In doing research for my return to writing, I was aware early on that publishing on a site like Medium, where actual people will be offered my work, would require more work. I’d need to address an audience, rather than write introspectively (as I’m doing here). I’d need to work hard on my titles and plan SEO keywords.
Now that I’m in the thick of it, as it were, I’m realising how great that difference is.
When I write here and on my WordPress blog, I assume someone might see it eventually, but it doesn’t matter a great deal because I’m not using these outlets to grow a following or trust. I’m just writing for me.
However, if Medium is to be worthwhile for me at all, I can’t throw up even a half-cooked idea. I see loads of underdeveloped writing on Medium, which leaves me disinclined to read more of that person’s work. If I rush headlong into Medium, I’ll have exactly that impact on most people who see what I’ve published.
I already knew all that. What I didn’t anticipate is how much harder it would be to write to that standard.
Having an idea which I think would appeal to Medium readers isn’t difficult for me, but shaping it into a compelling piece is really quite a steep learning curve, and I don’t know why—it’s not at all far removed from the kind of writing I’ve done for ages, professionally and personally.
Word count also seems to be an issue. The piece I tried to write yesterday didn’t even hit 300 words, which is a pretty short piece for Medium (I’m aiming for at least 700 words, in line with the typical minimum length of good Medium posts). Forcing it to blow out in size led me to expand it in a way I’d already decided was deviating from the focus of that piece, but I did it anyway to boost that word count, and my concentration and purpose quickly drained away. (By contrast, this post hit 500 words inside 20 minutes.)
Yesterday, in trying to understand why my brain wouldn’t perform, I Googled the causes behind brain fog. Most of the results were hilariously useless to neurodivergent people (and I might write a Medium piece on that, if I shape it into anything at all—see above), but I saw anxiety mentioned a couple of times. It’s possible that anxiety is what stops me developing ideas for Medium but allows me to pump out posts for my personal blogs.
It’s probably foolhardy of me to think I can identify what’s preventing me publishing something to Medium, because trying to analyse my roadblocks and failures usually ends up being a failure in itself. This is especially difficult because I know the next failure will hit me harder than yesterday’s, and I could very well reach the point of packing it in and being lost in the dark yet again.