My most recent Medium articles

After three weeks of hearing nothing from the publication to which I had submitted these two articles, today, during my lunch break, I bailed and withdrew the submissions. I have since published them myself.

Vacationing in the Era of the Rona

It's OK to Stand Your Ground

I will keep writing, as well as trying to connect with publications within Medium that are a bit more prompt about getting back to authors who have submitted articles. 
 

Still writing for Medium

I am still writing for Medium, but I have tried a new tactic to see if I can get my name in front of more people's eyes.

Within Medium, there are different publications that accept submissions from writers. If you want, you can submit directly to Medium.com, but there are so many articles submitted there, it will be challenging for your work to gain traction if you haven't already got an established audience of followers. More paid members reading your article translates into more money being paid to you at the end of the month.

The publications within Medium are geared toward stories of a given type. There are publications that accept submissions about relationships, career, tech, writing, and a lengthy list of other categories. If your story fits into one of these niches, then it will be worth your while to attempt to submit it to the requisite publication. The good news: more eyes that are interested in your topic will see your story if it gets published there. The other news: the editors of said publication have to review your work first, and that can take time.

So, I have three articles sitting and waiting for editors to review them. Hence, I have no links to recent articles, even though I have been writing steadily.

Cross your fingers that my articles will make their way into their respective publications soon. I am impatient and I want to see what happens to my stats when an article is in a publication.

I'm all set to carpe freakin' diem.

Woot, woot!

I am officially a paid author! 😀 I'll try not to spend it all in one place, lol.

Next up: curation on Medium. That's when Medium sends your article's link out to others, vastly increasing the number of visitors to the article. That's when an author will REALLY say, "Woot, woot!"

Singing the praises of distraction-free writing

I have a few devices that are basically portable word processors. I LOVE them. Love. They really help my just sit down and write, sans any kind of distraction.

So for my latest Medium article, I thought I would spend a little time singing their praises.

I actually started this article about 16 days ago, but that's right about when my laptop started to flake out. I spent so much time trying to straighten out all the laptop issues, and then working on migrating my files to the new machine, that I had no time or energy left to finish the article. Finally, this afternoon, as soon as I logged out from work for the day, I decided that the article was getting completed TO-DAY, period. It was actually pretty close to being done, but even then it took me three and a half hours to put the finishing touches on it (because perfectionist).

Anyway, I love me some gadgets.

Enjoy!

Distraction-Free Writing is the Way to Go

Medium Post

It dawns on me that I have got a Medium post sitting waiting to be completed and edited. Fortunately, it does not have time-sensitive content, but it has been sitting for a couple of weeks as I have grappled with computer gremlins.

Well, now that I have the new computer, I am not dealing with random freezes and crashes while I am trying to work, so IMO it behooves me to get this document edited.

I can get to work on that after work.

Also, there is now a Wildwood Tram Car app. Now we can pay fares with cashless transactions, the better to protect everyone from COVID this summer.  Needless to say, I downloaded it as soon as I found out it was available.

To Do List

I have been building up to starting to write on Medium for a while now. I would say it's been two or three months since I made the decision to start submitting articles. But first, I prepared by creating a list of topics to write about.

It amuses me that the article I submitted last night actually started out as one topic, but quickly morphed into expounding on a different topic. Here I was, thinking that I was going to cover one particular situation, and then my brain said  NOPE and veered off in a different direction. I just went with the flow, edited accordingly, and hit Publish.

In retrospect, maybe I need to go through that topic list and make sure that there aren't redundant entries on there. Perhaps a few of the items on the list are a little TOO closely related to one another, and they can be categorized as a single topic.

I had forgotten how much I enjoy writing.  I just heard Todd Rundgren's "Bang on the Drum All Day", and it reminded me of how enthused I am to sit at a keyboard and just create.

Fortunately, the past few workdays have been offering me ample opportunity to deploy my brainpower, which means that I am already in high gear when I log off at the end of the day. I have started handling electronic medical records requests, and it has been a bit of a travail trying to send faxes via email. Once I got it working on my end, the Gremlins started acting up on the receiving end. I got an email yesterday afternoon, saying that we are now to email the requests to a new address set up for this purpose, rather than using Outlook to send the faxes.

It's all good. I started sending the medical record requests the new way as of today, and it works. Take that, Gremlins!

I am now officially a writer at Medium.com

I have been a paid member of Medium.com for a few years now. I finally reached the point where the Urge To Write grew too strong to resist, so I started working on articles.

Here's my profile, which I just realized I need to add to my sidebar on here:


Donna's Medium Page

So stop on by and see what's happening! I published my first article over there yesterday. As it happens, I also posted a version of the same article here, but there are going to be times when I post content that is unique to either this blog or Medium, rather than being duplicated.

Here's the article link that allows both free and paid members to read the content:

I Enjoy My Lockdown Work Situation

Enjoy!