My First Week on Medium
The truth!
On the 21st September 2021 London Writers’ Salon (yes, I get a lot of good stuff from those guys, I really recommend that you check them out) had a chat with two ‘Medium editors’, well two fantastic gals working as editors for Medium: Michelle Woo and Amy Shearn. The chat was so lovely, I thought I’d have a look at Medium.
Long story short, I realised that I heard about Medium before. In fact, I joined at some point, I have no idea when. It must have been while I was clicking away all over the internet looking for something, I don’t know what. Anyway…
The more I looked into it, the more I liked it for my ‘activism’ articles. This is a bunch of stuff I’ve collected over the years, working as an activist. The articles are about all kinds of social issues, about the ‘not-for-profit’ sector (I’ve sent an e-mail to GEN publication with my first article of this kind, still waiting to hear from them), about ordinary people getting involved — what it means, how they can do it, understanding the need to be part of positive social change yet being restricted in terms of time, energy and money, and so on. In fact, I even have a name for the whole collection: The Art of War in 21st Century.
However, I also realised that I could publish all sorts on Medium. So I wrote a little piece, fiction based on real-life, inspired by an almost ordinary event that could happen to many people living in London. I published that last Saturday, 24th of September 2021.
That story did not do well. Quite surprised by that, but hey, that’s how these things work.
Since then, I have read a lot about how Medium works (still trying to get those 100 followers so that I can apply for the Partnership Program), I think my bio is fine, I use tags, I read other articles and leave a comment if I like the article, and I’ve published other articles, one of which was published through a publication New Writers Welcome — THANK YOU! And I have to thank Robert Ralph for the great advice and for his articles about Medium.
I have contacted 4 other publications: GEN (that I’ve already mentioned), Coffee Times (I sent my submission only this morning), I wrote to Culture yesterday pitching my ‘The truth about Money’ article (not been published anywhere yet), and one of the articles that I published on my page, I’ve sent a message about it to ‘Be Yourself’ publication — Joel Mwakasege wrote to me to do it that way. I hope I did it right.
There are many other publications I’d love to write for, but I have not got around to it yet. To be honest, I will not be able to keep up this momentum. After Sunday 03.10.2021. I will be posting an article a day on my page, and I will send 1–2 articles per week to a publication. I don’t mind waiting for a response from a publication, and I would love it if all my articles were published through a publication, however, I’d feel bad sending an editor an article that I haven’t worked on, that I just typed up the way I’m typing this up. So, to spear their time and efforts, and out of gratitude for what they do, I will be submitting only those articles that I invested in.
My general feeling about Medium so far is that it is very cool. It’s a great place to meet all kinds of people, writing about all kinds of topics — just this morning I read from a native Hawaiian; my book is set in Hawaii, I attend 2AM meetings with my Hawaii writers (12-hour time difference), I’ll talk to anyone willing to tell me more about Hawaii, and then this morning, bum! A native Hawaiian writing about Hawaii. What’s not to love?
I am disappointed about the 100 followers rule before applying for PP. I’d just like to get PP to feel a little more settled. Right now, I feel like an outsider, a foreigner barging into a strange country without a visa.
So, by the end of next week, I would like to have this sorted out — I’d like to be a PP, or I would like to be part of the Partnership Program. I hope they’re not going to make issues of the fact that I am currently in Bosnia. I’m a UK resident. My bank account is in the UK, and so is my permanent address. I’m just currently in Bosnia. But the internet can be a really dumb place sometimes. Fingers crossed.
How’s everyone else doing? What are you up to?