Writing On Medium Feels Different — Here’s Why

It’s all about the community

I’ve been writing and sharing my work online for a pretty long time now, at least four years this spring. Before that, there were fits and starts, but nothing stuck — I was trying to come up with a brand before I actually knew what I was doing and that induced a kind of pressure that stopped me from really letting myself explore.

A word to the wise: if you are new to this journey, just start. It doesn’t have to be good, you don’t have to have some cohesive throughline or perfect voice to share your words with the world. Perfectionism will stop you from living your life if you let it. Just try things. That’s the only thing that has ever really worked for me.

Near the end of April 2018, I was going through a big life transition. I didn’t quite know where I was going, so I did the one thing I knew how to do: I turned to writing. I started a blog with a simple URL, just my first two initials and my last name, and I gave myself permission to write whatever I wanted. No themes, just musings on what I was processing at that point in time.

What followed was a series of creative nonfiction essays detailing stories from my life. I shared vulnerably, maybe in a way others would consider brave, but I never felt that way. For me, it felt like the most natural thing. I love to write and I love to share what I love, so why wouldn’t I share these pieces of my heart where someone might discover them and feel a little less alone?

I wrote intermittently for the next couple of years, sharing whenever the inspiration struck. Those first three months, I hit publish three times per week. I petered off for a while, returning in autumn of 2020 with a similar consistency. According to the stats, I was reaching people — but when you have a blog like this, out in the Wild, Wild West of the internet, it feels eerily similar to screaming into the void: you never know if anyone is actually hearing you, or if your page is merely being visited by mindless hacker bots.

Your work matters

I’ll never forget the first time I met a stranger through my work. Well, stranger is a relative term — we had mutual friends, and we met at a waffle party. She was attending the circus school I had trained at for a year. I think she may have reached out to me via Instagram once before, and I remember feeling confused by how casually she spoke to me. I remember how excited she’d been by my words. As a fellow circus artist who had also struggled with anorexia, my work struck a chord for her, and it opened my eyes.

My work meant something.

Before then, I had been writing and sharing solely for my own purposes. Honestly, every time someone read a piece of my work, I felt almost indebted to them — they’d taken precious time out of their day to read what I’d written. That, to me, was a huge gift.

This girl is now one of my closest friends, and she’s since told me how she felt when we first met. She’d read my work and immediately knew I was someone she wanted to be friends with and, because of the kind of person she is, she went out and made that happen.

When she saw me at that party, she remembered all the stories I’d inadvertently told her through my writing. Now, she remembers my reaction (I probably froze or made a face, I think, I wasn’t used to random people approaching me back then) and she says it was the first time it occurred to her that we’d never had a proper conversation because she felt like we already had.

There is this strange phenomenon that happens when people read our work: our writing, if we are the kind of person to write about personal topics, can be incredibly intimate. Readers feel as if they already know us, as my friend did with me. The thing is that this relationship is often one-sided — until you have a thriving community around your work, you are the only one sharing your thoughts. This can be somewhat lonely, and it requires a lot of energy to keep going. At a certain point, I began to yearn for something more.

Enter Medium

Medium first came onto my radar a couple of years ago, in 2020, when my writer friend Bingz started sharing her journey with the platform on Facebook. I was intrigued. I’d heard about Medium in artist Elle Luna’s book, The Crossroads of Should and Must. She’d published an essay by the same title years before that had gone viral and essentially launched her career, but I never looked into it further. If I’m completely honest, I thought there was somehow more merit in building a blog completely on your own, like if I couldn’t do it I would be some kind of failure.

And then these last two years happened, and I am exhausted. Tired of fighting the good fight alone. So, I began to call in more support.

Following Bingz as her platform grew and she spoke about the support available here, Medium began to feel more accessible. Like maybe it was something I might like to try. Last autumn, the nudges grew louder and louder until I finally opened an account. On December 21, 2021, I published my first piece.

I wasn’t really expecting anything. I thought maybe a few people would see it, but I never expected any engagement. I think I ran away and didn’t check back until some time had passed. I was wary of silence and rejection.

When I returned to my account a few days later, I was pleasantly surprised — my piece had 125 claps and two comments. This may not sound like much but to me, it was. It was a relief. The platform had met me halfway somehow, and I didn’t have to do it all by myself.

It’s all about the community

Writing on Medium feels different because here, people are genuinely invested in good writing. Writers support one another. Readers come to read more in-depth, long-form content, unlike other social media platforms. I don’t feel like I’m climbing up the side of a mountain covered in sand. Quality content is honored. There is space for collaboration and, best of all, we don’t have to do this all on our own.

To my Medium community, thank you for welcoming me in with open arms. Thank you to all the writers who have started publications to create a home for our writing to live in — you’ve helped us find one another and for that I’m grateful.

Thank you, Bingz Huang, for the inspiration and for sharing your journey so openly! I am happy to know you and so glad our paths have crossed. To some of the other writers I’ve been lucky enough to connect with: thank you Natasha Nichole Lake, Carmellita, Janice M. Flanders, Poetic Therapy, Kern Carter, John C. Davis, Nancy Blackman, Valerie Teller, Pene Hodge, Heather Martin (@cadenzacreates), Faith Teo, Jace Loi, Camille Grady, Diana C., Imane Ben, Min L, Trista Signe Ainsworth … and many more.

Know this list is not exhaustive — if we’ve encountered each other’s work at some point over these last few months, I’m grateful for you, too. And I’m so excited to see where this journey takes us next.

Here’s a piece of writing I enjoyed this week from Janice M. Flanders:

As a poet, writer, and artist, Maia Thom works with words to create spaces for people to breathe and come home to themselves. In 2020, she published her first anthology, Kitchen Table Talks: Simple Reminders + Thoughts on Life. You can find her on Instagram as @maia.thom where she shares poetry, art, and practical wisdom to offer daily moments of calm.