Author

My Experience On Medium So Far

~ ChanAtkins ~ 16 Comments

I first became aware of the writer’s platform, Medium, a few years back when an author I follow on Facebook started posting about it. This author would share pieces he had published on Medium and suggested it was a worthwhile platform for writers to invest in if they fancied getting paid for their work. At the time, I thought, good for you and moved on by. So often in this industry, authors are bombarded with ways to make money out of writing and it often becomes too much. There are only so many hours in a day, and most of us have full time day-jobs and families to contend with too.

Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

Over the next few years I noticed a few other authors I respect had started publishing on Medium. They too often mentioned how good it was. Again, I thought, good for you, but I don’t have time. Too many books to write and promote and not enough hours in the day was my excuse.

Then, back in April, one of these authors messaged me privately to urge me to give it a go. He had just enjoyed one of my blog posts and pointed out that similar types of articles, essays and personal pieces could be making me money on Medium if I gave it a go. He told me he was on average earning around $200 a month which made a nice little side hustle and finally, I was intrigued. I decided to sign up and give it a go. I went all in, rejecting the free option for the paid one. You pay $5 a month to be a member on Medium and that gives you access to all the work published on there, plus it gives you a chance to apply for the partner programme. Being part of that, I was told, was how you eventually started earning money.

To start with, I set up my profile and on the advice of my friend, wrote an ‘About Me’ article. This is apparently the best way to begin to get follows. Life took over after that and I neglected the site until a few months later. By now, I was aware that another author friend of mine was also doing well on Medium, making an average of £200 a month to supplement her other income streams. There are, of course, many writers making even more than that per month, and this knowledge gave me a new determination.

If you’re not aware of how Medium operates, I will try and break it down for you.

You can sign up to the free version, post anything you like and read other posts that don’t have a paywall in front of them. This is not a bad way to get started and get a feel for the place.

Or, like me, you can sign up to be a member. You can then start posting whatever you like. Poems, stories, flash fiction, articles, essays, personal pieces and more. You can post by yourself or you can submit to write for publications. Luckily for me, one of my friends was already an editor on several publications that were a good fit for me, so I joined all of those, read the submission rules and got started. The aim is to get to 100 followers, as that is one of the criteria for being accepted onto the partner programme, which will then enable you to get paid.

I found it really easy to get 100 followers. I started following, reading, commenting and clapping on other writer’s work and they would do the same for me. I found people were following me after reading and responding to my About Me piece, and again, whenever I posted something, I’d get a new little burst of followers. It was exciting and felt a lot more worthy of my time than other social media platforms. Plus, I was really enjoying following and reading the work from other writers!

Once I got my 100 followers, and had posted enough articles, I applied for the partner programme and got in. A month after that I got my first payment! I was thrilled to bits. It was for just under $3 so didn’t quite cover my membership fee, but it spurred me on. This was starting to look really doable. And I was enjoying it!

I still am. I think Medium is a great platform for all kinds of writers. I just got my second payment the other day and it was just over $8 dollars. Again, I was absolutely thrilled. I’ve made a little profit and covered my membership fee. I now feel even more determined to write and post more quality pieces to up my earnings again for next month. In fact, I now have a goal in mind of £200 a month. That would be a really nice extra income stream for writing things I would have written anyway.

If you are interested, here’s a short breakdown of the pros and cons I’ve found so far!

