Tips for Writers
Newbies Welcome. 1400+ Writers on ILLUMINATION.
Help! I drown! Luckily, I can breathe underwater when I read this quick guide for new Illumination writers…
What growth! What an audience! ILLUMINATION is shining more brightly every day. And our writers become more visible every day…
Two months:
9000+ readers
1400+ writers
ILLUMINATION occupies a special place in the writers’ platform Medium. It’s a special publication that embraces diversity, synergy, fusion, and serendipity.
So whether you are already a successful author, have been struggling for a while on Medium, or are completely new. ILLUMINATION welcomes you warmly.
You’re a writer. And writers deserve to be read!
So what makes us grow so fast?
What are the key ingredients for this yummy recipe?
I’ll give you some hints. And if you wanna know more, reach out! And have conversations.
With Dr Mehmet Yildiz, the founding father of this publication or with our knowledgeable editors behind the publish button. With other writers on this platform. Or with me. I’m always willing to chat, care, and share.
The Foundation
ILLUMINATION has a firm foundation of writers who joined from the beginning. They are active and they are very inclusive. Some of them are editors, some are just very active word-wizards who keep the ball rolling.
And the good news is, you are now one of them!
The more active people in our group, the merrier!
Never think you joined too late. There are enough goodies for us all to share here. There’s no hidden agenda. There’s just activity, sharing, and vibrant action from all kinds of writers (with all kinds of topics) here.
The foundation as I see it has been laid down on these main stepping stones:
- Be active
- Give abundantly
- Receive and share fun
- Spread the fun on social media
Be Active
Illumination writers are an active bunch of people. We sit behind our computers and write our stuff. Yes.
And this stuff has quality. We make sure it does.
Here are some posts by one of our master editors, Timothy Key about the quality of stories. Things like paragraph length, photo credits, and tags.
“In short, ILLUMINATION is a place for generating synergy through positive energy. Negative commentary for the sake of being negative or potentially destructive might still fly under Medium’s guidelines, but not make it with ILLUMINATION.” — Timothy Key
Don’t think you have to do it all right in one go. Just consider this:
- Be positive and willing to learn
- Reach out to others and consider their advice
- Be professional and improve your writing with every new story
We’ve all published our first stories. And have all edited them a few months later when we were so much wiser on what this platform needs and how the mechanisms work.
And if you have aspirations to be an editor, here is a peek behind the scene of our editing team.
Give Abundantly
ILLUMINATION has a mantra: giving comes first, receiving will follow.
All writers on Medium want to be read. That’s why you write. To have an audience. Some writers really want to be successful and earn a living with writing.
I know I have the dream to realize a steady income stream for Medium. I’m honest about that.
But still, I’m focused on giving. Why? Because when 9000+ readers have their focus on the abundance of giving, there will be enough for all of us to go around. If the audience is big enough and everyone reads with attention, we don’t have scarcity. We will have achieved ABUNDANCE FOR ALL…
So what helps on this path?
- Read other people’s stories. Many of them…
- Clap to show your appreciation and support for this other writer (you can clap up to 50 times)
- Comment whenever you feel like it. Reach out. Add some wisdom of your own to a story. Add another perspective
After a while, you’ll notice that abundance seeps into your mind. You’ll have fun connecting to others. The others will have fun reading your stories, connecting to you. And there it starts.
However, make sure you really mean it! The giving is fun in itself. You’ll notice. So next time, you might wanna read stories from some new writers. Ones you don’t know yet. And broaden your mind…
Receive and Share Fun
And that’s only just the beginning. On ILLUMINATION we take it one big leap further. We are inspired by others and take part in writing prompts.
Here’s one by Amy Marley that got many of our writers active in the month of May.
I know it just finished. But what stops you to organize one of your own for next month? And there are others. I still like one of the first ones by Sherry McGuinn. If I wasn’t a writer, what would I be?
Many great stories came out of this one. Like this one from Jezebel.
Feel free to write your own story on this one. Tag Sherry, tag me, tag a few other writers you wanna read a response from. And join the fun.
