This Is Why I Don’t Really Care If Anyone Reads My Story!
I am a good writer, but I don’t expect most of the readers on Medium to get that.
My guess is nobody will read this article either. I’ve been there before — done that. And it is fine. It is their loss. I have over ten memoirs, eight historical fictions, five romance novels, and four crime-dramas that I have written as a ghostwriter that are best-sellers and award-winners. I have always made good money as a writer. But not on Medium.
I grew up in a publishing world where if you had something to say, you said it, and if it was good, somebody would want it, pay you for it, and publish it. In those days, publishers mostly only cared about ethics, principles, and great literature.
Not anymore by a long shot. Today, things are quite different. You hear it all the time — people do not have time to invest in reading anything. If it doesn’t capture their interest in the first few milliseconds of viewing your story, they depart. But there is an exception which Medium readers (many who are writers, as well) flock to. I will get to that in a moment (I promise).
I always loved reading and had escaped in books to ward off abuse and neglect of all kinds during my childhood. I was smart and possibly a teacher’s pet, and it was natural that I would go on to study great literature in college. I loved it and it made my life richer, happier, and it fueled my thirst for wisdom. I became a writer. I wrote excellent manuscripts and made an adequate living as a ghostwriter.
Perhaps surviving my bizarre and chaotic childhood helped me as a writer by giving me real-life examples from my family for all of my complicated characterizations. I found it easy to take an outline or an author’s life story or ideas, and then bring it to life so that it snapped off of the pages. I used to have great clients who were willing to pay me well for the value I could produce.
As the publishing world changed, I tried to adapt. Writers flooded the market. Publishers and agents wanted a sure thing and authors had to have a following. I continued working but competition and deadlines became palpable. Nobody wanted to wait and others could do it more quickly.
Was I successful? Was I still happy? I don’t know. I do know that I have tried fitting myself into this new world of publishing.
Every freelance website I put my profile on hoping to attract business was jammed-packed with writers trying to undercut me all along the way. I lowered my rates, expanded my territories, and competed as best I knew how. Even though I had glowing reviews and recommendations, I came to realize most new people interested in having their ideas, or life stories, written into a great book, would rather pay less for someone of questionable value.
Many more who hired me took advantage of my kindness and perfectionism by demanding longer word counts, lengthy revisions to their own ideas, and endless hours on the phone trying to soothe their nerves when they could not get a great publishing contract. Trying to earn money or making a living as a writer nowadays is some mixture of hope, pain, frustration, and every once in a while, satisfaction.
Everyone wants to know how to be successful. They study the articles written on Medium about how to get a great following, along with loads of applause, monthly earnings, and followers. From my observation over the past several years reading a great deal of published and curated stories, these seem to be the main genre of articles and stories most folks on Medium spend their valuable time reading and applauding. The writers of those pieces are the ones who have made some good money!
I have been diligent in observing specific authors and their successes. By and large, albeit with some resounding exceptions, the writers creating this material usually only have a few articles which were very successful, and those turned out to be mostly about how to find success using keywords, tags, headlines, and specific marketing solutions.
If you have read this article up until this point, I want to thank you. I must admit that I am a bit surprised, and that some part of me does not know how to feel about this fleeting moment of success.
I am sorry that it is difficult for you (and I) to make consistent and decent money writing about the things which we are passionate about. Seems our choices are to gird up our loins, write about what they want to hear, and sell; or stick out our chin, write great material, and then grin and bare the lack of reception and applause our masterpiece is going to receive.
Chalk it up to overpopulation, big tech, the Internet of Things, or progress. Either way, we who write great works of literature or fascinating articles about life and humanity, are somehow losing out.
We are all part of a community of writers and readers who traverse the unsettled plains of electronic media as modern cowboys and cowgirls in pursuit of gold. We know it is out there and we continue our trek, knowing in our hearts we can be successful if we can just find the correct vein of shining metallic pixels.
I have a suggestion:
Remember the love you had for a good book, story, or article somewhere along the way? How you once looked forward to sitting on your comfortable chair with a good read in hand, wanting nothing more than to absorb its glorious contents? Reading for the sake of enjoyment and learning a thing or two about life itself seems to be going by the wayside.