Pros

  • you can post anything, though of course there is guidance and some rules so make sure you read these first. Some writers only post poetry, some only political articles, some lifestyle pieces and so on. It’s totally up to you.
  • There is a publication for everything! I am currently a writer for 7 publications which gives me a good choice of who to submit it to whenever I write anything. Some of them are really niche, so you will definitely find one to suit your writing style and topics.
  • people are overwhelmingly positive and supportive. I’ve only had one critic on there which was a bit odd but we’ve unfollowed each other now. Everyone else has been absolutely lovely. Writers are keen to support each other as it increases the chance of the favour being returned
  • it’s like a co-operative of writers all helping each other and I love that!
  • editors can pick pieces to ‘boost’ which gives you even more visibility. This happened to me recently!
  • publications offer lots of prompts and challenges so you will never be without something to write about
  • Medium promotes the writers with ‘daily digest’ emails tailored to suit you. I try to read this every morning, a bit like reading a newspaper. I read as many as I can and clap and comment as much as I can too. It is a reciprocative platform so make sure you are helping out other authors too.
  • It’s super fast to gain genuine followers, unlike other social media sites!
  • You can get started by reusing old blog posts. Medium doesn’t mind if something has been published elsewhere before, but some of the publications do, so check first.
  • There are some very talented writers on there and I genuinely enjoy reading the Medium Digest each day!

Cons

  • It can be time consuming but I have managed to fit it in. In order to be supportive to others, you do need to follow, subscribe, clap, comment and share as much as you can. You can’t expect to help no one and still gain followers and views.
  • Like all internet platforms there are going to be some trolls, and some people who let you know they don’t like your writing, but overall, it is completely the opposite.
  • It leaves you with less content for your blog! I like to post on here weekly if I can, but it’s been less lately because every time I have an idea, I choose to put it on Medium instead!

That’s it. I can’t think of any other cons so far, but perhaps, further down the line I’ll feel differently. I think I will write an update post maybe six months from now and let you know how close I am to my payment goal and whether I have come across any other negative aspects to the site.

For now, I’d definitely recommend it. Facebook and Instagram have become such an echo chamber lately. Social media can be very depressing at times but so far, I am thoroughly enjoying being a part of the Medium community!

If you want to follow me, I’ll gladly follow you back: @chantelleatkins_17828

Character Interview: Josh Taylor from the Blackbirch Series by K.M Allan

~ ChanAtkins ~ 1 Comment

Hi and welcome to another character interview here on The Glorious Outsiders. K.M Allan is a writer I’ve been following for some time on social media. I’ve read all the books in her YA paranormal series, Blackbirch and I’m just about to dive into an ARC of the fourth and final installment! So, please welcome the series protagonist Josh to out character interview for November!

How old are you?

I am seventeen years old.

Where do you come from?

I lived in the city with my parents until they were killed in a car accident 6 months ago.

Where do you live? Describe it to us

I currently live in a small town off a highway. It’s called Blackbirch, and it’s filled with black birch trees, which is the only tree that grows around here. Most say it’s because of dark magick, and only my friends and I know that is the truth.

Do you have a family, if so tell us about them.

After my parents died, I moved in with my guardian, Grace. She was my mom’s best friend, and I live with her and her daughter, Sarah.

Who is your best friend and why?

Sarah is. She knows all my secrets and helps me when I’m not sure what to do.

Who is your worst enemy and why?

Eve Thomas. She wants to know all my secrets and use them in the worst way possible.

What are your talents?

I can use magick to heal people, and strength to protect them.

What are your flaws?

Not asking for help.

What do you think people think of you?

I hope they think of me as someone who is just trying to look after them.

What do you wish people knew about you?

That I’m just trying to fix all of my mistakes.

What’s your biggest fear?

Losing more of the people that I love.

What’s your biggest hope?

That I can one day live a normal life again and not be chased for the magick in my veins.

What’s your biggest secret?

That I don’t feel worthy of the responsibility that I have.

What is the worst thing you have done to another person?

My actions and mistakes have resulted in deaths. Of both good and bad people.

What kind of friend are you?

I like to think I’m a good one, but I’ve also put my friends in danger, and I don’t enjoy being that type of friend.

Is there anything about your life you would change?

The death of my parents.

Where would you like to be in 5 years time?

Hopefully living a normal life, not running from danger or from others trying to steal my magick.

Do you have any regrets?

I wish I had known more about my power when I first became aware of it. Then I could have used it in a way that didn’t hurt others.

How would you like to be remembered?

