Just Write. Don’t Dream.

So, you have just started your writing journey on Medium, and you hear of the reward when your article gets distributed (or curated). Inevitably, you got excited and formed an expectation about distribution. You write every day longing for the day your article get selected for “further distribution”.

Suddenly one day you finally saw the word “Distributed” appearing on your story stats, you pulled a chair and made yourself a cup of coffee, anticipating the long awaited bull run. You announced to everyone, your article was selected for distribution, your stock is going up and you are going to be rich. Then you stared at the stats awaiting the arrival of your riches.

Time passed, but the stats hardly moved. You refreshed your screen wondering if the connection was lost. You refreshed again, and again. Your coffee has gone stale but still your distributed article didn’t even pass a hundred views, worst, it is less than fifty. You begin to scratch your head and you wrote to the help center reporting a glitch on their system. Days passed, and you are now in a daze. What happened? Nobody read my article? Meanwhile you stopped writing until you can figure this one out.

Sounds familiar?

Well, the season has changed and so has the landscape. These days Medium no longer curates articles like they used to. In fact they now call it distribution rather than curation. What it means is basically your article is distributed according to their tags, whether it gets read or not, is dependent on the connection you have developed with your followers, plus the seductiveness of the title and image.

The change has caused the stats for many top writers to plunge, their earnings had been severely affected. Articles that were once fetching thousands are now only worth hundreds, and for those smaller flies who used to be able to make hundreds from an article are now fighting for crumbs. Regardless how well your article is written, no matter how high a quality you have, your worth has just plunged.

Regardless who you are, even if you are a top writer who used to be able to earn big bucks writing once in a while, has now to write more frequently than ever. If you want to earn more, you have to write more and as you write more you will improve more.

These days, it doesn’t matter if your article is selected for distribution or not. What is important is that you write every day and stop dreaming of your stats hitting the roof. I have many articles that crosses a hundred views on Medium, but they were all not distributed. Some things in life, you have to work for it. Writing is one of them. No short cuts.

Beyond writing more, you also have to publish more. What that means is you have to expand you work circle to do more than writing articles. You have to know how to write newsletter, fictional stories and poetry. Take part in challenges that comes with prize money, and challenge yourself to write in whatever ways possible.

Conclusion

Here is how I write every day.

1) I took up a 30 day challenge to push myself to write and publish every day.

2) I don't write long form every day. Most days I settled with short form.

3) Some days I go for creative writing like poetry.

4) Only perhaps once a week I will do a long form.

Most important of all I don't stick to one platform, I write for different platform, like today I am writing for Vocal Media.

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