So, Your First Story got Curated on Medium

Congratulations, but there’s more to this than meets the eye!

Medium is a platform where a plethora of knowledge lays. It has become one of the most indulging online publishing platforms as many writers publish multiple stories in a day to share their expertise, monetize their posts and some write for the love of writing. In this story, I will be sharing my experience as to how my first story got featured by the Curators as it was a piece of sheer luck and surprise to me in the first instance, and how I learned my lesson after my first curation.

One ne fine day, I was going to conduct a virtual workshop to students from various colleges on a technical subject. Just the night before the workshop I decided to write a post on this technical domain which would help the students cover all the essential code in this particular subject.

I started writing it immediately to provide them with a better and firm understanding of the topic through my “Medium Story”. I wrote down the article to provide them the satisfaction of the subject and made sure to cover all the possibilities. A one-stop destination to learn about the subject thinking from the student’s perspective is all I had in my mind.

I finished writing the story and hit the Publish button. I woke up the next morning, got myself ready for the workshop, had my cup of coffee and checked my mailbox. I was amazed to see a mail from Medium and my happiness held no bounds.

When I saw my story being curated, I was happy and filled with joy. For a new writer, this is quite overwhelming as it was to me. Although I’m new to content writing I have recently started to enjoy the process so when I saw my story being featured I was over the moon.

I would like to bring something to your notice that I hadn’t registered for the Medium Partner Program and I hadn’t taken any membership too. When I realized that my post has crossed a good amount of views I was amazed to see the response and the feedback. I got immensely confident about writing, I enrolled myself into the Medium Partner Program, got myself a membership, and started writing a few more stories ahead. Getting yourself curated makes your post get a better reach to the audience which can be beneficial for the new writers on Medium as it was to me, although it’s not a compulsion.

Moving on, I will share a small phase of my failure, as we see so many success stories I firmly believe that failures are a part of that success. As rightly said:

“ Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

— Winston Churchill.

After I wrote my first curated story I was happy, over the moon, and was hoping to write such a story which will blow people’s mind. Here, I was devastated when I did not receive the same response as my previous story. I asked myself where did I go wrong? What improvements do I need?

It took me a while to get over it, rejuvenate myself, and most importantly to not give up and start writing again. I came up with this realization that when I initially wrote my story I wrote it for the students so they could benefit from my story whereas when I wrote it the next time I wrote it for my personal gains. It is extremely important to write for your audience and not think of any personal gains such as views, claps, monetization of posts, etc. When we write for others there is freshness, the thinking process is broad and we always strive to deliver the best. I’m happy I learned my lesson which developed a good habit within me very soon.

Now the question arises, “Hey ! what did you learn from your first curation on Medium ?”

Answering the question above, the lessons learned are: —

· Write to your audience, not for yourself.

· The connection is important. Write down your emotions, what you feel.

· Write down your first thoughts first they are raw and beautiful, edit later.

· Know your content, write it as you own it.

· Don’t hesitate to hit that publish button.

· We all are Imperfect!

· The most important ingredient and the secret sauce of your recipe is…

The Final Word:

— This post is especially to all my new fellow writers on this platform to not get demotivated after such shortfalls and strive to write and publish better content. Above all to be consistent. Thank you very much. I hope you all enjoyed it 😊