Summary

The article discusses the author's frustration with the limitations of the Medium story editor while trying to format a poem.

Abstract

The author, Timothy Key, shares his and others' struggles with formatting a poem on Medium due to the restrictive nature of the platform's story editor. Despite efforts from several users, including Joe Luca and Tree Langdon, the editor's inflexibility hinders the ability to customize fonts, indentation, and spacing, which are crucial for poetic expression. The piece concludes that writers are confined to a uniform aesthetic on Medium, regardless of their creative desires.

Opinions

The Medium story editor is criticized for its lack of flexibility in formatting, particularly for poetry.
The author and others in the Medium community, such as Joe Luca and Tree Langdon, are dissatisfied with the editor's limitations.
There is a clear desire among some Medium users for more control over the presentation of their written work.
The author expresses a sense of futility in trying to overcome the editor's constraints to achieve a desired poetic layout.
Despite the author's efforts to engage with the Medium community and experiment with the editor, the outcome was unsatisfactory, leading to an apology to Joe Luca for not being able to resolve the formatting issues.

Medium Story Editor Format Blues

Nothing left to do but write a poem

This is the story I wish to tell, Joe Luca was writing poetry, and it wasn’t going so well.

Not that the words didn’t come at will, Instead, it seemed the Medium story editor was being a pill.

Joe couldn’t indent, nor could he change the fonts, That stupid editor just wouldn’t do what Joe wants.

What good is a poem when the lines are all spaced the same, Is Medium trying to mess with us, are they playing some sick game?

Why can’t a guy (or gal) tab over and space, What if we don’t all want to put our words in exactly the same space?

Joe took his angst up in the editor channel on Slack, I thought — let me try some stuff out; Joe Luca, I got your back!

Tree Langdon ♾️ was game as well, hoping someone could bring good cheer, So I headed into the editor myself; nothing here to fear.

But I needed a story; something with which to play, So that is why I crafted this silly poem today.

But, alas, try as I could the stupid Medium editor put up a good fight, No matter what I did, I couldn’t seem to make my poem look just right.

I tried the little quotey marks,

and the big lettery thing as well,

Neither seemed to help, just made the poem look like hell.

I tried to italicize and tab around, But nary a good solution was found.

So the moral of this tale, sadly, comes down to this unwelcome news, Unfortunately, there does not seem to be much flexibility in the Medium story editor that we can use.

If we want to put down our words in story for or desire to wax poetic, We are all pretty much stuck with the same crappy aesthetic.

Sorry Joe Luca. I tried.

If you like this, you might like some of my other recent writing, including my July daily roundup of writing challenges:

Where is Your Hole, and What is Leaking Out?

A warm welcome to new ILLUMINATION writers, the Daily Tip, and some fantastic writing prompts

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And a recent response to a prior challenge:

Something Strange Happened

It is funny what you see when you open up your eyes

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And this blast from the past:

How to Make it Big on Medium

Not just big, I am talking REALLY BIG

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Timothy Key spent over 26 years in the fire service as a firefighter/paramedic and various fire chief management roles. He firmly believes that bad managers destroy more than companies, and good managers create a passion that is contagious. Compassion, grace and gratitude drive the world; or at least they should. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and join the mail list.