Your Writing Needs An MVP


Medium has taught me some valuable lessons about writing. One thing I love about Medium is its ability to provide a safe environment for experimental writing, without the feeling that someone is going to judge you. Yet, something I’ve noticed a common lamentation among new users is a form of constipation when it comes to publishing. What drives this hesitance to put a piece of work out there are one of three things;

  1. Perfectionism (Over editing)
  2. Fear of Criticism
  3. Writer’s block

Thankfully, I’ve never experienced this particular affliction. The reason being is that I look at each piece I put on Medium as an MVP. For those of you who don’t know what an MVP is, it stand for Minimum Viable Product. In the software world, MVP is essentially the minimum number of features your product can have while still remaining attractive to potential users (would still give you a successful launch). I’ve always thought this was a lovely way of thinking about something, especially if you’re someone who suffers from perfectionism( as I have in the past). Here are three different ways you can start treating your writing like an MVP.

Keep It Simple


What are you trying to accomplish with your writing? Are you trying to tell a story? Are you trying to convince your readers of something or are you trying to teach your readers something new? In other words, what do you want the take away from your writing to be? Once you have a good answer to this question, go about writing and ask yourself once you’ve finished if you’ve achieved your goal. Remember you’re not looking for the most absolute yes, you’re looking for an acknowledgment that you’ve completed your objective. Keep it simple.

Keep It Clean


Nobody likes to read something that is wrought with spelling errors and bad grammar. However, extremely complex sentences, wordiness, and pretentious use of a thesaurus aren’t what the average reader desires. So what I’m trying to say is; Give your story a good once over and then publish. Don’t go overboard and start wringing your hands over your choice of adjectives or sentence structure. Keep it clean.

Keep Improving


So you’ve published. Great! What now? The great thing about Medium is that there isn’t some sort of finality to hitting that publish button. Noticed something is misspelled? Fix it. Don’t like the way that paragraph reads? Rework it. Think the addition of some images would help? Add them! Whatever you do, most importantly listen to the feedback of your readers. Your readers are your users, and they can give you incredibly valuable feedback about what they liked, what they didn’t and offer perspectives that are foreign to your own. Keep improving.

Medium is a great environment to continuously improve your writing skills. In addition to that, it’s a terrific network to engage others who don’t share your own experiences and opinions. It’s a place to learn and a place to listen. Don’t limit yourself by failing before you’ve even tried.



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