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Things change fast in the world of writing

Hello Friends!

I’m feeling exhausted this morning. We haven’t had much snow this winter in northern Wisconsin. The big ski event that I like to do is coming up, so yesterday I tried to go out and ski 40km. It was a pretty decent day, though a little on the cold side. The glide was slow, and I only made it to 36k.

You’d think, “Well, you only had 4km more to go, why didn’t you tough it out?” But I’d been toughing it out since I hit 30km.

The event I do is 50km and the terrain is much more difficult. I haven’t decided if I’m going to make the attempt or not. The truth is that my heart hasn’t been in it since the election. Part of me thinks that doing the event might be the best thing for me, and part of me doesn’t like to spend the day so far away from my family.

I’ll go out and ski around Wednesday and see how I feel then. After that, I’ll need to taper down anyway, so I basically only have one or two more training days to take advantage of. It will be a make or break week, so I’ll come back to that next Monday.

It’s also going to be a make or break week for Medium (for me anyway). I’m officially at the point where I’m feeling frustrated with the platform.

The Mouthy Renegade Writer

mentioned that he’d seen some improvement in earnings, so that was hopeful, but that hasn’t been the case with me. Here’s my results from last week:

These are both really good stories, so the lack of engagement is perplexing. Also, here’s my audience stats:

It has always seemed weird to me that I have 859 email subscribers, but I only got 128 views on my latest story. That’s a 14.9% open rate. Here on Substack, I have a 29% open rate.

It could be that I’ve been on Medium longer and some of those emails are no longer active. Still, something about that seems odd to me.

I have two stories waiting to be published on Medium. One is for my column for The Writing Cooperative, and one is for

Grace Hanna

who writes Soul Connexions. We’ll see what happens with those two. I expect I’ll continue to write my column for The Writing Cooperative because that’s always a source of good content I can bring over to Substack. Last week I did 2 articles for Medium and that might be my publishing plan there going forward.

I was reflecting on this because on Friday I did an interview with

Will Fullwood

which will be published later today. Will has an excellent YouTube channel called The Contraband Wagon where he publishes interviews about race. He’s built up a lot of quality content and I’ve been brainstorming strategies for him to bring that content to a larger audience.

I first met Will about a month before the election, and at the time I still felt Medium was the most powerful tool. I even helped Will get a couple of articles Boosted. Since then, my enthusiasm for Substack has been steadily on the rise. Is it possible to become an “expert” on a platform in 4 months? Well… no, but I’ve been on Substack for 2 years, even though I’ve only been serious about it for the last 6 months or so.

The difference between the perspective I have now and the perspective I had four months ago is that I’ve really leaned into the audio and visual tools that Substack offers. 4 months ago I wasn’t comfortable recording voice overs or doing video meetings. Lately, I’ve been publishing 2 audio posts a day and scheduling 3-4 video chats per week.

I’ve been throwing myself into this work as a distraction from the anxiety and stress I feel.

Now, all that being said, I still believe that Medium is a valuable tool for writers to take advantage of when they get a Boost. My personal frustration is that less of my work is getting Boosted, it’s been only 1 Boost a month for the last 2 months. However, 3 of 4 stories that I’ve nominated this month were Boosted, so I still can help people get that.

At $60 per year, I still think it’s worth being a Medium member. When I see people complain about Medium, one of the big problems is that they’re using the tool wrong. You don’t pick up a screwdriver to hammer in a nail… but that doesn’t mean the screwdriver doesn’t have its uses.

Every now and then I still find myself in a “Medium mindset” and I crank out a story. It’s easier to produce content for Substack because it feels more informal. But sometimes I like to stretch my muscles and write something that resonates. It makes for a nice change of pace when I bring those stories into Substack.

Ultimately, it comes down to this:

• If you have a “New Yorker” style story/article, or a scholarly type academic paper—try Medium

• If you’re working with audio and video and you support that with articles that are sort of written like business emails—try Substack

As always, you don’t have to feature your work exclusively on any one platform. In fact, it’s better if your work appears in a variety of places. I’ll let you know how my two Medium submissions went next Monday. Thanks everyone!

Here’s some stories to check out:

• About Will Fullwood a.k.a. “Contraband” by

  Will Fullwood

• Migrants to be Shipped to Guantanamo, El Salvadorian Prisons by

  Arturo Dominguez

• Where The Hell Is Kamala Harris? by

  Zuri Stevens
  
  

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