Medium Stories Writing 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Medium Writing

Let’s begin this story by saying, “I was disgusted with my own writings.”

I still am.

I started writing a long long time ago. My parent was a bibliophile. Thus, they shoved books to my face since I was a little kid. My brother already became one when I was able to call his name the first time. It was no wonder how I grew liking towards books just as soon. I was mesmerized by how all those words intertwined into such beautiful stories. I was captivated by how magical it was for random alphabets to become something so incredibly meaningful. I decided that I wanted to be a magician. Making something that was once invisible called ideas into this concrete beautiful thing that could possibly exist on the other side of the world, books.

Such a nice dream I got there and yet reality sucks. Writing was hard; the ideas were hiding in place I could not find. I was trapped in such delusions that I was a great writer and even further, I was thinking that one day I would become a writer of best-selling books.

Looking at all those successful writers I systematically overestimated my chances to become as successful as they were.

All those thoughts and here I was, almost every single day, sitting in front of my laptop spending hours to come up with something to write. There were times when I was so disgusted at my piece that I erased it as soon as I published them.

One day I stumbled into a platform called Medium while searching for help on improving my life quality, just the usual random stuff. Going through some posts I thought to myself that medium was a ‘serious’ and ‘legit’ version of BlogSpot. I had a lot of blog in the past. I bet you know what is the next thing I’m going to say and I will say it anyway. Yes, all of them are now abandoned. There, I was not interested in learning deeper about this Medium, at first. Then, since that day, I weirdly found myself kept on going back to Medium, being curious about the next interesting posts I could possible get my hand on. I felt like this platform was different with the other one I had ever experienced. I thought it won’t hurt to try having an account on Medium. It was not even a day where I started to feel the temptation to once again try and write something.

I decided I was going to become a daily writer in Medium. I wrote my first post and I immediately being offered to have my stories featured in one amazing publication. I was delighted, feeling validated already. The next day with so much confidence I wrote another piece hoping for a better luck and boom! None seemed to love it or respond to it. I was devastated thinking I was never created to become a writer. I did not decide to stop writing though but I felt like taking a break for some time from writing.

In the middle of my break, I found a story by Quincy Larson talking about how to write Medium stories people will actually read. Then my thirst took over me and I aggressively clicked on the post. I scrolled the story ever so slowly trying to breathe every single word in. Half way of the story I decided to stop reading them, since I did everything wrong. I did the exact opposite of what I should have done to get people to read my story. Weirdly, the time I stop reading them, I felt all the urges to start writing something. It felt like I was enlightened. Right at the moment I got my own answers on how to write Medium Stories. This is how:

1. Question why you write your piece. What exactly is your goal?

There are lots of reasons why people decided to write on Medium. For me, I initially wanted to write here because I see Medium as a great platform to share my idea. I just wanted to write down all my wandering thoughts, practice my skill in writing, and I thought it is interesting knowing there are somebody who have some say about my thoughts. It is scary how after a day being on Medium, I was already thinking so much about the statistics of my stories. I checked on it ever so often I couldn’t concentrate with my study. The next day I wrote hoping to get just as much love as the first post. I started to think about what title will get me more views, what content will attract more responds, instead of writing what I have in mind. That action resulted to standard amount of views and me, losing my way to my initial goal. I did not feel emotionally attached to my writing. It did not feel like I was reading my own words. It did not speak to me the way I spoke.

Never be blinded by that number in your statistic. Stay true to your purpose of writing and what exactly you want to write. All will followed just as nicely.

2. Just Write. Just keep on writing.

This is actually the most important part of the guide. Just. Do not. Stop. We always start as a newbie of something. If you were lucky you might be able to become a talented beginner. Still, you know just so little it gives pain to the pros. The only thing setting you apart with becoming a better writer is the idea of giving up. The urge to stop because you feel like you won’t get anywhere. If you have a hard time with what diction to use or what vocabulary to add, you better read more and try it out on your next story. If you feel exhausted and seemingly have no time to write, sit on your desk, take a piece of paper and a pen or reach out to your laptop and start to write, still. If you feel like you run out of ideas or you just have this writer’s block. Oh boy, listen to what Sylvia Plath have said,

“Everything in life is writable about if you have outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy is self-doubt”

So stop doubting yourself, take a look at your surroundings, and please, please, just keep on writing.

Those are just two points, but I feel happier with my writing with those two in my mind. I feel like I’m going closer to my goal, just a little, but it gives me hope because I am now focus and going straight to my goal.

“It is because for me, the first person whom I wanted to write for is myself.”

“You can’t pour from an empty cup. Take care of yourself first.”

Ask yourself, what do you want to read from yourself? What content will give you satisfaction? What idea would make you feel glad sharing and whether you would like to take your time to read them over and over or not?

I still write crazily bad. I’m still disgusted with my choices of word. Will it stop me from keep on writing?

Never.

Because failure only happen when you stop trying.

Happy writing!

Thank you for investing your time here. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I love writing it :)