I was finally accepted to the Medium Partnership Program and I am left with a bit of befuddlement and apprehension, but more prevalent is the simple revelation of asking the question “now what?” As it stands now my reader engagement is minuscule with a clap here and there added for good measure, but nothing to the point that I would earn a penny for. Right now I write fictional short stories something that seems to be a bit of a “do not” here on Medium if you are looking to generate any kind of revenue and for this I am sitting here at my desk pondering the very notion if I should concern myself with earning; well anything from this site. This article alone is my first and already I feel like I’m just echoing into the void realizing no one will probably read this and if they do they would be sadly disappointed since most likely they clicked on this article thinking they would be enlightened on what to do after being accepted, sorry fellow writers but I am as lost as you are because in short I don’t want to change what I have started and that is writing fictional short stories.
I joined Medium several months ago and discovered quickly that success is measured through the same lenses as other social media sites and that is gaining followers — a word that in reality makes me feel uneasy. Through my Twitter I quickly came to the resolve of how to get more followers and that was using the good ole’ “follow for a follow” method, but here on Medium it takes it a step further, because now it is quite evident that to have engagement on here you must create it; you must read and clap a million times a day to other peoples stories even if it doesn’t fit your fancy. Me personally I have several passions in life and as the older I get I understand; one of the most important things is to safeguard those passions, it alone can relieve the stress from the chaos of living our day to day lives. One of those passions for me is writing stories and even though my genre isn’t everyone’s cup of tea I enjoy reading my own work, which I guess can be considered narcissistic but then again we’re writers; we’re all narcissistic.
So back to the dilemma at hand, do I change my writing style and start invoking ideas of how to profit on here or perhaps do I spew different point of views on politics or do I keep writing the…