WRITING TIPS AND TRICKS
Dear Writer, You Really Do Not Have To Get Your Stories Buried
Use one or more of the seven R’s of sustainability
This must be the greatest fear of writers on this platform — having their stories disappear into the belly of Medium without even a single view, worse yet read; even the thought of getting a clap is something that dreams are made of.
It had happened to all of us, well unless you came to the platform with a faithful following. You told them, hey I am trying out this Medium thing; my stories will be posted there so if you want to continue being a beneficiary to my words of wisdom, you better sign up. Those five free stories that you will get per month will not feed that rabid beast inside you.
So you come, write, and your first story got 5000 views, 4500 reads, and 225’000 claps. Yes, I did no math.
It does not happen like this to the ordinary ones of us. We have to write and write and write some more, hoping that our story gets read by someone somewhere out there. We run to our stats every morning, some every hour, hoping to see some upward trajectory in our numbers.
Many of us get a lot of stories buried. Lost — sent to Medium’s Landfill, never to see the light of day again.
Some of us persevere and meet success and others think about giving up. Every. Single. Day. Giving up is easy. If you like easy, well, you know what to do.
I would like to propose that you do not allow your work, your hard work to become Medium trash
Use one or more of the Seven R’s of sustainability and we know what they are:- refuse, rethink, reduce, reuse/repurpose, repair, rot, and recycle.
You will have to determine which category your stories fit. You really may have to rethink and repair a few and there may be one or two, or ten that you really have to let rot but there are the gems that can be repurposed and recycled.
Take them out, dust them off, and put them in a book. Add some that you wrote but never published before to create something new and exciting and go about selling your book. They do not have to be lost forever.
I am not just talking the talk, I have done just that. So many of my stories — stories that I thought were so good and deserved a second chance got lost after a few hours circulating. They were sent to the anus, errh…annals of Medium.
Therefore I decided to put them together in a book. I added, about a third of never before published pieces and created something that I am proud of.
I know this cliché is something else that needs to get buried but if I can do it, so can you.
Hint, hint.
I. Trudie Palmer
One Love
