But I Don't Want To Submit My Stories To a Community

So many things about Vocal puzzle, irritate, annoy, and/or enrage me, and I have not been shy about calling the site caretakers out for it. This post will be no exception to that proud tradition with yet another screed about what seems to be a well intentioned and maybe even good idea, but one that is so poorly executed it cancels all the potential and actual positives out in one fell swoop. The idea of communities (or publications as they are called on Medium, Vocal's aspirational big brother site from which almost everything about the look, feel, and logistics of publishing here has been copied) seems to make sense. Group writings on similar topics and perhaps with similar styles into certain specific communities and it will be easier for readers to find stories they will be interested in reading and avoid "wasting their time" browsing through hundreds of stories they could care less about. Almost immediately we can sense a major flaw in this line of thinking. Do people really know what they want to be reading about and should they not be exposed to other topics and styles even if they think they do?

For writers like myself whose works cross multiple genres, styles, and topics, forcing them to submit their material to one (and only one) community is a major bummer and huge stressor each and every time I do it. Will I select the "correct" community that will allow my story to potentially reach the largest audience? Even worse, will I select the correct tags so that others who might be searching in the future can find my story. So many times I find myself skimming through almost all of the communities to bring up the dropdown list of available tags trying to hit on the "right" combination. The community and keywords that best reflect the content, tone, and spirit of the piece, and will maximize its impact in terms of potential present and future readership. It feels very much like a game, and it is one at which I am particularly terrible, or so my readership stats here would lead me to believe. Of course, those stats may just as likely be a reflection of my terrible writing abilities. In truth it is probably a combination of both. Most of my writings, while generally terrible, do not fall neatly into any one of the communities on Vocal and in fact they often could fit into two or three or four or more of them. Same can be said for the available tags. At least with the tags you can choose more than one, whereas sadly you can only submit to one community. Even with the ability to select multiple tags you are stuck with the tags that are given. There is no option to create your own tags. Why in the world not? One of my favorite things to do with my Medium stories, before my account was suspended for the second time, was to make up little stories at the end of my stories by stringing together made up story tags. It was tons of fun and I thought fairly clever too. I would think that though woudn't I? Exactly like any terrible writer like myself would.

Bottom line Vocal on this topic you get a B- for intention. At least having communities focused on specific topic areas seems like a good idea, even though in the end it is to the detriment of each individual and society as a whole. You get an F for execution and delivery however. Terrible in so many ways. Just plain awful. Ugg. Yuck.