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My Latest Writing Platform

I’ve begun writing for an online writing platform, Medium. A friend of mine, Hi Marie! shared the news about it, and said she’d joined up with it, and it seemed to be quite a seamless one to join, and to use, so I thought about it for a bit, and then jumped on board.

I published something, earned a little bit of money, published something else, earned more money, and thought, hmm this does seam to be a good site! I like blogging, and will keep on with my blogging, but for other things, perhaps Medium cold be an excellent site to use as well.

I’m never going to earn money through my WordPress blogs, not directly anyway, but that isn’t why I hang around here for making money, I hand around on my blogs to rant and ramble on a bit …

Anyway, I published another piece on Medium next, and haven’t earned a single cent … I’m not sure whether I did something wrong, or it just wasn’t interesting enough. It was a longer piece, 7 minutes reading time, while the first two had been only 3 minute reads … So perhaps short and sweet is the way to go with Medium, I’m not sure, I’ll keep on exploring the site.

There is some interesting and varied reading there for sure, with writers from all over the world, writing about anything and everything. It is dead easy to publish articles to the site, and photographs too, so that makes it even more attractive to me, when I’ve been with other sites in the past where their rules and regulations were difficult to understand, and work with.

I decided to have a look back at my ‘stash’ of bits and pieces on my laptop, and found a piece about Covid, and the toilet paper shortage that happened last year, and is still happening for some people. I had some photographs of toilet paper rolls, so I used one of those as the image to head my article, and posted it. I’ll keep an eye on it, and see whether this has a broader appeal, so I can get more people following me, and build up a readership, perhaps.

The idea of writing something that ‘goes viral’ holds a lot of appeal to me, but I’m not sure if I have it in me to manage that, who knows? I have a feeling my most recent piece will attract more attention than any of the previous three pieces. Perhaps I’ll manage to build up my earnings to, oh, I don’t know, 20 cents?

I definitely can’t see myself becoming a millionaire with this site, but I’m enjoying myself with it, and surely that is important. Writing, and sharing my words beings me joy in life …

And for a bit of a giggle here is one of my ‘toilet paper’ images , not the one I used in the article.

covid 19

My Writer Life

At the moment, in my lock down Covid-19 life, I’m performing a variety of roles, mostly from the comfort of my sofa, with laptop on my lap, or at the computer.

I am the Editor of the Mallala Crossroad Chronicle monthly newsletter, I’m the competition secretary for Adelaide Plains Poets national poetry competition (entries closed last Friday, I have to write up the most recent poems that have come in, and take photocopies of the entries accepted via email, because of possible postal delays. And I’m also collecting submissions for an anthology about this Covid-19, which is making life difficult for so many of us.

But today, I was able to send some of my books to a purchaser, who will pay for them, as soon as she can, and this woman is expecting to enjoy reading my words, once the books arrive, as I have enjoyed reading the words she has written in her entries to that poetry competition I’m organising. Making connections, whether in real life or online, the honesty is beautiful, and words will further connect us, for who knows how long.

Friendships maintained can keep us safe, from many things in life, let’s hope this friendship will keep going, and who knows when I finally get my passport organised, and travel to New Zealand, we are sure to meet up. She lives just up the street (30-40km?) from my brother, who I will be staying with if or when I get to NZ.

Life hey? I love the way connections like this happen. And one of the poems this person entered in the competition, refers to Covid-19, and I will be glad to have it in the anthology I’m working on. Swings and roundabouts, it’s awesome. Did anyone mention toilet paper? Oh yes, plenty of people did … I’m so looking forward to having this anthology finished and launched, so I can meet more of these wonderful writers who have shared their word with me.

And before that, we will be announcing the winners of the Poetry Competition, and I don’t know yet, if that can happen in real life, or if it will have to be an online thing. This is in a month’s time from now, or a bit earlier actually, and things are still a bit up in the air, on the question of what is safe … But at least I have enough toilet paper, for now, anyway.