Reflections on a Summer of Medium-ing

On popularity

I’m not at all surprised that my more political/social-justice oriented posts got way more attention than the literary ones. Though to be fair, there has been a lot of overlap, such as my lyric essay How to Lose Weight in 10 Easy Steps, as well as looking back on my mini-rant in the first half of my Americanah book review, and even a bit in my discussion of personhood and empathy in How Archaeology Has Made Me a Better Writer. For me, all literature is inextricably linked to the fight for social change.

The two (!) posts that got featured on Editors’ Picks were both feminist critiques of pre-existing dialogue already floating around on the internet (the consent / rape culture one was also featured in Top Stories for a few days):

I got a lot of trolls on these, but the positive and constructive comments made it all worth it, especially the comments on my rape culture piece from survivors telling me that it resonated with them. That means the world to me.

I published a new-and-improved version of that piece with HuffPost a few days later. The dialogue in the responses section helped inform many of my revisions (it seemed disingenuous to insert the better version into the one I have up here, so I left that as is). Do check it out if you’re interested:

Reality check

My *real life* this summer, just like my internet life, has been a whirlwind of reading, writing, and learning. I had a full-time editorial internship with AGNI, a literary magazine based in Boston, and also took a ten-week fiction writing workshop at this excellent literary nonprofit place called GrubStreet.

I’m moving back to school tomorrow.

And especially once classes start up — and all my extracurriculars including managing a magazine and staff writing for an alternative newspaper, and my two jobs, (and I’ll also have a social life again!) — I won’t have as much time to devote to Medium. But I do intend to stay active here and post work when the mood strikes me. I’m hoping to take a class called The Art of Literary Nonfiction, so maybe you’ll see some of my assignments crop up here. At the same time, I do want to turn some of my attention back to the craft of fiction writing, which is my “main gig,” my dream.

If you’d like to stalk me elsewhere:

(okay, please don’t actually stalk me, but here are some other platforms where you can follow me at a respectful distance if you want to)

1. my instagram book diary, if you’d like to keep up with what I’m reading, I post mini-reviews and reflections on various books (mostly fiction, but I do read my fair share of poetry and nonfiction)
2. my normal twitter account (mostly literary & social justice content, fangirling over Charles Blow’s columns, retweeting Hannah Hart, etc.)

3. my brand-new nerdy twitter account @AncientRomeProblems where I screw around and tweet about the problems of the Ancient Rome (sometimes humorous, often pretentious, e.g.:)

when u can rap in dactylic hexameter like a boss but ur vids dont go viral bc the internet doesnt exist and vids dont exist omg so sad

OH SHIT THEY BROUGHT ELEPHANTS

when u don’t want to admit that the etruscans are cooler than u but u secretly know that it’s true

(not sure how long I’ll keep it up, but I’m taking Roman History in the fall and thought it would be fun to make a humor twitter about it)