On starting a new Medium Publication — musings on a ‘past’ and a list of ‘resolutions’.

So if you handle a publication, I would love to hear from you. What advice would you give me. On running a Medium publication successfully.

One of the best things you can do to yourself is — write. Or create something that you are proud of.

I am not sure how many of you get what I am trying to say, because words are mere symbols, that can relay only a portion of what we wish to convey. And yet, these are all we have. Most of the time.

I recently started “LITERARY IMPULSE”. A literary magazine with a slogan — Literary bubbles made of creative impulses. And it’s USP is - instead of publishing Medium Articles everyday, we publish poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction twice a month. Nothing new. But USP indeed.

I do not really know why I decided to start a new publication when I am so young myself, here, on Medium. Maybe because I have done it before. Earlier, ten years ago, there was a literary magazine I had started, and it was called IMPULSE — a literary magazine. It ran for two years. And what an experience it was! — every day trying to understand how things work and making them work, and communicating with a bunch of dear people on an everyday basis. It was like a start-up. With its hormonal high of ups and downs… work, work and more work, and tension and love and hatred and deadlines. Blah Meh.

Let me confess. I have studied in IIT Roorkee, which is considered to be one of the premier institutes of India — like MIT or Stanford in US, where when I was a kid (I guess I can use the moniker ‘kid’ for that version of mine) I wanted to start a company of my own. Everyone in IIT dreams of starting a start-up at least once in her life. At least in my days, it was the truth, and what more? — I was involved in a college festival. I was part of the central committee. Management was part of my routine. And by God, I love those days-

meeting deadlines, the pressure of work, professors’ eyes, studies, the anger of seniors, the little parties they used to give us, those intense meetings in hostel canteens, midnight walks, late-night walks…

Perhaps I yearn for those moments more than anything else. And yearn for the experience of my failed start-up also…. which I would never call as “failed” in spiritual terms. But for now, since I wish to talk about the concrete, the real, it failed; and sometimes, we have to be hard on ourselves.

It was a very small part of the many plans of my life — a kind of aspiration in the bucket list people are always talking about. And people really thought I could be successful — I could manage a whole organization to success… and I tried, to some extent; but I couldn’t. I was the node then — of IMPULSE — a literary magazine, and we were a bunch of kids trying to make it big, and every day new articles used to come which we would edit, and read and collate, and since I knew a bit of coding, I would maintain the WordPress blog — www.impulse.org.in was the URL of the start-up and I remember after the initial success, I had even tried to contact a few printing houses, for a print version of the online mag.

But sadly, a few undesirable things happened. Mostly miscommunication. Perhaps I couldn’t manage it well. Or perhaps people’s emotions came in between. Perhaps they thought that I was emotionally involved with people whereas they themselves were. Hotchpotch. Or perhaps some people could not digest the way things were going well — we can never find the REAL REASON. AND we should never try to find the real reason for our failures. We should only assess, and move on. There are no ‘real reasons’. Only assessments.

After that, I did an honors course in English Literature from Delhi University, And a master's in English Literature later, during transplant. And then, post my kidney transplant, I did another master’s, in Philosophy, from the famous Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. This all I am putting forward for the express purpose of giving myself confidence that “I can do it this time.”

I have a certain idea of how I see things, I am mature. And most importantly, I am always ready to learn new things.

Knowledge never comes as handy as “humility” does. We should never stop learning.

Anyway, I shouldn’t dwell so much on the past. Because I have not started this publication to make something big. I have started it this time, to nourish my need of being a part of a collective that values words and the magic they can create, the enjoyment words can bring about. It is only for literary write-ups that I have started this little space. And that is why I don’t seek to publish articles every day, which seems to be the norm on Medium.

I have started it for my happiness, more than anything else. And to relive the beauty of the past. Past was beautiful in a certain way, I should never forget, that it had many linings between the clouds. In other words, I am done with the past, in a way that now only its beauty remains with me. And I like to think — that I have a hoard of experience now. And I can maintain this little publication of mine. For a little longer period of time.

I do not know how far it’ll go. Nothing can go farther then it is meant to, anyway. No one can live more than it is meant to. It is not fatalism. It is an acceptance of death. All we can do is try. We get to do what we get to do.

And after an initial bout of conversations, I can rest assure myself that I have five good souls, as fellow editors, in total strangers - Priyanka Srivastava and Somsubhra Banerjee, Erica N, Francine Fallara and Nikita for now.

Now, the important thing — As an organization we have decided to stick to the following rules:

1. There would be a safe space in the organization.
2. Kind respectful words.
3. SLOWNESS — we will rather tarry then beat the deadlines, even though we will have them. Deadlines are important.
4. We will not publish if we do not get something “unique” that we all agree is unique.
5. We will not run after “a number of views” and a number of claps.
6. We will cater to a niche market. Literary words are our niche.
7. Things take time. So we will wait. Though for what, we don’t know. Perhaps for the right articles, and the right time.
8. We won’t do any themes. Or prompts. They are an important part of writing/reading culture. And we are not against them. We will participate in prompts and themes of other publications. But we will never have the same in LI.
9. And yes, an editor’s creative piece will never be a part of LI’s edition. We are not here to play our own bassoon. We are going to depend on other’s Publications’ patronage to publish our words, which is more important.
10. Positions are for making things easier. We are all equal.
11. We will always try to remain calm. Being a critique is not an easy thing. You can never be good enough to judge others’ works. You can only say that — it didn’t click with me. Or. It clicked with me.

I know that this is a very loose and abstract list. Not as concrete as someone’s who is an expert. So if you handle a publication, I would love to hear from you. What advice would you give me? On running a Medium publication successfully.

Let’s see how it goes.

Here is the link for reference —

We are looking for entries for our second edition. Which we expect to release on 15th May, 2020.