Spend more time reading and writing about things of value which bring you enjoyment and fulfillment, regardless of how helpful it will be to you in earning money as a writer in this current climate. You will feel better about yourself for having done so, and you will be exercising your creative zeal and passion, thus fortifying and honing your craft. If you are persistent, I am willing to bank on it that, one day soon, something good will come of it!
I am also willing to bank on it that readers will soon come back to us — they will begin to crave, cherish, applaud, and then demand good writing once again. Good writing stands the test of time, while all other current hypes in the world of publishing are just fads which will eventually go away, and they will do so quickly and definitively.
How many writers can Medium support with great pay for the same kind of material? Good writing stands on its own. Medium will soon need us to deliver our finest works of fine literature, poetry, and articles which address humanity’s greatest concerns. It is just a matter of time.
So, go on and write, and read, like all that matters are the moments you spend with the pages before you. Become lost, even transfigured, by the words that can take you out of your own life and concerns for a moment, can teach you something you never knew; and which can give you a glimpse, like a God from heaven above, on the affairs of someone or some others besides yourself and your own community.
Still reading this article? I’ve surprised myself. I am positive that if you applaud this article, I won’t know what to do, and will be beside myself with an improbable sense of my own value. I will probably wind up hoping for more, and then what ….
As we plan our next big story or article, we boil our coffee over the campfire, gaze up at the stars, wrap our shoals across our shoulders and breath in deeply so to collect our thoughts. How can we find that just-right tone which will hook our audience, so that we may do justice to what has become for us an urgent idea or story needing to be shared? Electronic media is so competitive, but as modern cowboys and cowgirls, we are unperturbed. As we continue our journey, we know it is in our souls to get it out there, and that this is who we were meant to be ….
Unlike the traditional publishing era, when vying for success meant producing the best possible article, characters, or manuscript; in today’s world, success mostly means we have succumbed to the lure of sameness, have probably cheapened our message or watered it down to reach the most followers, and have produced something which hundreds of others have already said, probably better than we can.
And then, after all that, what if we do not find success anyway? We may have missed out on producing a true work of art, or something which would have brought a greater measure of success — our self-respect. Perhaps we should not get lost in the numbers, the science of writing success, or the jumble for views and applause. Remember, Medium itself does not reward great writing.
In fact, I will go one step further than that, and implore each one of us to go back to the days when reading and writing was still enjoyable, and having something of importance to say meant a great deal more than just the numbers of applause, followers, and views we have received.
As an example, I have five of my own best short stories published on Medium. Each has something important to say about culture, family, principles, and love. They mostly derived from real people involved in actual life events. I am proud of the readers they have found, even though none of these stories have thus far found success in terms of dollars earned.
For now, we may have to earn money as writers by taking on freelance and ghostwriting jobs, or whatever else we have done in the past to earn money. The good news is that we can still write, and read, while making money doing something else until we hit one out of the park.
For further consideration, as another example of principles versus earning success: I am aware of many writing services which pay good money to writers because they overpromise the potential of the final product to their clients. I have been hired by these. Like other good writers that I know, I cannot bring myself to work for those, since it is dishonesty right from the start which gets you the work, and therefore, it is unethical.
And this brings us right back to the main question which this article is trying to address:
Do we dilute our principles in order to make money? Do we suck it up and produce something which will find success if that means we are writing about things mostly pertaining to successful writing? What happens then to the power of great literature?
Mainstream media certainly has become a sell-out. Good luck trying to be a good reporter nowadays! Being a keen observer of newscasts for fifty years, it is obvious to me that even America’s finest reporters no longer investigate the news they cover — they just read what they are told to read. Many times they seem to me to be off-guard and uncertain, and even sometimes choke over, what they must regurgitate at us.
Like lone cowboys and cowgirls sitting atop our horses overlooking a canyon of unchartered territory relaxed and at peace within our environment, while most others scramble in the mud to find the latest veins of gold, we cannot become sell-outs to the requirements of our modern world. I think it is because I have a very deep core of ethics, with its accompanying moral compass, that has always made me a great writer from the start.
If you think at all like I do, take comfort in knowing you are not alone . I know from my contact with great writers across a plethora of platforms, that there are, thankfully, still many of us out there.
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Here is another of my short stories:
Blessings to you!
