Last Year, I Screwed Up By No Longer Publishing on Medium. Now, I’m Back, and This is Why.

For this freelance writer, Medium isn’t about the money. It’s about writing.

Last year, I came to a decision — no more writing on Medium.

My freelance writing business was picking up. I had consistent clients I enjoyed working with and who paid well. Medium, on the other hand, paid me in pennies.

When I first became a self-employed freelancer in Jan. 2020, I planned to build a following on Medium. I expected Medium would provide maybe a quarter of the income I needed to earn each month, although I understood it would take a while to reach that goal.

For a few months, I wrote and published almost daily on Medium.

In addition, I joined Facebook groups to read, engage, and help promote other writers’ work. I shared my content on social media. And I even started writing articles that included sources and subject matter experts, the kind of thing you see in mainstream media outlets.

There were days when all I did was create content for Medium. And yet, the most monthly income I earned through the platform was $12.

So, as business picked up, I made a business decision — no more writing on Medium.

A writing drought descends.

Fast forward a few months. I’m in between client projects, but I’ve started research for a nonfiction book. Something’s missing, though.

“I’m a freelance writer who isn’t writing,” I jotted into my journal one day.

There’s some shame in that, thinking I’m a fraud. Do I need to update my social media profiles? “Freelance writer currently not writing,” I imagine my bio reading.

But fraudulent feelings aren’t the primary problem. That I’m not writing is the issue because writing is what I want to do. It’s why I left my job, essentially gave up my career.

Not that writing is loads of fun. Any writer will tell you that writing is not the best way to have a good time. It’s painful and discomforting and often feels pointless.

As Joan Didion once wrote, “I suppose almost everyone who writes is afflicted some of the time by the suspicion that nobody out there is listening.”

For some of us, writing isn’t fun. It’s essential.

Yet while writing isn’t fun, I want to do it because I need to do it. And I need to write because it’s the best way I know to process the world.

Besides, writing is one of the only things I feel I do at least slightly better than average than everyone else. After all, if you must do something, do that which you may be a tick better at than others, right?

Yet, a while back, I realized I wasn’t writing. Weeks passed before I wrote something outside of emails, texts, social media posts, and journal entries.

That writing drought is what brings me back to Medium. Abandoning this platform was, for me, a business decision when it shouldn’t have been.

Medium is the fuel

There are writers for whom Medium is an income stream. They do all the things you need to do to make money on Medium, such as publish stories every day to fill their email list to which they sell courses and books.

That approach works for them. But, unfortunately for my pocketbook, it doesn’t work for me.

Yes, I have a newsletter, but I’ve about as much interest in selling you a course as I do in selling you a horse. (Cue the Mr. Ed theme song, “A horse is a horse of course of course.”)

What I need to do is write, independent of client work and creative projects. Just because I’m currently researching for a book, for example, doesn’t mean I should go more than a few days without writing.

And while I know writing is good for me, I’ll avoid doing it if it feels purposeless, as we often skip the things we know we should do.

So, enter Medium. This platform provides enough of an audience to give my writing purpose. And that purpose is the fuel I need to write regularly, outside of creative and client work.

That’s why I’m back to publishing on Medium.

Writing with a purpose

I try to write stuff I think you’ll enjoy or, especially if you’re a writer, find helpful. And, you bet, I’ll take any money I earn on this site.

But the primary reason I’m active again on Medium is to give myself the incentive, the purpose I need to do the thing I need to be doing, which is to write.

Last year, I made a business decision to abandon Medium. Now, I’m making a creative and personal decision to return.

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