Never Ever Delete a Medium Story
You may regret it if you do.
In the early days of my Medium journey, I did something I now regret.
I deleted some stories.
Yep, and not just one or two. At least 5–10 of them, even more so.
This doesn’t sound that bad. Writers do it all of the time. But don’t fall into this trap.
Here’s why:
My Reasoning Behind The Deletion
When I began writing on Medium in Feb. 2021, I didn’t really know what I was doing.
Do any of us really know?
Anyway, I was trying to find my niche by writing articles I thought it would go over well and help gain me some initial views:
Examples include:
- Benefits of a daily walk
- Why read for 1 hour every day
- Writing as you please
- And many more.
Each story received maybe 1–10 views total. That’s it.
I guess it wasn’t too bad as a writer looking back at it now. I was just starting out.
But I thought it would be more.
The stories didn’t make me any money either. The ones that did earned me $0.01 to $0.10.
So what did I do.
I deleted the stories.
I knew they sucked and I was trying to write articles thinking they’d go viral. This was the worst mistake ever.
I didn’t try writing them because I wasn’t very good at the subject matter. I was gonna throw in the towel long before I started.
But I didn’t.
Don’t Be Ashamed of Your Writing
Whenever you feel a story doesn’t do well or it could be better, leave it alone.
You wrote, promoted it and now you wait.
Who cares if it’s not your best writing. You will write even better articles tomorrow. You just have to believe in every piece of work.
But why?
Because some stories surprise you.
Since my journey began, I’ve written stories that didn’t receive many views when I published it. Then all of the sudden, they did.
Some of my stories skyrocketed in views and earnings. It was crazy.
And they still do today.
Closing Thoughts
Whenever you feel like you’re going to quit or you want to delete a story, don’t.
When you keep them here and believe in your work, the best is yet to come.
It worked for me and I know it will happen for you too.
As always, I would love to hear your about your Medium journey. I can’t wait to read what you write next!
Happy writing!
Noah Nelson is a senior at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign majoring in journalism with minors in political science and history. He serves as a senior columnist for The Daily Illini, a writer on Medium and the host of his blog called Nothing But Noah. “Life: A Collection of Short Stories” is his first book available now on Amazon. Like what you read? You can write for Medium too!
