The Illuminated Road to Becoming Better Writers

Is curation the highest level of achievement on Medium? I beg to differ

Every day at 3:00 am or thereabouts I am out of bed, and within half an hour my routine begins. In the living room, one of my exercise tapes is on pause. Every twenty minutes I stop writing and work out. Outside we have some eight inches of snow, which makes it a lot easier to hang out inside and write.

I produce at least one, sometimes four articles a day. Every single day. Most of them show up on Illumination. On occasion I will still send one to a few publications who might be wondering where the hell I wandered off to. I get fed here. So do we all.

However. Dr Mehmet Yildiz this morning wrote a piece about curation that caught my attention. I responded and also wrote him privately. I have seen him both say it doesn’t matter, and then that it does. I think we’ve all been there recently. Here is his challenge:

I think that many of us feel the same way. Partly, of course, because if you are anything as prolific as I am, the curation percentage is woefully low. And as a result, so is income from Medium. However that hammer fell on pretty much all of us. My primary topic is adventure travel, although I have long written a good bit in a few other categories I care deeply about and have significant experience in. No matter. Eyeballs are elsewhere.

Dr. Y and others including this author have already raised the question-as have many others on Medium- about what on earth is going on. I am not going to post that material here. You can see what others have posted in their comments on his piece, above.

I do wish to offer this perspective. Ultimately you and I are writers because we are in some way called to it. The Illumination community is deeply diverse and growing. Not without a few bumps, but that’s to be expected during a growth arc. Not all of us like everyone’s material, that’s also to be expected. However I might point out that one of the huge and defining differences between our community and most other publications as that our articles don’t linger in perpetual publication hell while we try to figure out if the editors are going to publish the damned thing. Not only do we get published, but I have yet to produce a piece wherein Dr.Y doesn’t weight in on something and highlight.

If you’re not a regular on Medium, kindly, that’s an incredible amount of personal attention to say nothing of the time commitment. No other editor that I have published with has ever taken that kind of care. I’m lucky if I get published in the first place. Yesterday I reviewed an old article that had been submitted to Noteworthy early last year. Never heard a thing.

I have wholesale dumped submitting to certain pubs because of this rude behavior. And, because those publications, after carving out a specific lane (like love, or business) are publishing material that has nothing to do with that lane, and/or they are ignoring material that does.

Illumination doesn’t do that. Not only do we get promoted, we are getting challenged, invited, tagged and supported among one another. For me that’s become a bit of overwhelm, as I have taken on some client work (THANK YOU)and I am developing a website. That doesn’t keep me from submitting, commenting and tagging where I can, and watching what’s going on.

I am going to submit a challenge: for my part, Illumination, in its highest sense when I consider what I call Deep Work, involves taking a Klieg light into the basement of my inner world and throwing the drapes off the demons that live there. One of them is my neediness. My ache for acknowledgement. The desire to see claps. I want to know people like my work. Of course I do.

Yesterday I worked the entire day. I might have gotten two claps the entire day. The entire day. Until later in the evening when folks took more time and even then, not many.

That can hurt, if you let it. It is a rare thing indeed that any story of mine gets more than a few eyeballs, but then I am not everyone’s cup of tea. Nor should I be. Even my curated articles rarely generate much traffic.

If I tied my delicate self worth to that I’d be in terrible trouble indeed.

If we tie our self worth to curation, we are all going to be in trouble, if current curation rates continue. And that’s my point.

While each of us is motivated differently, and some of us take on the challenges Dr. Y offers and some don’t, I’d like to point this out: we are far better served as a writing community, to my mind unique on the Medium platform, to continue to read, serve and support one another as opposed to focusing on curation. None of us, to my knowledge, can affect that. Until such time as things slow down and normalize to some extent, all we have is how we behave with each other on this platform and on Illumination specifically.

To that: I would encourage all of us to continue to produce our best work. To read, tag, comment and support each other. Ask for help. I continue to PM where I find it useful with suggestions that need to stay off line, and I thoroughly enjoy building on others’ work as I always have. I deeply appreciate those messages that I receive both privately and publicly which help and add value. I might also suggest that each of us consider the role we expect Medium to play in our worlds. What is our purpose? Why are we writing here?

Medium for me is just one place where I produce a great deal of work to use in other venues. On my upcoming website. To secure consulting gigs. To continue to hone my voice and my skills as a writer. To explore. What’s yours?

Dr. Y has consistently focused on adding value. The only way I get gigs and work is to add value. You and I have direct control over our content, but not curation. You and I have direct control over the level of commitment, how much we engage.

We also have direct control over the tone of our emails, which, kindly, I would kindly ask that you consider before you send. I have seen some examples sent to Dr.Y about using Slack. With all due respect to the stress we’re all under, it is hardly either kind nor respectful to fling anger at a gentleman who is putting in extraordinary time, effort and passion to help us be better. Kindly, and I quote:

However, I had many email messages from members asking and making comments like “what the hell the Slack is?”, “do we really need to join another stupid tool?”, “I have no time for playing with gadgets”, “technology frightens me”, “what is the use of Slack”, “I don’t think it will add any value to your brilliant strategy”, “I don’t know how to use a smartphone or tablet, I use my PC for writing that is it”, “please don’t pressure us for joining weird things, we are not technologist like you”. These are only a few examples.

Ladies and gentlemen. I challenge all of us to shine an Illuminating light on such behavior, to question why we are so resistant. Look, I HATE technology. I’m 67, I did my first Skype call this year. It came out in 2003. Yet I found a way to join Slack. Even if I didn’t, with respect to your discomfort, which I most assuredly share, I can’t understand how sending this kind of email to someone who is donating enormous time for our benefit is any kind of a thank you.

Dr. Y doesn’t pressure. He invites. Big difference.

But that’s just me. We’ve been invited to grow. Your choice. Along with picking those writers whose work most resonates with you, you are regularly invited to try something new. Some of you are terrified of negative feedback. You can learn to deal with that here. Or not. That’s up to you.

You and I can also choose not to be fixed on curation. I am honestly surprised these days when someone picks up one of my stories. It used to be a regular occurrence. Not now. So I don’t count on anything. What I choose to focus on is my writing, my work, staying well, being responsible, being a good member of this community. There’s a lot to be grateful for here. There’s a reason we’re growing.

The more we put in, the more we get back. The more chances we take, the more we grow. The more we give, the more we get.

But, that’s just me. I don’t speak for anyone else. However, I am, once again, going to give a massive shout out to Dr. Y for his incredible patience, his hard work, his dedication to this publication, his baby. I would ask that we might offer him not only the thanks that is his due for creating a very different kind of Medium publication, but consider his commitment when we contact him privately. Please consider your choice of words, your tone and your intent.

None of us stepped up to do this.

He did.

I think that deserves our respect. At the very least, let’s please not abuse the privilege of being an Illumination writer. I do consider it a privilege. I genuinely hope you see it that way as well.

As for curation? PAH. Let’s set our own bar higher, and hope that Medium will eventually figure out that they’ve been left behind. We are doing what, IMHO, Medium could have been doing all along: creating Diversity, Synergy, Fusion, Serendipity.