New Writers, Keep Writing and Reading and You’ll Figure It Out
Experienced writers, please share links to your first and most read stories to help encourage new writers.
Earlier this year, I opened my Speaking Bipolar publication up to other writers. For years, it was only a place to share my writing, but now it’s home to many writing about mental health.
One goal I had with opening the publication was to give new writers a place to grow. When I started on Medium in July 2019, I had been writing online for a little over a year and was stumbling around like a toddler learning to walk.
I can’t help but reflect on the help I received as I guide newer writers through the intricacies of creating online content. A few publication editors were amazing in helping me improve my content. I’m especially grateful to Nicole Akers from PubLishous and a few other editors who have since moved on.
Medium is full of amazing writers, and watching how they developed and delivered their stories helped me grow. I rarely think about how much I’ve grown over time, but working with newbies on the site is making me relive my early days.
This post is for new and long-time writers. For new writers, you’ll get a glimpse of what it was like when many of us started here. For those of you who have been around a while, I’ll hope you’ll join me in sharing links to your first posts and most popular stories. We all grow when we can learn from each other.
Practice to Improve Your Art
The more you practice an art, the better you get. Writing is one of the greatest arts and it takes time and practice to develop your skills.
As a new writer, you may feel like everything you write is garbage. Guess what? A lot of it will be, but you must keep writing anyway.
After years of writing online, I tend to like only about a quarter of what I write. It makes my stomach hurt to read some of the posts I wrote in 2018 yet readers still love those stories.
The more you write and read, the faster you’ll find your voice and get into a flow state. I guarantee, even if you’re brand new, your fifth story will be better than your first. The tenth will be better than the fifth, and on it will go.
Learn From My Content
All this might seem meaningless without facts to back it up, so let me prove it. Hopefully other writers will chime in to show their growth over the years.
I published my first Medium story on July 21, 2019. After spending a few months helping an indie author get his book ready to publish, I flew into a rage after he received an unkind book review. Here’s the story.
The story received 800 views in the first few days and taught me one essential lesson: Medium readers love personal stories full of emotion. Exciting triumphs or devastating failures, share what’s inside and readers will eat it up.
This personal connection is also why I think my most popular story has done so well. I hit publish on December 8, 2019, and the story has earned me at least a few cents every month since. Even when I took a few months off from writing on Medium, my Listen story brought in enough to pay my membership fee.
Stop Deleting Your Stories
New writers, one more thing while I have your attention. I notice a lot of writers creating posts and then deleting them later. Every new writer who follows me gets a story added to my private read list. I’m always surprised when I go back later and roughly 20 percent of the stories have since been deleted.
I understand there are times you want to take a post down. Maybe it was a post you wrote in the heat of anger or a story that wasn’t yours to tell. Both are understandable.
Outside of the rare anomaly, I recommend you keep every post active. The following post was published on Medium in August 2019 but sat silently for months. Then in July 2022, readers discovered it again, and it’s growing by a few reads every month since.
You never know when a story might take off. Unless it’s content you never should have posted online, keep the story live. As long as it’s available, there’s the possibility readers will find and love it.
Even though all of these stories have done well for me, none of them are my best content. I much prefer these two recent posts, but in another year, I’ll probably find them cringeworthy, too.
Stick With Medium
Medium is a great place for writers to hang out. For new writers, it’s a sandbox to play in while finding your voice and testing material. For all of us, it’s the best writing community to connect with and learn from each other.
If you’re brand new here, I hope you’ll stick around. And if you just published your first story, put a link in the comments. I’d love to read it.
For my fellow writers with a year or more to your tenure, I challenge you to write a similar post or share links in the comments to your first piece on Medium and your most popular story.
We are all stronger when we learn from each other, so take a moment to share how much you’ve grown.
A few of my favorite writers (in random order) that I hope will respond with their own stories. All of them are lightyears ahead of me, so give them a read and see what you learn.
- Roz Warren, Writing Coach
- August Birch
- Leonard Tillerman
- Ryan Fan
- J.R. Heimbigner
- David Perlmutter
- Matt Hampton
- Glenna Gill
- Nicole Dake
- KiKi Walter
Until next time, keep fighting. (And writing.)
