Should You Delete Your Medium Stories?
Does deleting your Medium stories make a difference in the long run? Or are you just in your own head about it (like me)?
“To nuke or not to nuke?” That is (always) the question.
Whether it’s opening your stats page (big mistake) and seeing something fair poorly or trawling old Medium lists and questioning why you churned out such eye garbage in the first place, there are going to be times you wake up and, just like Lara Croft, hate everything.
Some Medium writers hold firm in claiming published stories should always remain as such. That one day in the future they will be valuable to the portion of mankind on the platform.
And believing that is absolutely fine. Like the great babe, Hogan Torah says “Never delete. If you forget your flops you’re doomed to repeat them.”
I just don’t think it can be said of all posts.
Let me attempt to tell you why.
When you really want to nuke but there’s no real point
I recently returned to Medium after a hiatus and did some spring cleaning.
A complete overhaul of my lists, a refresh of my CTAs, and trimming the visceral fat from my 90+ post ideas in my draft folder — getting it down to a healthy 16.
One of which was a short form of the advice I’d give my 16-year-old self.
Now, I often self-publish when I need to ritualistically accept that it’s “done”. It’s a way of being able to marry mentally and physically ticking it off and serenely letting it float to the bottom of my priority list.
Or so I always think…
More often than not, I go back on my hasty decision, realising how few views I’d get with this content.
And there comes the question… “To nuke or not to nuke?” I can then republish it freshly on a publication instead.
This time I didn’t nuke. I added it to The Brain is a Noodle on the same day (shout out to Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她)).
No harm done.
Now, I pose this question to you…
When you publish stories that are emailed to your subscribers only to notice spelling errors in the title… what then?
Once they’re sent, that’s it. They’re in their inboxes and can’t be unseen.
Yes. This did happen to me…
I accidentally spelt ‘Millennial’ with one ’n’ and now all my subscribers can see it in all its haphazard glory.
Here is where I usually rage at myself and nuke it…
Nuke it real good.
It’s an automatic process that attempts to rectify a mistake but it's in vain. We have already established what has been seen via email can’t be changed or unseen, despite changing the title later on, as shown below.
BTW, if you’re a millennial (with two n’s) you might actually relate to this…
I'm going to play the learning difficulties card here and say this is thanks to my ADHD; allowing me to act brashly in order to complete tasks and switch my focus without guilt. But I think perfectionism is also at play here.
I get hung up on each mistake I make, so much so that I believe they will haunt my career for the rest of my life. This wildly inaccurate belief stops me from making decisions and cripples my progress. Big time.
Mostly it makes me think I’m not worth more than my mistakes, which is a determining factor as to whether a story deserves to be nuked or spared.
And if we truly believe our stories aren’t worth more than one spelling mistake, are they even worth publishing in the first place?
Tasty thought food.
When it’s a good idea to nuke and republish Medium stories
I wanted my recent slightly unhinged personal essay to find a home in my go-to (and current favourite) creative nonfiction publication, The Narrative Collective (formerly Age of Empathy)(shout out to KiKi Walter, Sally Prag, Christopher Robin and the OG, Aimée Gramblin).
Within the hour I clicked that ‘Add to publication’ button at the top right, Christopher added a private message asking if I’d be willing to delete and republish.
This way, it would become one of the most recently published stories of the day.
I obliged.
Depending on where you sit with this preference, proceed at your leisure. For me it allowed me to get more views and reads than self-publishing this particular story.
Re-publishing stories like this might not sit well with everyone who gets my stuff emailed to them… but you shouldn’t let that stop you from subscribing.
It’s just how I — and my deep-rooted insecurities — roll.
Now when you see two of the same title pop up on the same day you’d actually be in on the joke.
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