As someone who did the best he could.

What are your hobbies/how do you relax?

Reading, and watching movies with my friends, Sarah, and Max.

If you would like to find out more about this intriguing series, here is the Amazon link to the author’s page:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/K-M-Allan/e/B0849WFZG9?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_6&qid=1699006260&sr=8-6: Character Interview: Josh Taylor from the Blackbirch Series by K.M Allan

The Joy Of Being Lost In A World I Created

~ ChanAtkins ~ 8 Comments

Oh, it is such bliss to be back here again…

It’s been too long…

I had almost forgotten what this feels like…

Image by Mystic Art Design from Pixabay

I’m talking about the unique and blissful joy of being utterly immersed and lost within a world you created. I often blog about how magical writing is – partly because I feel it so strongly and partly to counteract the often negative view towards writing I come across online. You know the memes; writing is torture; writing is terrible; writing is so, so hard…

Nah, I don’t see it that way.

I could go on all day about how wonderful, brilliant, life-affirming and beautiful writing is but today I just want to focus on one aspect; getting lost in a world you created.

At the moment, I have the next three books in The Day The Earth Turned series ready and waiting for their release dates. This will be October 2023, January 2024 and April 2024, roughly. By June, 2024, I hope to have At Night We Played In The Road published, which is a spin-off from The Boy With The Thorn In His Side series. After that, I plan to release The Mess of Us (long-awaited sequel to my debut, The Mess Of Me) around September 2024 time and finally, the last book in that connected universe, The Dark Finds You will come out around either at the end of 2024 or the start of 2025. These books are all finished! Some are awaiting beta reader feedback and one is about to come back from the editor. They all have front covers ready. There’s not a lot more I can do to any of them other than responding to feedback and edits when I get them and preparing them for release…

As you know, my self-imposed writing ban ended a few weeks ago when I gave in and started typing Black Hare Valley up on my laptop. This is, of course, the book I’d vaguely planned with a map, character bios and plot ideas and then ended up writing entirely in long-hand in five notebooks during a prolonged power cut in February 2022.

After that frenzied writing session, I put it away to concentrate on everything else.

And now here I am, happily typing up my own work, work I barely remember writing, transferring longhand from notebooks into a Word document on my laptop.

Every night I sit at the laptop for at least an hour and type up what I can. Every night, the story reveals itself to me like a dream I can barely remember. It feels so fresh and new, like I only wrote it yesterday, but at the same time, I have little memory of being the person behind the pen.

I am loving this.

Black Hare Valley is a strange little town with a lot of strange goings-on. I got the initial idea after reading Stephen King’s epic ‘It’ for the third time. I love that book. I would read it again tomorrow. I feel like Black Hare Valley is my personal homage to the great, master of horror, Stephen King. Funnily enough, after coming up with the idea, I watched Stranger Things on Netflix and realised there are a few comparisons. Only in the sense that it’s another strange little town where strange things happen and it’s mostly up to the kids to solve it!

When I came up with the idea, it wasn’t much of an idea; it was really just the town, which I had great fun creating with my son on a large piece of roll out paper. I still love that map. We put such detail into it, the whole place just came alive. I was also inspired by recent visits to iron age hill forts and places like Hell Lane, in Dorset. I was inspired by dark, magical, local folklore, and slowly the story began to write itself.

At the start I just had a missing child, and a group of kids thrown together trying to solve the mystery. They soon realise there is far more to their close-knit and seemingly ‘perfect’ town than they ever realised…

It was such fun to write and it’s even better now, sat here night after night, writing it up. I look forward to it all day. In my head, I am going to Black Hare Valley. I am there every evening, lost inside a world I created, wandering the streets after dark, wondering who is keeping secrets and whose those glinting eyes in the shadows belong to… I am there with my heroes, my band of misfit teenagers who are slowly unravelling the darkness that forms the foundations of their town, in order to find out what happened to missing Paddy Finnis…

