Last updated on 2020/02/12
Tips for anyone wanting to get started on Medium from a wanna-be writer
Hey reader! All of the best practices and successful articles on writing for Medium state that the title above and this first paragraph are the most important parts of this story. They need to be eye catching and grab your attention. How about this – I will tell you the big secret to my success at the end of this article!
If you are still reading this without skipping to the end for the big reveal then you are probably one of the people very much like myself who is either looking for the quick and easy formula for writing that is going to catapult you to the top and get you some of that easy writing money. Either that or you have already started the grind and are looking for that edge to get more of your articles noticed by the curators.
The reason I know that both of these items are popular topics is that I also spend my fair share of time reading these articles in an attempt to increase my writing abilities and draw more eyeballs to these words. That isn’t a bad thing, but it does feel like more of the tips and tricks are formulaic means for structure and format than they are an honest attempt to improve the quality and flow of someone else’s work.
Don’t get me wrong – I am well aware of the potential hypocritical nature of these very words as I am writing an article expounding upon the very same target. Cool.
Hopefully you are still hanging around waiting for some pithy wisdom to drop. I also promised a secret at the end of the post. Better get to it!
You Cannot Predict Viral
I don’t know how many views it takes for something to meet the definition of viral. Normally, I would look a topic like this up and drop in some links here to get more of that SEO link-iness, but this is an article on how I achieved success, so forget that. I have tried over and over to achieve that sweet spot where an article just takes off. Honestly, I wasn’t sure that it would happen. When I started this article four days ago, I had just cracked a total of 1,000 views over three months. Not bad. I was happy with those numbers.
In the four days it has taken me to get back to this point, I have gone from 1,000 views to 2,975 views and counting. I am reasonably certain that I will crack 3k before I finish writing tonight.
I am sorry to disappoint, but there is no magical formula to figuring out what will or won’t go viral. I am not even sure that the post that has launched like a rocket into the stratosphere in terms of views could even be considered as truly viral – yet I am happy to be the author behind such an article.
The thing is, you never know what people will glom onto while reading. Some of what I would consider as my best work wasn’t even picked up to be curated. Others were curated but didn’t go very far. Then one article landed in multiple curation topics, started slow then took off like a rocket after being published for a week. Go figure.
I don’t have any secret formula here. The best advice I can give is to consider yourself a grinder form the get-go. Grind it out. Write as much as you possibly can. Shoot for an average as close to an article a day as possible. Use quantity to improve your writing. Others may differ in their opinion, but what do they know – I am now up to 2,976 views.
The Biggest Fulfillment comes from making yourself happy
The worst trap that I fell into while writing is in my efforts to write what I thought would be good articles and what I thought would interest others. All this served to do was to betray myself and what I wanted to accomplish.
Sure – keep reading the articles on how to improve views and get more claps. There are nuggets of gold embedded in the fluff of those articles. But no matter what, don’t forget to write for yourself. Everyone else gets to review and comment after the Publish button is pressed. The creative writing process is for you and you alone. Try not to forget that!
When you try and write for what you think people will want vs writing for what interests you, while you may not realize it at the time, the power of your words and ideas is diluted down into a mush that people seem to be able to spot a mile away. This is not a good practice.
Focus on what interests you and stick to that. The views and claps will come.
Use the $*@&#*&$ Thesaurus
There is absolutely no excuse not to elevate your writing to the next level. By default, things in most browsers are spell-checked. Just look for the squiggly red lines under words, right click, and select an appropriate spelling. It is not rocket science!
If you find yourself using common words over and over, take the time to rewrite sentences to remove those words. I did this. I thought that. I, I, I. That is bad grammar and you should do everything you can to avoid it.
If you find a word being used more than twice in a piece, stop, go back and look for a quick and easy thesaurus. Don’t know of one? Simply go to dictionary.com, then up at the top change the dropdown from dictionary to “thesaurus” and type the word in. It cannot get any easier. This is one of the best and easiest ways to improve your writing and it takes almost no time and very little effort.
Another quick tip? Simply read and re-read your article a few times before posting. Read it out loud if you have to. Many grammar issues can be smoothed over by reading and hearing the work and it will allow you to edit your own work in to a much more comprehensive piece before you publish.
Now we are at the end of the article and I promised everyone a big secret. I almost hate doing this but here we go, the final and biggest secret I have learned:
The Secret: Have Patience
Yeah, grab your tomatoes and start throwing them at the screen. I get it, what a lame secret. The truth is, your opinion doesn’t matter. What you see as mediocre may get curated and what you consider to be your best work ever may be marginalized and ignored. Then as you keep grinding away a bolt of lightning hits and you jump from 6 views to 600 overnight. It can happen. It happened to me.
The key to all of it is, have some patience. You aren’t writing for the New Yorker. You are building your own following and that can take time. Instead of doing what I did and refreshing the stats page on Medium every 5 minutes, step back, focus on your writing and try and have some fun with it. Even if that doesn’t lead to page views, you will have a better time and feel more fulfilled at the end of the day. Achieving that is a secret that you can use to write your own success article on Medium and join the rest of us in attempting to enlighten the next group coming in looking for that easy button answer.
I can’t wait to read what you write! Thanks for reading.
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