I’m Going to Tell You A Secret

Carol Burt
5 min readMay 11, 2023

You can write all day, every day, on Medium, but if you don’t read the work of others and comment, clap, etc., you aren’t going to be successful here.

Yes, I ended that sentence with a preposition. That’s another nice thing about Medium that we sometimes take for granted. You can write any cock-a-mami thing you wish. If you spell it wrong, the word-processing program we use to write on Medium usually clues you into the fact. There’s a lot that is good about Medium — and some that is pretty frustrating.

The thing I’ve learned lately is just the same old re-run of things I have learned about other endeavors. It works if you work on it. If you just write some stories and wait for the claps and encouragement to come, you probably aren’t going to be very successful here. (Oops I did it again).

Good thing Grammarly doesn’t get to control everything I write. I’d have nothing left. I think what I have to say here is more important than that preposition.

Anyway, succeeding on Medium isn’t so hard, but it is a lot of hard work. If you want to know how to succeed here, read authors who have, like Jan Sebastian 🖐👩‍🦰. I just read an article by her that would have shamed me if I wasn’t so busy feeling sorry for myself.

I used to be successful on the platform. My checks were nice. Hell, I’ve been here since 2019. I should know how things go, but the trouble with Medium is the trouble with my whole life — I’m not committed to working as hard as one must to succeed here.

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Carol Burt

Former print journalist, former mayor, retired law enforcement officer. Writing about politics and government along with random personal essays.