games,” and create your own. This is what the best game designers do. They let the designs of their peers inspire them and create something of their own.

Without the readiness to learn from others, I wouldn’t have found the best adventure for myself on Medium right now, as I described it above.

And here is another warning.

Don’t judge your past self either. It is easy to step into the trap of labeling something as bad in retrospect. You couldn’t have made any of your choices differently, and you wouldn’t want to, because they brought you to where you are right now.

So, I don’t judge my initial urge to advise you to simplify your stories' structure anymore. Without it and giving it a chance, I might not have had the joy of thinking of Terraforming Mars and making all the epiphanies related above.

An invitation to live in the state of discovery

Here is a point to say, “See you in another story,” and I wish you that your journey on Medium as a writer and publisher becomes an exciting and fantastic adventure of constant discovery.

Enjoy building the worlds of your stories, publications, and maybe even books!

P.S.

If you have ever published a book out of your articles on Medium, please share them in the comments. I want to check your book or books out.

Thank you for reading!

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P.P.S.

To stay in touch and keep updated on the fantastic possibilities of turning life into fun games offers, join my e-mail list, Optimist Writer.