Medium Featured My Article After Two Publications Rejected It

Never give up hope or feel bad about yourself.

The Rejections

Throughout my 5+ months of freelance writing, I’ve experienced a multitude of rejections and flops. I’ve also let it get the best of me, in which I’ve felt upset about the outcome and down about my writing. I remind myself that everyone experiences rejection and that it doesn’t make me a poor writer, but that rejected email (or ignored email) is still hard to read.

I’ve read articles before about writers’ rejected articles becoming their most popular, and that didn’t really happen to me — until now.

I recently wrote an article about a chapter in a book I read for class last semester called “Work Happy: What Great Bosses Know” by Jill Geisler. In this article, I talked about the communication tips and traps Geisler discussed.

It wasn’t incredibly hard to write, especially since I underlined important parts of the book when I read it for class. For a couple of reasons, however, it isn’t my favorite article I’ve ever written.

I submitted it to two popular publications. I believed them accepting it would be a bit of a stretch, or maybe not the prime example of what the publication is about, but definitely still a fit. I believed I formatted it well and that it could help others, and I’ve become braver about putting myself and my writing out there.

Before long, both publications rejected it. Since I have imposter syndrome, I began to worry they rejected it because my writing wasn’t good enough. I worried where else I could submit it and that more publications would reject it too. As someone who enjoys crossing items off a to-do list, I felt more than ready for my piece to be published.

The Successes

I decided to submit it to Age of Awareness, a publication about education and related topics. Thankfully, within a short amount of time, the editor accepted and published it.

I instantly felt relieved.

And only 45 minutes later, I received an email saying Medium was featuring it.

I felt shocked and thrilled. I called multiple family members and friends. My mom begged me to post on Facebook so she could share the good news.

Being featured was a dream I hoped for but didn’t truly believe I could reach. Of all of my articles, this isn’t the first I would guess Medium would feature. I read the email multiple times out of excitement and disbelief.

This article has received over 1K views so far and is still growing. It also helped me achieve top writer status in Leadership and Business. I’m excited to see where it goes and if similar articles I write will become featured too.

With some of my recent successes amidst my rejections, I decided to start a newsletter to help other writers. I believe we’re all in this together and can help each other, no matter where we are in our journey.

The Takeaways

This experience has taught me a lot of important lessons I want to share with other writers who have struggled as I have:

• Good articles can be rejected (and even a favorite of the Medium curators). Plus, sometimes rejections have to do more with a publication’s brand than the quality of your writing.
• A rejected article isn’t doomed to fail when published. Many writers have written about their rejected articles becoming successful.
• Even if you don’t believe an article will be your best one yet, write it anyway. You never know what will do well, and you may realize you have a knack for something that you didn’t realize you did.
• Ignore the voice in your head that says you’re not good enough. It’s stupid and wrong. I like to talk back to that voice and remind myself that feelings aren’t facts.
• Continue to pitch work after it’s rejected; don’t give up on an article or idea. It will eventually find its home and you’ll find success.
• Brainstorm reasons why successful articles were successful so you can (hopefully) replicate that success. Look at Medium’s curation guidelines as well to help you figure out what they liked so much.
• Even when you’re feeling down on your success, remember your time is coming, whether it’s hours or years later. I wrote for months before Medium’s curators featured one of my stories, and for some writers, it’s taken longer or shorter than that. Keep going and your likelihood of success will increase. Try to not compare yourself to other writers, either— you’re on different paths with different strengths.
• Don’t be afraid to write outside of your niche, if you have one. For a while, I wrote mostly about health and relationships. Despite having a college degree in public relations, I have written little on the topic, and I already returned most of the books I rented for class.
• On that note, sometimes you can become a top writer in unexpected topics. As I mentioned before, despite all of my writing on health and relationships, my featured article helped me get top writer status in Business and Leadership, two categories I wouldn’t consider myself an expert in.

The Encouragement

I hope you feel encouraged. You deserve to feel hope and to have faith in your strengths and your success. Even when you don’t think you can do it, you can. Keep writing, keep learning, keep asking questions, keep trying. I wish you the best and am excited about all you can achieve!