“Medium Promotes Active Writers. That Doesn’t Make Them Good Writers”

I’m at a crossroads.

To be honest, writing is the one thing that has never misinterpreted my language; never misunderstood my intent; has never left without having nothing to say for all of the effort I’ve put into it. But never has the path to relevancy as a writer seemed more frustrating.

I am a straight black man who doesn’t appeal to the LGBTQ+ community. I’m a writer of fiction, prose, essay; but I am not what people consider “urban fiction.” I am a storyteller. I believe that experience is the best teacher of most anything, even if you may still need advanced studies to achieve a certain professional level. Admittedly, I’ve chosen a path — or rather the path chose me, and I oblige — that was already subjective enough.

But here’s the main problem: are sites like Medium really for the modern, every day writer/storyteller of literary fiction? To me, it’s almost an extension of the academia model that says, ‘if you want this, you need to do it like this,’ and that’s just not how the arts work.

Every day, I am inundated with articles from writers on this platform, who say they have the answers on how to make “x” amount of dollars with your writing. I’ll go and read the first paragraph or more, sometimes, finishing the article. And it’s a bunch of nothing. It’s almost an MLM scheme with no clear…