Nine Months Writing on Medium: A Look Back at a Crazy Gestational Period

Complete with a few stats for you numbers geeks

In looking back at some older articles yesterday, it struck me that it is almost exactly nine months since I began writing on this site. In the same amount of time I could have actually birthed a child, if I wasn’t old…and male…and still raising two kids already into their 20s…and…you get the point. What I have “birthed” over the past nine months is a hell of a lot of words, over 300,000 of them in 384 articles. That’s enough for six short novels or half of one by David Foster Wallace.

So what have I learned during this magical mystery tour of writing? A lot, and yet at the same time not much at all. Life is weird that way. This will make more sense as we move along.

I know some of you clicked on this article hoping for a treatise on how to get rich quick on this site. If that’s your main goal here is what you must do:

1. Start off by saying “Bless me, Uncle Paco, for I have greatly sinned.”

2. Confess the number of times you have read (or worse, written) an article with the title “How I Made $1 Million By Selling Feet Pics to Tibetan Sherpas and How You Can Too.”

3. As your penance, write out the final line of The Great Gatsby 1,000 times or until you see the error of your ways.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s move along, starting with what I mean when I say I haven’t learned much. What I haven’t learned, and what every writer secretly hopes for, is what topics will actually connect with readers. I have some basic ideas, as we all do, but the fact remains that while one piece combining history and film is my best performing thus far (with 22K views, 15K reads, and 4.4K claps), another one in the exact same vein has only 65 views. Same with music articles; they do great except when they don’t. There simply is no formula that you can follow.

That said, I have discovered two persistent trends, one early on and one recently, that have been pretty consistent for me. First, fiction is the red-headed stepchild of this (and every other) site. If a fiction piece hits 75 views after three months I do a happy dance. Everyone here seems to love writing fiction, so it doesn’t make much sense that it is read so little. And I know it’s not just my stuff this happens with; as one of the editors of the Fictions publication, I see the stats for a lot of stories, and there are many that should be completely blowing up, but aren’t. It’s a travesty.

The only exception to the low views issue with my fiction ties into the second trend, the one I just recently noticed. My most viewed fiction story (with 431 views and 106 reads) has the following title: “Story Time and Springsteen at The Last Word Bookstore.” Given that other stories in my Last Word series will reliably generate up to 25 views, what is different here? In a word: Springsteen. Any article I write about the great man blows up almost instantly, yet as I have lamented before, for some reason anywhere from 90% to 95% of the views come from non-Medium members. There’s nothing more gratifying that an article getting 4K views while earning $1.73.

But enough of this Prophet Ezekiel-like doom and gloom. The joys of the past nine months have outweighed the pain in ways I could never have hoped for. Actually writing every day for maybe the first time in my life has been the best “job” I’ve ever had. Having a viable outlet for the voices in my head has certainly prevented untold catastrophes, both personal and societal. And hopefully it’s made me a better writer (the jury’s deadlocked on that one).

The most unexpected benefit of this almost-yearlong writing journey has been something you often find on real-life journeys: the people I have met. Getting to know the number of superb writers (and even better people) that I have met on this site, and becoming friends with many of them, would have made banging out articles non-stop worth it even if I had not earned a dime. It has been even more crucial since it happened at the very time we were all cut off from most human contact. To say even briefly what each one has meant to me would turn this into a 30-minute read, so I will simply say thanks while giving you the genre I know them best for:

Film: Simon Dillon and Eric Pierce

Music: Terry Barr, Pierce McIntyre, Kevin Alexander, David Acaster, Alex Markham, Keith R. Higgons and Rui Alves

Humor: Sarah Paris, Emma Lindsay, and B.G. Warren

Fiction: Patrick Metzger, Paul Mansfield, Danielle Loewen, and Arpad Nagy

Memoir/Observations on Life: Aimée Gramblin, Lisa Gerard Braun, Mary DeVries and Maria Shimizu Christensen

Rants: Jessie Waddell, Chris Zappa, and The Garrulous Glaswegian

Books: Walter Bowne and Amanda Kay Oaks

Poetry: David Rudder and Jillian Spiridon

All of these fine authors cover far more than one genre, of course, and many of those not listed under fiction are also master storytellers. You need to check all of them out. (And if we’re friends and your name’s not here, it is solely due to the shortcomings of my memory; I apologize in advance). In addition to these writers, you need to be following (and writing for) these fine publications: Fictions, Blow Your Stack, FanFare, Plethora of Pop, The Riff, Rock n’Heavy, Perceive More, and Writers’ Blokke. All of them have been instrumental for me.

In the subtitle I promised some stats for the numbers geeks, though I will not be putting any earnings here. Other than the occasional gripe like the one above about how little I earn writing about Bruce, I find discussing money in public unseemly; I guess I’m more British than Italian in that respect (I’m sure Simon Dillon will agree).

My best performing article overall, as mentioned earlier (22K views, 15K reads, and 4.4K claps):

Best performing History piece (19.1K views, 10.5K reads, 3K claps):

Best performing Film article (8.7K views, 5K reads, 2.3K claps):

Best performing Springsteen piece (8.2K views, 2.5K reads, 717 claps):

Best performing Rant (6.5K views, 3.1K reads, 2.4K claps):

And just for grins, my single worst-performing piece, which is not surprisingly Fiction (7 views, 5 reads, 50 claps):

If you stayed with me this far, I appreciate it. As is my habit, it turned into a bit of a ramble, but a lot has happened over the past nine months. I’ve defended Iron Man as the greatest Avenger, vented my spleen more times than is healthy, and hopefully converted a few people to the Fellowship of the E Street Band. Who knows what the next year holds as this newborn finally learns how to walk; I just appreciate everyone who’s come along for the ride. Tramps like us…

As I now get back to hammering out Christmas articles (they’re only good for another 2 weeks, so get after it), I will leave you with this musical interlude. It’s a “stump the band” number from a concert in Leipzig in 2013 where Bruce teaches the horn section the song onstage; I hope you enjoy it.