How Medium Made Me a Better Writer

Damn you, Medium

I began writing about 15 years ago. Actually, the first piece I ever wrote is now on Medium.

It was one of those ideas that popped into my head and the story wrote itself. I got it published in several local print magazines around the country.

But the bigger takeaway is, it started my journey with writing.

I then dipped into fiction for a while, which was enjoyable, but it didn’t pay the bills. A few of those are here as well.

Soon after, I began writing non-fiction at various content mills. And that’s when I made money.

This was after the massive growth in the internet at the end of the 90s, but before SEO was a thing, so work was easy and competition sparse.

Over the course of a decade or so, I produced close to 1,000 articles and made some decent money at it. But here’s the thing.

They all sucked.

Well, maybe not all of them, but most. Every once in a while, I got inspired enough to put some thought into them.

But mostly not.

The bulk of them were 400-word fluff pieces I knocked out in about 20 minutes. Write it, one quick proofread and done. Some less than that. I remember writing a half-dozen articles on bumper pool tables.

You should wait for the movie.

Some were so repetitive, they even put me to sleep. I had a former client who was an HVAC contractor. He wanted me to write an article a day for his blog, and the pay was good. After a few…

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