Medium, Earnings, and NaNoWriMo
It’s Like Believing What Medium Tells You
I’m having a pissy moment. Everybody does. I do, too. A pissy moment where I feel sorry for myself. I can see where you also feel sorry for yourself, at least in regard to whatever monetary impact your stories, your poems, your shorts, or pieces make on the Medium platform. Unfortunately, it’s larger than if I were to do a grand old bellyflop into the swimming hole in the back pasture.
It’s like one hand clapping. Where is the noise in that?
Okay, so maybe I am missing the point. They always did say, “Don’t quit your day job” when a person was looking for a career in the arts. Nobody makes money there as an author, an entertainer, or a deep thinker.
Money is where it is at. Didn’t anybody tell you?
Well, I’ve never had much of it. I don’t expect that to change any time too soon. But I can talk to dead people. There are a lot of them right now. And more to come.
I always moved in my younger years. Moving got you away from untenable situations, which I generally ended up in.
I thought once I was grown up, that would stop.
It didn’t. These wearisome encounters with evil folk, with folk who were willing and quite able of stabbing you in the back, of stealing, of tormenting, of picking on you when that sort of behavior was best suited to third-grade bullies, seemed to proliferate. At least I was not involved in politics. I imagine it is worse there.
The people looking for power against those who are trying to do what’s right only to find they have to play the game to get anything done.
So, here we are. Medium writers, most of us, without a chance in the world to be heard. Are those our new rules now? That’s what they would have you believe.
I get it. Don’t slobber and drool on your shirt. Don’t pick your nose in public. Please, if you’re going to fart, try to do it behind the plants. Then, come out asking the room in general, “Did you hear a duck?”
Let’s own our shit. For one day, speak your mind. For one day, say you hate war. You hate racism. You hated your childhood. Nothing can change any of that without your ideas.
Yeah, it sucks. Yeah, there used to be better times.
But let’s play with the hand that was dealt to us. Let’s begin anew and write a story for ourselves. The words you’ve been wanting to say. Multiply that by 100 and allow each chapter to hook up nicely to the one before and to the one after, like rail cars in a train.
Let’s write a train. Publish it for free at KDP.com Do your own advertising. Do your best and publish that book — your book with its own ISBN.
We didn’t like it as 8th graders, top of our class in Middle school when we were promoted into 9th grade, the first year of high school. We went from the top to the bottom. Just like that. In the blink of an eye.
It’s what happened to a lot of writers at Medium.
So, take a deep breath. Write for yourself. Make a book.
Join NaNoWriMo in November and write a 50,000-word book in a month. You’ve written that much in Medium articles, haven’t you? That’s like 50 articles on Medium. Now, just write for yourself.
And, after you’ve written that first book, write another one. And another one after that. You could end up writing two or three books in a year. And, eventually, you might end up with more street cred and more money than you could ever make at Medium. It’s just another step.
And maybe, just maybe, you can get somebody to think. To consider. To learn. Maybe you can make a difference.
Be happy.
The Links: NaNoWriMo — National Novel Writing Month in November — 300,000 participants from around the world, and did I say it was free? Yes, it is free. KDP.com — Kindle Direct Publishing. Through Amazon, a place to publish your book. Yes, it is free. TalkingToSpirit — my website since 2001. Yes, it is free.