Here is another response on a different Sherry-challenge by P.G. Barnett.
All stories have their own angles. They keep us in the flow, give us inspiration, and gave me a bucket full of fun reading time…
Keep an eye out for them on ILLUMINATION, and write your responses. You can go loose on the form, magical pictures, and find your unique voice in the process.
Tagging
In these stories, you can tag other writers that have shown interest in this specific challenge or who you’d like to read a response from. Do it responsibly and don’t go spamming.
Of course, you can always highlight another person’s story that you admired or that inspired you to write a certain piece in your work. Giving each other a podium is what we’re good at here in ILLUMINATION.
Polyglot Poetry
ILLUMINATION also inspired some writers and editors to start side-publications for certain topics. In our group e.g. there are many non-native writers. And some of them write poetry.
Kevin Buddaeus, Salam Khan, and some others had the clever idea to start a publication for Polyglot Poetry. Poems in more than one language. It’s great. It’s growing. And also here, the idea of tagging relevant others took off.
This is a story by Martine Weber who tagged me in her Dutch/English poem. And I’m definitely gonna read more of her work!
Spread the Fun on Social Media
Our work deserves a podium outside of Medium. We deserve to be read by the whole world! So the Dr. made a strategy for social media. It works! I completely lost track of all that’s going on.
There’s so muchhhhh…
But I’ll tell you about some of the things I know and see. And then, it’s up to you to get involved by yourself and add to the fun and visibility.
Slack
We have a very active Slack group where many writers mirror ideas, communicate, and get on with stuff. Just ask to join and you’ll be added. You can always contact the publication via the Inquiries button.
Or you can add a private note to one of your stories before you hit publish. The editors will see those and answer your questions…
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
We have pages on Twitter and Facebook.
Whenever we tweet about our own stories, we mention ‘@Illum_official’ and ‘@Medium’ and #Illumination to get the in the lists and make them visible to other writers on there. We like and retweet each others’ tweets and really mean it!
On Facebook, our stories are added by some volunteers. You can read more about it on Slack. And if you wanna become a volunteer to help with whatever task there is to give us all more visibility, don’t hesitate.
There’s not a lot of interaction with the stories on Facebook yet. Guilty! It’s not my favorite medium, sorry. But please, if you love Facebook, just check out the stories and get some action going with reading, likes, and maybe discussions underneath the posts.
LinkedIn is a more active one for me. Several writers are already on there. So feel free to connect and check out what they’re doing. And support in whatever way feels most natural and logical to you…
On LinkedIn, there’s no special group or page. We just link and tag others when we feel like it, I guess…
More Social Media
And then there are more social media I don’t know much about. I hear about Pinterest pages, Flipboard, and maybe others by now. Also here, feel free to get involved. Discussions are in the Slack channel. Share your knowledge on these topics, interact and help us get visibility for all our writers in as many great strategies as we can come up with…
SEO on Google
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is something else this group is very savvy in. For me, Chris Hedges is the expert. I follow her posts closely and am very glad that she (and the rest of the team of course!) managed to get us top ranking if you google ‘illumination medium’.
She also hosts a special page ‘Illumination Spotlight’ where you can upload your stories so you’ll have backlinks. As many of you might know link building is a hot topic in SEO. So it helps. Thanks, Chris!
Well, this is it for now. Let me tag some new writers from yesterday and if you want to spread the word further, be welcome to do so in your own unique way…
Rebecca LeBard Augustine Habenga Shoreditchpoet J. D Castillo Garcia Ethan Taylor Rose Bak Nikki Petrova Jessica Vu Rachel Sample Hannah Altagracia Angel Joy Kasia Kalinowska Anna Klawitter Alisha Hossain Adriane Riesser Suryatapa Sahba Sanai Trevor Mahoney Jim Latham The Somnambulist Society Mike Maher Genevieve Rossier
If you want to connect, you can find me on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or my website. Or somewhere sharing food and creating a more beautiful world with my friends…