Is your writing like a house cat?
How posting on Medium sets it free
My sister’s kitten is hilarious. She’s a master of stealth with surprise attacks on their Great Pyrenees, a gentle white mountain of a dog. She prances wildly at surprising times, yet is wise and consoling at just the right moment.
Or so I’ve heard, anyway.
I’ve caught glimpses of her buff and charcoal stripes as she dashes into the closet, but she hides from the rest of the world. Only her trusted people get to experience the joy of her shenanigans, the comfort from her snuggles, the struggles and the outrage when she shreds the curtains. She never leaves the house, for fear of terrible consequences.
The paragraph above could also describe my writing — at least until I started posting on Medium.
My personal essays and stories lived in my computer like a house cat: the inspirations, the struggles, the joys — I kept them hidden in the file icon called WORDS. Like a cat that felt safest under the bed, my words tiptoed out only when the coast was clear. I was afraid to experience the rejection that might come — the terrible consequences faced by the house cat let loose in the world.
This house cat analogy came to me one day when my social media stream was full of feline videos. Their people found a way to share their adorable, engaging, endearing kitties with the world. With a few notable exceptions (lookin’ at you, Grumpy Cat) people weren’t posting these videos for profit, or fame. They just wanted to share a creature who made their own lives a little more interesting and positive. What would happen if I took that same approach with my writing?
Getting your words out into the world
A friend once asked why publishing is so important. Isn’t it enough to journal, to write for yourself? I’m guessing that most writers are like me — they figure out life through stories. And at the heart of each story is a universal truth — something that we all eventually experience but can’t always find the words to articulate. Universal truths just beg to be shared, to be put out into the world so readers can say “Yes! Me too. I relate to this. I’m not the only one that feels this way.” Just like Grumpy Cat’s famous scowl — a universal truth story is too much to keep to yourself.
I’ve spent hours searching for the right publications open to submissions. I browsed through Submittable and Duotrope; I joined the 100 Rejections group on Facebook (because somewhere in those rejection replies, there’s bound to be an acceptance!) And I kept writing, revising, editing, massaging and polishing the message. The stories were never quite ready to share with the world, or else I just hadn’t found the perfect fit for publication.
And then I put a story out on Medium. This isn’t a “my life changed with my first post” story — it only got a handful of reads, and enough fans to make a V for Victory sign. But dang if it didn’t feel good to get even a handful of reads. That surely was a handful more than when it was hidden away on my laptop — and probably more than if it had been accepted into an obscure literary journal.
There was no money, no fame — but suddenly my internal house cat recognized that it shared DNA with a lion. I could send my stories roaming freely across the savanna, roaring into the sunset to chase back the hyenas* of rejection. Medium, for all it’s faults, has given me a way to share my thoughts and inspirations, get braver about sharing my work, and get positive feedback from a community of writers who support each other’s efforts.
Today I got another rejection email from a personal essay column I’d submitted to last September. It was kind, supportive, encouraging. A not-what-we’re-looking-for-at-this-moment-but-please-submit-again kind of rejection. But still a hard no.
I added it to my file, then shifted gears and wrote this story.
If you have a bunch of engaging, mood-lifting, curtain-shredding stories living on your laptop, consider releasing them into the wild with a Medium membership.
- You might be thinking the “hyenas of rejection” thing is taking the cat analogy too far. You’re not wrong. I got carried away. But this is Medium, not The Paris Review. Here you can run with your analogies, no apologies. Roar!
