Medium’s Member Edition is getting better, but I still feel discouraged
Editorial’s getting better, but poetry & fiction can’t get no satisfaction
Update: since I wrote this post, I’ve moved most of my work to my own member platform using Mighty Networks over at creativeonion.me.
A few months back, I wrote a somewhat negative review of Medium’s weekly Member newsletter, The Edition, as well as a few other general practices I observed.
It was pretty harsh, and although I mean it as constructive criticism, I’m sure it came off as a bit of a hit piece. It did drum up some conversation and support, but in the end I just felt bad about gaining views and followers by negging. I don’t like to neg. I really don’t.
So, with that in mind, and in the interest of balance, I felt it only appropriate to pen a quick update praising Medium Staff for stepping up their game in the editorial department, both in terms of quality and diversity of content, and a quick update on how things are looking on my backend (so to speak — don’t be filthy minded!).
Examples:
Staff’s recent collaboration with Michael Pollan to curate “Trips Worth Telling,” an anthology about life-altering encounters with psychadelics, curated from among Medium’s own pool of writers, is fabulous, IMO.
Gathering experiential data about the real impacts of psychadelics on human mental and physical health is, in my opinion, an incredibly cutting edge and laudable conversation to have, especially in light of the recent dearth of scientific evidence showing how impactful psilocybin can be on PTSD, depression, etc.
Not only that, but the anthology collected stories from Medium’s userbase, which I think is a slam dunk for many of the reasons why I expressed criticism in my earlier post. I like to think it probably had a lot to do with the fact that Pollan was involved, and Michael Pollan is a brilliant journalist and just excellent human being in general, so of course his vision for the project would be balanced and democratically voiced.
The more recent digital magazine, “Trust Issues,” I was a little less keen on. Its introductory post made it sound condescending and a bit big-brothery. But then I’m REALLY sick of reading people freak out about fake news and Russian trolls, and I really, really don’t like being told who I should trust by people I don’t entirely trust.
That being said, some really interesting pieces have emerged in and around it, including honest conversations about our privacy in regards to Google and Facebook.
The story that came through The Edition today was, I thought, really superb:
Facial recognition software has been pushed aggressively towards us as consumers for months now, and I for one was extremely happy to see this topic get visibility, in such an ardent and articulate tone.
So yay. That’s good.
There’ve been plenty of other topics promoted in The Edition that I’ve felt lukewarm about, at best, but I’m a grumpy old troll wearing a thirtysomething woman suit, and ultimately I have to say that as a whole, I would consider them to be a marginal improvement in terms of both innovation of subject matter and diversity of perspective.
I’ve also noticed that Siobhan O'Connor has taken the reigns by penning The Edition for several months now.
It’s nice to hear your voice consistently, Siobhan. :)
So why are my stats so “blah” lately?
Yeah yeah, this is the part where I find something to bitch and moan about. I’m really not frustrated with Medium Staff about any of this in particular; I’m just feeling kind of frustrated in general. And a bit discouraged, to be honest with you.
Is it just me? Are some of you feeling discouraged lately, too? My empath ESP tells me maybe it’s not just me. But that’s not much concrete evidence to go off.
I’ve tinkered with locking a few posts here and there, with marginally better but still massively underwhelming results.
I’ve made a hair over $9 on my post about Osho follower Ma Anand Sheela (from Netflix’s Wild Wild Country) over the last two weeks. That’s a pretty silly number considering some publications pay me actual money to write pieces that require less research than that piece did, but, I get it — the Member pool is growing to raise the tide for all ships, blah blah blah.
I will say that locking the post seems to have given it a slight but steady boost in visibility. How much of that effect is its being locked vs being a kind of clickbaity topic is hard to say. I’ve locked a few other similar works to see if it budges the stats for backposts at all.
BUT, that being said, visibility for new posts has been absolute trash. I’m talking single digit views for the first several days, and never being able to crack 30 views. That’s how it goes for most of my poetry. Niche advice pieces like my “how not to suck at writing poetry piece” get a little more — but still not more than a few hundred views.
Which brings me to a familiar old lament here at Medium:
Will there ever be editorial love for poetry and fiction here at Medium?
Here’s the thing: I CAN write just about anything, in any style. Like a LOT of other writers, I can write the kinds of vaguely self-helpy, science-laced op-eds on current events that draw clicks.
But I don’t LIKE to do that, because everyone else is, and also because we’re fucking saturated in it.
I don’t want to make more noise, I want to make ART, dammit. Art is a much more efficient way to have so many of these conversations we’re trying unsuccessfully to have, and to build bridges, and to understand our own identities and the meaning of life. Creative writing is the art of the writing industry, and we talk about its importance all the time.
Print poetry and short fiction publications are struggling, and there really is no cohesive online community where these genres flourish freely, without the walls of traditional publishing.
Yet these genres want to flourish on Medium so badly; the writers are here, the talent is here, and the platform is pitch perfect for it.
But to date, poetry and fiction continue to languish, lumped together in the obscure “Lit” category, which includes essays about literature.
I’m upset about this because I’m a poet, and I want to be able to write poetry here that actually gets seen, and to build my audience. But beyond that, I’m more upset as a publisher of what I consider to be some truly jaw-dropping, potentially award-winning works of poetry and afrofuturism.
Afrofuturist writer Gary E. Moore has allowed me to serialize his complete novella over at COSGRRRL, and every chapter takes my breath away:
I could list my favorite COSGRRRL poetry ad nauseum — johnronand, SouthPawPoet, and Evan Fleischer are some of the best modern poets/flash fiction writers I’ve read, and COSGRRRL has been privileged to publish truly gripping, thought-provoking, and laugh-out-loud works.
But…there’s not a lot of love for poetry and fiction here. Which makes me sad.
So I’m doing a really risky thing this fall: I’m gonna make a run at print issues through a local independent publisher, and see if I can get traction on a literary nerd magazine subscription. We’ll see how it goes.
In the meantime, Medium Staff, I hope you folks take a beat soon to reconsider your current stance on creative writing (actual creative writing — not writing about writing). I really think you’re missing out on a big opportunity.
Love to all you fellow writers out there, whose stimulating conversation and endlessly fascinating stories make this place worth coming back to every day.
You know who you are.
❤
