Just Keep Writing

A melancholy meander through my dwindling stats

Rejection is an experience that is all too familiar for writers. In a saturated market, it is inevitable that our writing will sometimes not strike the right chord or will merely get lost amidst a sea of words.

You can tell that it is common to all writers from the large number who write about being turned down. Recently, I’ve read interesting insights into finding the positives in rejection by René Junge (here), Tim Maudlin (here) and Sarah Thomas (here).

My Experience

My time on Medium has been overwhelmingly positive. I’ve read some outstanding articles, developed a more consistent writing habit and interacted with some wonderful people.

Overall, I’ve been shocked and humbled by how many people have read and engaged with my writing. But I have noticed a definite downward trend in the past week or so both in terms of views and engagements.

Of my last five Illumination articles, only one has reached double-figure reads. The engagement rate has also slipped, especially on the two longer pieces I wrote.

My most recent article, ‘FOMO On Other Cultures’, is the one I spent longest researching and writing. From what I’ve seen so far it seems that the shorter, snappier articles (between 2 and 4 minutes) do often perform better.

But having low viewing figures is a different form of rejection to being turned down by a literary journal. In the case of the latter, someone has carefully considered your work and decided it isn’t quite what they are looking for. In the former, nobody has been enticed by your headline and picture.

Clicks vs Reads

I think this excessive pressure on the title and image is something to look at if Medium wants to improve the experience for readers and fairness for writers. I have been fooled numerous times by an aesthetically pleasing cover, only to be disappointed by a hastily composed article full of banal, recycled material.

In its introduction to the site, Medium claims:

The internet should reward quality thinking, not clickbait.

I couldn’t agree more with this sentiment and think that on the whole the system does achieve this goal. Reading time is a great way to determine payments (it is certainly far fairer than claps) because it encourages writers to create quality content that will make people want to read every word.

If an article has had a lot of views and not many reads this shows that it hasn’t kept the reader’s attention. But what is infuriating is when you lovingly craft a story and the number of views is low.

This is not a reflection on your writing, but on your design skills. It seems unfortunate that getting people to click on your story relies on choosing attractive titles and pictures, and not on the quality of your content.

The Power of Illumination

Of course, Illumination makes a big difference here. There is a genuine community feel where writers support and encourage one another.

Furthermore, I am a big fan of Dr Mehmet’s new initiative, where he encourages writers to provide a brief synopsis of their article. This takes some of the pressure away from the heading and picture and gives us the chance to lay out why our article is worth reading.

For what it’s worth, I would suggest that this mini-synopsis should be added to the whole Medium site. This would ensure that it is the content of the story that determines views. Perhaps a short summary could appear when you hover over the picture?

Come what may, I will follow Dory’s lead and keep on writing because I have committed to the Illumination 30-Day Challenge. This is my ninth post.

Here are some of my articles that didn’t get many clicks: