Building an audience that reads your tech/UX/productivity/creativity articles is great, but you can’t feed them one thing and then switch to another and hope for the same strength in views. Consistency is what’s important. If you want your poetry and fiction to be read, then you’ve got to write poetry and fiction.

There’s a strong poetry and fiction community here on Medium, one doesn’t have to look hard to find it. What you do have to do is be part of that community. I’ve noticed this is not the first post you’ve written about wanting to write fiction. What are your priorities with regards to your writing? What do you want to write? And why aren’t you writing that?

It seems like you’re in this just for the views:

I even started writing about UX, just to get views.

If I recall correctly, that was one of the reasons that TWUC shut down the first time: views. I’m not trying to sound confrontational here, I just want to show you another side — and maybe inspire you a little bit. You’ve given a bunch of us writers an awesome platform (I can’t speak for everyone but I’m very thankful for that opportunity), but if you’re not happy with what you’re writing, then you’ve got to change what you’re writing. Views are great, claps can be addicting (they are physically addicting), but if you feel like you’re selling out just for views, you’re right on the cusp of a big change in your life. You’re conscious of the fact that you’re not being true to yourself, and that’s the first step to being true to yourself.

Let me give you an example from my own experience here. I kept a blog last year that posted frequently, like 3 times a week. I shot from barely 1k to 4.3k followers over the span of 5 months. And then I stopped. Guess what also stopped? Between October 2017 and today, I’ve only gained around 100 new followers, but I’ve been doing almost only poetry since then. The reason behind the drop off in my work is that I was working on my second book, and also writing poems for a collection I’ll be putting out (somehow) this year. In other words, my output stopped, and I was outputting to a widely different audience (self improvement vs poetry). My Medium output is still low because I’m working on my third book and still working on my poetry collection.

It’s a question of priorities. Do you want views, or do you want to create something meaningful to yourself? If you’re just in it for the views, keep up the hard work, you seriously do grind out a lot of words and you get more eyes on a page than I do. If you’re looking to create something meaningful for you, the views have to take a back seat. Look at what Mike Essig does. He posts so often, and his poems get serious numbers. Same with Zev. But I guarantee they didn’t start that way. They worked hard and manage to consistently create awesome poetry. If they cando it, and thrive on Medium, who’s to say you can’t? Maybe it’s not Medium’s fault, maybe it’s where you place your priorities.

Side note: You ever heard that saying, “Build it and they will come”? Build quality content and you’ll get your views. Everyone can talk about productivity, but how much of it is recycled from the last guy?

Best of luck as you go forward.