WRITING TIPS AND TRICKS
Dear Writer, You Really Do Not Have to Publish Your Stories in Large Publications
One of the things that new writers struggle with is trying to get their pieces into top publications
Every writer on Medium desires followers. We want our stories to be read and hopefully appreciated; we want our own core of merry bandwagonners who stick with us during our good story days and during those times when we write a five-minute piece, rambling through the reeds, ending up slogging through the mud and sinking, without even getting to the other side.
We want the claps and the comments — the good job, the well-written, the this piece is so relational, we want it all. We want the writer in us to feel warm and fuzzy all over each time we share a piece of ourselves with a reading audience.
Most of us start writing with zero followers and over time, we get one or two and the lucky ones amongst us gain followers in the thousands. Me, I have ten or so persons who would read almost every piece I write and share and I thank them from the bottom of my heart! They inspire me to keep on keeping on.
One of the things that new writers struggle with is trying to get their pieces published. We can all self-publish but it feels a tad better when our story is accepted by a publication. Somewhere along the journey, we heard it said that we should go for the big guns — those publications with hundreds of thousands of followers because we stand a greater chance of having our work discovered.
Once we get into a publication or two, then we start looking at the other goodies that Medium offers:- Chosen for Further Distribution (CfFD) Featured Writer, Top Writer. I mean, if we are in for the penny, we might as well be in for the pound!
This is when some of us get really lost between the tall grass. We try everything, hoping that the curation gods would smile on us and we end up frustrated when after having written our ninth story over a 20 day period, not a single one of our blood-sweat-and-fears articles was chosen — was CfFD’ed.
We become sour-graped.
Before that happens, I want to encourage new writers, and writers still trying to get that trophy, to go small. Look for smaller publications to share your stories. But the key is this……wait for it…look for publications that are closely related to the essence of your piece — using the word from Burk, look for niche publications.
This means that if you are writing poetry, try to get your poem in a publication that caters to that, whether it has 2 followers or 20’000. You may be surprised how your story gets picked up quickly by curators.
A case in point is me, and I have written about it before. I have had stories CfFDed writing for publications with 6 followers and in one case, one publication had only 3 followers and you can guess who those persons were — the editor/owner, myself, the writer, and perhaps her best friend, but my piece still got chosen by the curators.
So, the popular slogan that says “Go Big or Go home” is not always the path to success. Well if you go big and fail, you will inevitably be sent home, but why not, “Go Small and Stand Tall?”
Choose a small publication that relates to your story and smile all the way to the bank — Medium’s Bank of Curated Pieces.
Hint. Hint.
I. Trudie Palmer
One Love
Author’s Note:
Please read Burk’s piece (not that he needs any promotion from me). It is an excellent short-form story about promoting your work on Medium and it got a huge amount of claps so you know it is chock full of the good stuff!
