By Shaunta Grimes
Subscribe to Medium
It costs $5 a month.
I’ve been poor. Deeply poor. The kind of poor where you don’t know where your next meal is coming from. So I get it. For some people, $5 is too much.
If that’s really you, you can skip this. You can’t get blood from a turnip and all that. Medium doesn’t require you to subscribe to start earning.
But, if you can, you should subscribe to Medium ASAP.
You’ll earn more money. Sure Medium doesn’t require subscription for you to write on their platform. But some of your readers will be other writers.
And those writers are sometimes hesitant to clap for people who don’t have the green ring around their picture that indicates that they’re subscribers. The thinking that I see in forums for Medium writers is that some people don’t want to contribute pay to people who aren’t contributing to them.
I think that at least subconsciously, readers attach some cachet to the green circle that indicates that you’re a Medium member. Even if all it really means is that you paid $5 a month — it signifies your seriousness, maybe.
Last, and maybe most important, it’s good karma to subscribe to Medium if you’re writing here. You’ll pay into the pool that pays everyone.
Join a Medium-Writer’s Community
There are a bunch of Medium Writer groups on Facebook. It’s a good idea to join at least one. This is especially helpful if you’re a new writer and you’re coming to Medium without any already established audience or writing community.
You’ll be able to ask questions, connect with other writers, find people to bounce ideas off of. Many of the groups have daily link threads where you can post your work and get a few reads and claps. (You’ll reciprocate by reading other people’s work and clapping for it.)
I belong to this group. And this one.
While You’re At It, Make a Friend
This is the same advice I have about writing fiction.
It’s nice to workshop and have a group opinion sometimes. But there is so much value in developing a relationship with a single critique partner. Someone you trust, whose opinion makes your work better, and whose work you enjoy reading as well.
It makes a huge difference for me that I have a Medium friend that I touch bases with on Facebook every day. We talk about what we’re working on, bounce ideas off each other, whine when things aren’t going well, celebrate when they are.
Those Medium Facebook groups are a good place to connect with people and hopefully find someone who will be a good fit as a critique partner.
Start Your Own Publication
Starting your own publication on Medium is very easy.
Create a publication
Click on your profile picture in the top-right corner of the page and choose Publications from the menu. Click New…help.medium.com
I highly recommend it.
You’re reading this post in my own publication, The Write Brain. This publication is a place where I can gather all my posts about the business of writing, and where readers can come when that’s what they want to read about.
A publication functions similarly to a blog or a website. You can feature posts, add tabs to organize your posts. Best of all, readers can follow your publication and you can reach them via the ‘letters’ feature. Medium also lets readers know when publications they follow publish new posts.
Write What You Want to Read
The best thing about writing on Medium is that there’s no editor telling you what you have to write.
The worst thing about writing on Medium is that there’s no editor telling you what you have to write.
The freedom of being able to write whatever you want is glorious. But it also leaves you with the responsibility of choosing what exactly that’s going to be. Without guidance.
My best advice is to sit down with your notebook and think about what it is you want to read. What do you want someone to write for you?
I like to read about simple systems or ideas that actually work. I love when I read something that makes me think — yes! That makes sense. I like concrete, actionable ideas.
I like to read snapshots of another person’s experience — kind of like the literary version of peeking into someone’s medicine cabinet when you use their bathroom. Posts like that make me feel grounded in the world and remind me that I’m not alone.
Those are the kinds of posts I do best writing.
Here’s something to try.
Make a list of three words that describe how you feel when you read something you really connect with. Mine are: excited, engaged, enriched.
Keep those words and your thoughts about the kind of stories you like to read in mind when you write. Because if that’s how you want to feel, if that’s the experience you want, you can bet there are readers out there who are just like you. They are your people.
Write What You WISH You’d Read
When I write about writing fiction, I often have a younger version of myself in mind.
Sometimes it’s myself at twenty. Very young. Desperately wanting to be a writer, but not knowing how to even find the door in.
Remember that scene from the movie Labyrinth, when Sarah couldn’t find a way into the maze? It just goes on and on without any turns or doors or anything. Writing was like that for me when I was twenty.
And just like Sarah, I didn’t know the questions to ask. Sometimes the person advising me didn’t know where I wanted to go and ended up giving me bad advice.
And sometimes I write for myself at thirty-three. I’d just finished writing my first novel. Now that I knew I could do it, I was burning with the desire to figure out how to do it well. I wanted to be a better writer.
When I write about fiction writing, I write posts that I’d wished I’d found when I was twenty or when I was thirty-three. I wanted someone to offer me a way in or show me the way once I was through the door.
Think about the things you’re good at now and what would have made a difference if you’d come across it when you were first starting. Write those posts.
Here’s my secret weapon for sticking with whatever your thing is.
Shaunta Grimes is a writer and teacher. She is an out-of-place Nevadan living in Northwestern PA with her husband, three superstar kids, two dementia patients, a good friend, Alfred the cat, and a yellow rescue dog named Maybelline Scout. She’s on Twitter @shauntagrimes andis the original Ninja Writer.