How to Take Advantage of ILLUMINATION’S Diversity

3 Ways Writers Can Benefit

When I first started writing for Medium, I was a bit overwhelmed. There are so many topics, publications, and writers. So many words to read and claps to sound.

I was a goldfish in the ocean. Which is the perfect analogy because it leaves the goldfish in a horrible state. Goldfish can only live in fresh water, not oceans.

Even though I had a few curation hiccups here and there, I couldn’t find my niche. I was choking on the salt water. I didn’t know how to distinguish myself.

Then I found a home at ILLUMINATION.

My tiny goldfish brain went from a salt water ocean to a fresh water lake. I strapped a shark fin to my back and started typing.

For me, the wonder of ILLUMINATION is the diversity, one of its founding principles.

According to ILLUMINATION founder and editor, Dr Mehmet Yildiz, “Diversity empowers the publication members by appreciating what makes each member different. We value diversity points such as age, educational background, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, national origin, professional background, political views, and more.”

As I began writing for the publication, I asked myself how I can take advantage of the diversity blanket that had been sweetly wrapped tight and cozy around my being.

1. Scan the Vast Perspectives

Let me whet your appetite with perspective first because this is what blew me away initially. I found I could use perspective to my advantage by pulling from the vast talent pool. What a feeding for my writer’s soul.

Within ILLUMINATION I discovered futurists who study history like Marty de Jonge and business experts who dapple in haiku like Kayo Zaduban. I learned from cyber security experts like Marcus Musick and from animal lovers like Suzanne Mondoux.

I explored the minds of financial “nerds” like Kunal Walia who write about the amazing return on criticism investment — if I am willing and open to hearing it.

Take advantage of perspectives by reading outside your preferred and typical reading preferences. Step into a mindset you’ve only admired from afar even if it means you bump your head on the angles.

Here are a few places for you to start:

2. Settle Into The Unknown

I am excited about writers I haven’t read yet and words that haven’t been written. I have eagerly allowed ILLUMINATION’S diversity to lead me straight into the eye of the unknown.

It only takes a thimble-full of unknown to make most people nervous, causing them to dig in their heels and deepen the stakes of resistance.

But to me, the beauty of the unknown is just that: it’s someplace I’ve never been before. A place I never would have gone if it hadn’t been for that particular author.

I’ve never been inside the head of an orange before! Thank you Toni Tails for taking me to this unknown place.

I’ve never been so entwined in the happenings of the bicarbonate system until Dr Joel Yong, PhD unraveled this unknown with his take on carbonic anhydrase in our bodies. The nurse in me made me nerd-out on this one.

As you explore ILLUMINATION, take advantage of the unknown by settling in to places you’ve never been. Don’t be too quick to click away from the unfamiliar. Ask yourself, “What known can I take away from this unknown?”

3. Bring Your Own Innovations to Light

I love letting innovation rip through my being, don’t you? It sounds painful, but really it’s not. Innovation allows us as writers to modernize a concept or mutate an idea. That’s what we’re good at!

ILLUMINATION helped me embrace my innovative side, allowing me to bring my own innovations to light, like writing about maggots or oral sex, topics I’ve never written about before.

Let the diversity of this publication spur you toward your own personal departures, like Maïa Belart did in a recent post that was so personal, she couldn’t even re-read it herself.

Let the wrinkles in other people’s writing be the shifts that move you toward your own innovating moments where you depart from the norm and deviate from your routines.Write the words you’ve never dared to write.

I haven’t been here long, but ILLUMINATION has sparked within me a panorama of energy and conversation, propositions and enterprise. This publication is like a power cable channeling the essence of life from writer to reader and back again.

It is my hope that you too can find the diversity here just as animating and motivating as I have discovered it to be. If you’re choking on the salt water, it’s time to suck in the freshness of ILLUMINATION’S potent diversity and flaunt your shark fin.

Salute to my fellow writers at ILLUMINATION!

Joolz