A satirical take on my first few months on Medium

I Wanted To Be a Medium Sensation

Just follow these tips from someone who doesn't know

So, you want to be a Medium sensation?

Here are some tips from someone who has yet to abandon all hope.

Get to know the competition, winners and losers.

Read all of those How Much Money I Made on Medium This Month articles.

Envy the claps, comments and highlights.

Be jealous and figure out how to get them.

Find your niche, master the tropes, those that keep on giving.

Dish the readers precisely what they want to hear on buffet-sized plates.

Sink a shaft and dig at the seam.

Decide the hours you want to put in.

Eight would be good — a day, that is.

Every day, that is.

For six months, that is.

Try not to die at the coalface.

Self-improvement and relationships, productivity and writing tips.

These are a few of Medium’s favourite things.

And when you’re feeling down, simply remember them.

Trawl your past. Were you ever locked in a cupboard as a child?

Did you have a wicked stepmother with a mirror on the wall?

Pretend it was not you who was fairest of them all.

No skin in the game, eh?

Childhood a dream?

After weeks of digging, troweling and fine brushing, you unearth no buried trauma.

Why is it you who never suffered any sadness or pain?

But what about that bastard you married? Surely, a rich seam of embedded nuggets.

Bring them to the surface, spin them your way and come out golden.

Try not to remember there are two sides to every story.

Move on — nothing to see here. Only Iron Pyrite, not real gold.

Read those self-help books. The ones you keep buying. See them over there on your shelves! Yes, those: their colourful spines, unbroken.

Digest and regurgitate truisms and cliches.

Drink snake oil but try not to sound trite.

Give it some oomph.

Make out like you’ve lived this shit, that these are lessons from life, not psychobabble pilfered from books.

Become A Friend of Medium.

Show them you care.

They’ll seek you out now, fishing for comments, follows and claps.

Now, look forward to four times the pennies.

Maybe it’s your style that needs attention.

Read some more books. The ones about writing.

Be ruthless with adverbs and cut the length of those sentences.

Things not going as planned?

There’s always Erotica! Peek into dark abandoned workings.

See nothing but debris and forlorn hope, overturned trucks and parched white bones.

The fire was too big. Not enough wood.

Someone pissed on those embers, extinguished them months ago.

Think about packing away your toys and going back to Tik-Tok.