How I Sank My Own Best Story

Curated in 4 topics, but only 3 views! Here’s why.

Yes, it was quadruple curation, the dream result for any aspiring Medium writer. Yet I was cursing my luck — and my own stupidity for wrecking the story I’d crafted. Here’s what happened, how I tried to fix things, and the lessons I’ve learnt.

Let’s start with the email I received May 19th — the date is significant:

You’ll need a brief background to my story. Since early May we’d started hearing horror stories about the wave of coronvirus deaths in nursing homes and care facilities. Here in the UK, these deaths had not been counted in the official figures — in fact, until March 12th, the Government had insisted coronavirus infections were ‘very unlikely’ in care homes. Today the estimates are that around 40% of all Covid deaths have been in care.

In the article, I focused on the inconsistency of the official guidance: if we believed social distancing would prevent the spread of the virus, then why were our old folks — known to be at most risk — still clustered together in the close confines of their care homes? Shouldn’t we be trying to get them out? I went on to propose a series of practical Government-led measures that would enable many residents in these Covid breeding-grounds to be moved to safety.

So, my story was timely: deaths in care led the news. And the proposals were important. If we could strike effectively at one of the main sources of infection and death, there’d be an immediate improvement in the virus transmission rate. As our leaders keep telling us, lowering the rate is the key to restoring normality.

Would I get millions of views? No, I wasn’t expecting that. I know from earlier experience that elderly care is a niche topic on Medium. 18 months ago, I published ‘The Day I Kidnapped My Wife’, about a struggle to get my dementia-affected partner into a taxi. Despite curations in 4 topics for that story, it’s still only had 1,100 views. But readers keep showing up, over 50 more of them in May. So, with a ringing endorsement from the curators, would my latest story make the same impact, perhaps at least get people talking?

No it wouldn’t.

Because by the time I received Medium’s wonderful news, I’d aleady pressed the Delete button.

My story was in web limbo.

My big blunder

So what possessed me to delete my story? This was the UK timeline:

6pm — Published Sometimes Saying ‘I Love You Ma’ Isn’t Enough’ on Medium. The sub-heading made it clear what the article was about: ‘A strategy to stop Covid infections and deaths in care homes’. I notified Facebook friends.

7.30pm — Received an email saying I’d been accepted as a writer for the fast-growing Medium publication, Illumination, after applying the previous day. I was excited. The story I’d just published would be a perfect way to make a strong Illumination debut, wouldn’t it? But was it too late? Had anyone already read my post?

I was in the middle of preparing our evening meal, but I immediately downed spatulas (spatulae?) and dashed upstairs to my computer to check the stats on the story.

Only 3 readers so far — all of them non-Medium members, arriving via my Facebook post. So it wasn’t too late. I could copy the story into an identical draft, delete the original and then re-submit the new version to Illumination.

(It was only much later that I realised all of this was completely unnecessary. Illumination is one of the few Medium publications to accept stories that have already been published. I could have submitted the existing post — if I’d bothered to read the guidelines properly.)

With dinner still waiting, I decided not to post to Illumination yet. That could wait till afterwards. But I did send a little apology to my Facebook followers, explaining that the story would be accessible again shortly.

8pm — All finished. Back to the kitchen.

9.30pm— Dinner was over, and I couldn’t wait to submit the new draft. Back at my computer, I opened up Medium … and saw I had a new message:

“Medium’s curators selected ‘Sometimes Saying ‘I Love You Ma … “

I opened the email: curated not just in one but four topics! It had been sent at 7.35, exactly when I was busy with the deletion.

You didn’t hear my howl of frustration? The people in the next street did.

Life in limboland

Now what? Submit the new draft to Illumination anyway? I could see real confusion if I published a story with the same URL after the curators had distributed it. But if I changed the title and therefore the URL, I’d lose all those wonderful endorsements.

