Recently one of our writers wanted to leave from an unpleasant cyber-bully experience, and many days ago I felt likewise. Not because I got bullied here since I got the option known as a block.
<I am a firm believer in kicking the dust off my feet and move on when I am not appreciated, so blocking or deleting off others could be my favorite pastime.>
What made me suddenly felt compelled to leave writing in Medium?
I scrolled through my articles published and assessed the headlines. Then I looked at the performances of each article. I looked at the genre writing. Mixed.
Life lessons usually get more readers because everyone hurts in one way or another. Like some people said that the World is already filled with painful moments it doesn’t cost anything to be kind.
The question is most of this advice is already known to all of us as we grew up. What is new then?
For a moment I was wondering if I had imposter syndrome.
Statistical and Analytical Me
Stats won’t help much in getting us to discover strategies. For example, I had 3 views and 3 reads, but a percentage of 50% read-only. Which means readers may not read till the end. They stopped halfway through.
I had brief experiences in marketing performances from some analytical tools, so I am a critic of myself. I don’t need to look far except to count many things I can critically assess for my performance.
<Side effects of graduation from the upskilling program started to kick in>.
I discovered that a lot of articles here are about earning money from this writing hustle. For the newbies like me who have to get a job outside while writing in our time, you won’t earn much if one thing doesn’t change.
Your readers’ time reading your article.
Long articles make readers leave halfway like an abandoned shopping cart. Short articles do not earn you much or are likely 0.
So, if we are going to write because we wanted to turn it into an earning platform of a few hundred bucks in a week, that is tricky.
The Hackathon-Reading Beyond Words Syndrome Kicked In
What bothers me as a writer was how a person skipped so much without reading till the end but still able to engage as though he or she read thoroughly and understood.
When the article you wrote approximately tells you it is a 3–4 min read, how did readers complete it in just 1 minute or a few seconds?
The devils whispered to us easily that hey you got to buck up dude! buckle up your shoes! you got to write more catchy kinds of stuff. things like Life matters are not catchy and click-bait enough.
Be a realistic girl! Be realistic!
The angel side whisper to me don’t you realize that there is a reading strategy too? While many writing strategies are going viral, don’t you think there is also a technical aspect of reading strategy? Have you ever heard of it?
Once upon a time, there was a big trend about masters who trained or taught others how to read better.
I remember reading about a few intelligent or smart people who read many books within a day by a glimpse of the pages. And then ta-da! They completed and could tell you what the book was totally about. Was that a SCAM? I don’t know.
But I do believe that there is a thing called the reading strategy. That explains part of how a 4-minutes article is read in 1 minutes spree!
Don’t take it too hard or to your heart.
My articles did not reach a standard of good quality.
<Am I punishing myself?>
I wrote simple kinds of stuff with simple English Language which the World should understand. Why don’t we do writing with some jargon? However, I looked back to all the articles my eyes caught sight and hooked up to. A simple language clearly understood by mass.
The Nor Lisa’s Stats Department
Are you wondering how many words are equal to how long in minutes? These are the approximate statistics I observed from my published articles.
The majority of my articles are 3 minutes read — because human beings don’t read more than 3 minutes due to impatience or short attention span. That is approximately around 600 to 700 words.
What? Only 600 to 700 words were all that I managed?
That is the art of learning to love yourself, be gentle to yourself, and learn to increase the words written over time step by step!
The imposter syndrome said to me I am still not good enough.
900 to 1000 words make around 4 to 5 minutes read. LOL! Very statistical! Ok, let’s stop this statistical attitude.
- Don’t burn out your mind with statistics.
- Don’t burn your writing passion with statistics.
- Write from your heart.
- Write with passion.
Why then did I want to leave?
I Was Overstimulated
It is what I termed as the struggle of an HSP or self-prescribed OCD. It triggered after my final capstone project presentation in the upskilling program.
My heart sank in a little bit of sadness that I needed to look for something new now because I have not gone full-time writing, and there are more that I need to learn before doing so.
<Oh, Lord! I don’t want to die young from all those office political toxicity in a rat race life country. I prefer my peace.>
And I saw a few matters waiting for me to pick up and complete the journey where I first began. My heart no longer bears any love for it. I turned void of feelings and emotions for it. The passion burned out as I met energy vampires. I started feeling I would not be anyone good for anything. I cringed. I got numbed. For a few days…I just needed to sleep.
Be brave, Norlisa. Be brave. It is too early to call it a quit.
<if i still have the interest to write on energy vampires I met in Yemen, I will do so in another article by God’s Will>
Yes! The embed style works!
Dear, Alberto. I did not ask you first before making this link. Please forgive me. Don’t be offended. I always look into your articles as I always learned something from them.
Guys, let me introduce one of my default mentors without asking him if he minds I follow him with joy! 🌹 He wrote very well.
