FUN AND GAMES
Oh, the Pieces You’ll Submit Without Getting a Hit
Even Dr. Seuss was far less obtuse
Welcome to Medium, it’s a fun place to write Do you wanna get boosted without a big fight?
If so, surrender your ego, do these five things A pain in the ass, but the money they’ll bring!
Write an On-The-Nose Headline in All Title Case That clever creative one — you can erase
Or make it a subtitle and put it right below In sentence case — small t — for those who don’t know.
And have some punctuation right there at the end We shouldn’t have to remind you, Medium Friend!
Now for a picture, there’s an Unsplash ready link If you leave off the credit, you go right in the clink.
But try not to bore us with an over-used one If we see one of those images, your story is done!
The woman in sombrero, that kid at the mic Use any like this and you can go take a hike.
People, don’t just grab one like it’s no big deal It’s key to curation as this post reveals.
Don’t overdo photos in the body of your post Think diminishing returns — three at the most!
Then we take a look at the body of your text Of course we also read it, but that comes next.
If something is glaring, like your prose is too dense We won’t waste time reading — don’t take offense.
Break it up with subheads — or two, or three Give our eyes a break, let our lungs breathe
You think these don’t matter, but oh, Darlin’ they do We need ways to streamline our workload, too.
If we can pass on your piece without having to read See how it gives us a whole lot more speed?
There are way more of you than there are of us Only thirty-five boosters ride on this bus.
But if you’ve been good and played by our rules Formatted correctly with our formatting tools —
For Titles in Title Case, Click the Capital T, Subheads — either case, but in the larger type, please.
Your photo is credited and publicly usable Your temper’s stayed calm and not highly fusible —
We’ll read your story but we can’t say by when You won’t get a lovely hang tight message up until then.
Meanwhile, so many days or months will go by You’ll forget all about this post and why
You wrote it and what it was you so eloquently said So it won’t matter if the boosting process is dead.
By the time we could boost — if indeed we did It would be far down the queue, and very well hid.
So don’t get your knickers caught up in a bunch We’re not even talking about the price of one lunch.
Yes, we know boosting’s a feather in your cap And we’ve boosted posts that were quite full of crap.
But if you knew what we knew, and saw what we’ve seen You’d give us all credit for being real human beings!
We’ve heard your bellyaching — it’s quite insistent — But we’re not robots so we won’t be consistent.
We’d love to boost every one of your pieces But some smell like roses and some smell like feces.
No, not yours personally, but you know what we mean Which is why we stay silent, hidden, unseen.
Think of poor Lucy on that fast-moving line She had to eat chocolates to make it on time.
We’re in the same boat, perhaps more, perhaps less So instead of complaining, maybe you’ll bless.
No? At least we gave it a shot And put a little rhyme in the work of a bot!
Thanks to our friend Gill McCulloch for the inspiration And to all our readers — congratulations!
Here’s Ten Templates to Kick-Start Your Humor or Satire
Marilyn Flower is a sacred fool who writes fiction, poetry, and blogs, inspired by the practice of SoulCollage®. Her books: Developing Characters: Fun Ways to Cast Your Fiction, Creative Blogging, Bucket Listers. Follow her Sacred Foolishness or SoulCollage® for Writers, and Stay in touch!