So I immediately wrote a reply to the curation email, explaining what had happened and asking for guidance. By the time I’d finished it was 11pm here in the UK. Would anyone still be in the office in New York or Calfornia or wherever the mail response team was based? I realize now how utterly naive that thought was. Medium has around 100 million readers — so they probably get tens or hundreds of thousands of emails every day. Why would they spot mine?

I did get a reply though, an hour or so later. An automated mail, assuring me that the team would respond to my message as soon as possible, but that in the meantime, I might find an answer to my question in their Help Center. This is what I found:

and:

Now I had a real dilemma. If I attempted to republish, even with minor changes, my whole Medium account might be closed down. In bold type and emphasised.

I waited.

Nothing.

I sent a gentle reminder two days later.

Nothing.

I changed tactics. I submitted the post to the Medium publication GEN, with another explanatory note: perhaps if they liked the story, their editors would be able to help.

Nothing.

I’m not blaming the people at Medium. They give aspiring writers like me so much of value. I’m grateful to have the opportunity to contribute to a platform like theirs. And like I said, I’m only one voice in 100 million. Sometimes we just have to work things out for ourselves.

So a week later — on May 26th — I did. Coronavirus deaths had begun to decline in the week that had passed, and care-homes were no longer headline news. But that didn’t make my story any less important. As Robert Roy Britt wrote in Elemental:

“… many infectious disease experts are worried about a comeback, a second wave, that could strike more quickly and harder than this initial wave of infections.”

If that happens, care-homes will still be in the firing-line.

I decided finally to complete the submission to Illumination. I changed the title slightly to avoid the URL problem. Now it was ‘We Love You Ma’ — But Words are Not Enough’. Everything else I left unchanged. I knew I was risking Medium’s displeasure, but the story needed to be heard.

Inglorious failure

By this time — the 26th — I was beginning to find my feet on Illumination. Two days earlier my personal bio, Facing Up To Our Final Big Challenge had been picked up by curators and distributed in Relationships and Self. Illumination founder, Dr Mehmetyildiz, wrote to tell me that this was the first time one of the publication’s bios had been distributed to Medium topics, and then gave me an extra boost by featuring the story in his daily bulletin to the 9800 followers. I was making friends fast amongst Illumination’s incredibly supportive network of writers.

So, I had reason to be optimistic about my care-homes post.

It sank, almost without trace.

In the week since publication, it’s been viewed by the grand total of 3 Medium members - one of them today, who was kind enough to give the article a little love. (Thank you Tree Langdon ♾️ )

On my Stats page, within 24 hours, there was the notice ‘Not distributed in topics’. (So I think they might have noticed I’d broken the rules.)

My campaign train to reform social care is still sitting in the station.

Meantime. everything else I write is moving along nicely.

Lessons Learned

• Curators can move with surprising speed on a story with a fresh approach to a hot topic.
• Read the instructions. If I’d read Illumination’s submission guidelines properly, I’d have realised I didn't need to delete the original story.
• Slow down — it doesn’t always need to be done this minute. Take time to breathe. If I’d calmly carried on with the cooking, I’d have spotted the curators’ message before deletion.
• Speed up — it does need to be done while the topic’s still headline news. In the week’s delay, public interest had subsided.
• Don’t duplicate a story. My account hasn’t been suspended, but none of my posts since the 26th have been curated. Of course, that may be because they’re not good enough, or it may just be coincidence. All my subsequent stories are being processed and I’m hanging tight! But if I’d taken the time to recast the article — boring though that might have been — I could have confidently republished on the 27th.
• Accept that low viewing figures don’t make you a bad writer. My experience proves it: the same story can be a standout success on one day and an abject failure on another. A lot of it’s down to luck — who happens to spot you … and ideally spread the word. But to mangle Gary Player’s famous quote:

The more you write (brilliantly, of course), the luckier you’ll get.

These are the two stories I’ve referred to — first the care-home proposal and then my bio: