Pick Me, Pick Me!
Tips for New Writers
Every day new writers join the Medium platform, and in particular, I notice newbies on Illumination. Congratulations on getting your words out. If your experience is anything like mine, the glee will soon turn to disappointment that more people aren’t reading your work. This reality is to be expected, but I also think can be actively managed.
It might help if I will share with you how I pick what to read. I don’t know how different I am from other readers but it might be useful nonetheless.
The Medium menu is vast and enticing — especially if you add the many worthy publications outside of Illumination, which I also enjoy. Here is how I pick:
- The pieces need to be relatively short: I usually opt for 4-minute pieces, but can go up to as high as 6 or 7 minutes for a handful of writers (and by “handful” I mean literally less than five who have all earned their street cred with me). Time is short, and there is much to read. I learned early on that my 800-word pieces did much better than my over 1,000-word pieces. Short pieces are harder to write, but it forces us to be more disciplined. As Winston Churchill once said, “I’m going to make a long speech because I’ve not had the time to prepare a short one.”
- Don’t explore the obvious unless you can add an interesting twist: So “How the coronavirus has me down,” is not as interesting to me as “Wacko behaviors that keep me going.” Similarly, there are countless stories on the essential qualities of a great leader, but how about a piece that explores how a mediocre leader kind of, sort of, gets the job done? Or a gotcha-quality that made an otherwise excellent leader truly awful?
- Contain your list to 3 or 4 points: Many posts have the top-10 list of how to be a
. Frequent choices include “top writer,” “amazing lover,” and “successful entrepreneur.” Even if you don’t know the “Marketing rule of three” (i.e., things that come in three are more effective), you probably know if you are a user of lists, that long lists are harder to internalize.
Last tips (and kind of a cheat on the rule of three): Tone matters a lot. Humble and self-deprecating win. Humor always helps as does working in a good dog story (confession: I have two dogs, so there is some sample bias here). I also love old people (probably because I am becoming one). I celebrated my Bubbie in this short post, which got little notice but is still one of my favs.
Had Illumination been born when I wrote this, my Bubbie’s wisdom would have gotten more pickup.
Pickup: This takes me back to my starting place. Yay, that Illumination is a fertile platform to grow new writers. Being mindful of readers’ attention span, finding relevant topics that you can treat in a quirky “off-the-beaten-path” kind of way, and winnowing your wisdom down to a few key points, will give you a headstart as you begin to gain a following.
I am there as a reader to be picked and will be on the lookout for you. Can’t wait…