Stuck in the Middle with Medium

This is a bad time for me to dive off another social media platform.
I just dialed back my social media usage in attempt to write and read more with good success. And here I am. Becoming a medium-user, whatever that means.
Platforms take on animal characteristics to me. Facebook is an octopus. It’s tentacles reach in many directions and they all share one predatory instinct: to strangle. Google is a wise and friendly elephant that remembers everything for me. Twitter is a squirrel because it makes me feel squirrelly. Wordpress is a species of small monkey. It is cute and often on my back, although I don’t mind it. Instagram is a white dove, calm and pretty. Linked-In’s spirit animal is man. Specifically, it is an overweight man at a sales conference slipping his card into my pocket as I walk by.
So what is medium?
I first saw medium popping up in the inter-sphere from the likes of Claire Rudy Foster and Olivia Pennelle. It was magic that the next day I had medium emailing me with suggested reads by those writer friends of mine that I am always eager to read more of. My fascination with medium began there. It is rare that I receive an email unwillingly without unsubscribing from the sender, deleting the account I accidentally created, or marking it as spam. But Medium seemed okay to me even though I had no reason to trust it.
Maybe it’s the name. People are bombarded by media that no one trusts. Medium is singular and therefore trustworthy. Psychics are one-eight-hundred numbers; mediums sign contracts with Network Television. As an adjective its not too big or too small: a rare quality in a globalized world. As a noun, it is a channel, a conductor.
And that’s what I will use it for — my channel to chronicle the path of an emerging writer.
I hate the term, emerging writer. It conjures an image that I am lost in obscurity until I print publish something substantial. That’s not what it takes to be a writer. In fact, I’ve found many requirements to be a professional writer — aside from the writing itself — run contrary to the poetic spirit, something I equate to the life example of Emily Dickinson or the poem “In my Craft or Sullen Art” by Dylan Thomas:
“I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.”
Writing is writing. And publishing is publishing.
I am trying to emerge as a writer. I’ve written a memoir, a novel, volumes of poetry, a collection of short stories, nearly two hundred blog posts, articles and personal essays. The only thing I have to show for myself in print is my work as a journalist for my local newspaper and the occasional appearance in a monthly recovery newsletter.
I am in my first round of rejection emails for short stories I’ve submitted to literary journals. Soon I’ll be querying agents and publishers for this novel I wrote. Or maybe it will be the short story collection I query first, or a volume of poetry.
Whatever happens, a writer needs a place to reflect on the stifling process of 21st century publishing. It is a genre of personal writing I haven’t explored yet. And I could use this space to clear that air a bit.
So, hello Medium. Nice to meet you. My name is Mark and I am a writer.