I am there, in the warm and cosy Hound and Hare pub, and I am there at the old ruins, hiding from shadows. I am there in Black Woods, searching for strange footprints, and I am there at the school, where the headmaster has something quite evil behind that thin smile of his… I am there in The Magic Of Books bookshop, sneaking between old dusty books for answers, I am there at Hill Fort Farm, the highest point of the valley where Mayor Sumner keeps a watchful eye over the town her ancestors founded…

I am there! Every night I go missing. I’m not here, I’m not anywhere you can find me. I am in Black Hare Valley and I don’t want to come back…

This is without a doubt one of the best and most magical things about being a writer.

3 Weird And Wonderful Things About Writing

~ ChanAtkins ~ 6 Comments

I noticed something weird about writing lately and this prompted me to think about how weird and wonderful writing it is. Am I just very weird or does anyone else relate to these?

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay
  1. When I read something I wrote, I can’t remember writing it – I’ve always been somewhat aware of this but just recently I really noticed it and it struck me as very weird. If I pick up any of my published books and read an extract, I am always more impressed than I was at the time of writing it. It feels like someone else, someone better than me, wrote it. I can’t really remember writing those exact words, even though the plot and the characters are utterly mine and will live on in my head forever. Just last week I started typing up my Black Hare Valley story. This was the one I’d had in my head and in planning for a few years but ended up writing in longhand about a year and a half ago when a prolonged power cut meant I couldn’t carry on with stories I had on my laptop. I remember writing Black Hare Valley mainly because all the plot ideas came to me while walking. At the time petrol prices had gone through the roof and I was trying to walk more than drive. It was during this long walks to work that this book wrote itself chapter by chapter in my head. Then once it was done, I put the notebooks aside and had to forget about it. Now I’m typing it up and reading what I wrote it genuinely feels very strange; like someone else wrote it. I know the words are mine (when I can decipher the handwriting!) but I have no memory of writing them, or the thought process behind putting each sentence together. Typing it up feels like I am discovering this story for the first time even though it has been in my head for so long.
  2. When a world becomes so real, I can’t wait to get there – I’ve not had this experience for a while because I’ve been editing various books for so long, so it was a lovely but weird surprise when this started to happen with Black Hare Valley. It took a long time to build this world; starting with the drawing of a large map of the fictional town. It’s a valley town, surrounded by iron age hill forts and it has everything from a school, post office, vets, cafes and pubs, library, theatre, police station, church and so on. It was a lot of fun to create and after the map came the character bios. As I created each character I could then add where they lived to the map and this in turn sparked of plot ideas and scenes. This made writing it so much fun as every time a character moved from one place to another I could check on the map which way they would go. It really made the whole place come alive and now that I’m typing it up, I am right back there again. Every night when I go up to write, I feel excited to be returning to Black Hare Valley, this strange, beautiful and terrifying place I created. For me right now, it is entirely real.
  3. When a book writes itself – I love it when this happens but it’s not always the way it works for me when I write books. Sometimes characters will arrive, presenting drama and plot and I’ll have to figure out how to start it, where to start it and how to divide the story up into chapters. I’ll normally do a certain amount of planning before I start, but then once writing commences, the writing and planning run alongside each other, usually with me knowing at least the next few scenes and then working it out again as I go along. But sometimes, something really weird and wonderful happens. It happened recently with a book that will be ready for publication next year and it happened when I was writing Black Hare Valley for the first time. It’s like once I pick up the pen, something else takes over. The pen moves faster than my mind; I feel a bit like I’m in a trance, being controlled by something else. The next words are spilling out before I’ve even had a moment to consider them or hesitate. It’s like the story wants to be written so much it just writes itself. I feel almost disconnected at times, like I’m the reader waiting on the sidelines to enjoy the result.

There are a lot more things about writing I’d consider both weird and wonderful but these three really struck me lately. How about you? Have you experienced any of these things? Or are there other things you find weird and wonderful about writing? Feel free to let me know in the comments.