How to Stick It Out as a Writer on Medium in the Long-Term
Clue: the solution is neither frequency nor click-bait posts
Niche or mass appeal? Writing nook or crowd-facing soapbox? Fan-driven content or audience–building articles?
The battle most writers face nowadays on Medium concerns the streaming of our ideas. This situation has left many of us scratching our heads and pondering what to write, how to promote it and to whom to promote it. Very often the question we ask ourselves echoes down the halls of contribution after contribution: should we concentrate on just one topic or try to cover as many as possible?
Looking for fun and feeling groovy
A complex world like the one we live in demands cross-fertilisation. This means sharing and exchanging knowledge and ideas. Obviously, this also presupposes that said knowledge has already been acquired and that ideas have been tried and discussed before. At the centre of this structure lies education.
Approaches to education change from country to country. Even within nations, education is very often seen as a pawn on the political chessboard. In Britain, it is my experience (as a parent) that the educational system gears students towards narrow qualification courses (be it NVQs or degrees) where the reputation of the provider usually trumps the value of what learners are taught.
A better school system would focus on learning as both a fun and lifelong activity. This would include a wide-reaching curriculum where the arts, humanities, science and physical education would have a similar standing.
Mr. Writer, why don’t you tell it like it is?
A similar situation plays out on Medium. The constant search for a viral story causes some writers to turn their focus solely on the post that will gain the most views and plaudits. They become one-track content generators, discarding along the way the layers of what makes writing such beautiful and inspiring art.
There are clear advantages to being a niche writer. The first one is obvious: you know your stuff. Some people can wax lyrical about technology for hours whilst others are deeply knowledgeable of the animal kingdom. The second advantage is that your intended audience feels appreciated and in return trusts your output. The fourth wall is knocked down and replaced by genuine camaraderie. The third benefit is that time is maximised. A niche writer is capable of magicking column after column out of their expert’s sleeve on their favourite subject with minimum effort.
On the other hand, there are also pluses in spreading ourselves as wide as possible when writing. My favourite chef and food writer is Nigel Slater. Nigel also is a keen gardener (as anyone who’s seen his Insta posts will agree). Last year he penned an article on his garden and the revolution he’s carried out within it for the last 20 years to turn it into “a place to think”. For me, the quality of that outing was equal to his musings on food. The way he described how he got rid of the “rectangle of mown grass that passed for garden” was like the way he talks about plump garlic cloves.
That’s the first plus: passion. Whether discussing technology or the animal kingdom (to go back to my previous examples) your passion will come through. Readers like that, and I count myself amongst those who do.
The second advantage is the challenge. It’s fine when you know the subject you’re writing on like the back of your hand. How about when your knowledge is patchy and yet you’re still passionate about the topic?
I say, plough on. It’s worth taking the plunge. One reason is that, as writers, we need the pull of the unknown. Or at least the lesser-known.
The third benefit is the reach. Many readers respect writers who escape the narrow confines of their identity markers and venture out into a world that, while not being totally unfamiliar, is not the writer’s usual stomping grounds. I go back to Nigel. His column on his green patch earned praise from gardening enthusiasts for its honesty.
Oh I get by with a little help from my friends
As you’ve probably guessed by now, my inclination as both reader and writer tilts towards the polymath writer. Polymath being a very loose term here, not necessarily referring to the person’s stature in the field of learning, but their hunger for new topics and horizons. The kind of writer I look up to is the one who can knock up a column on photography, another one on how to build a bookshelf from scrap materials and a third one on Arsenal Football Club’s failure to win the English Premier League in the last seventeen years (sorry Gunners, I just had to throw that one in).
Fortunately, there are ways to make it as a polymath writer on Medium. The main route available to us, writers, is via publications, or pubs for short. I write for a few (I won’t mention all of them, because I might risk leaving one of them out and I, for one, would not forgive myself) and have found them to be welcoming and challenging in equal measure. The editorial guidelines differ from one to the other, but they all share a common denominator: quality above quantity.
The trade-off when writing for pubs is one new writers would do well to work towards. Besides the recognition of one’s work, there’s also the satisfaction of filing in articles on subjects we might not be experts in but that we feel passionate about. You will also be in good company. A cursory glance through my Medium updates throws up names of writers whose followers are in the tens of thousands and whose posts get the much-coveted 1K within a few hours of being published. Believe you me, these people can cover subjects as diverse as impressionism, AI, Black Lives Matter and the sex toy industry without breaking sweat.
So, niche or far-reaching? As usual, it comes down to you, individual reader/writer. As for me, I’ll carry on building my polymath writer career.
“Cuban, Immigrant, and Londoner”, on sale now.
Originally posted here.
