I’ve grown tired of the countless articles about Medium curation but this one was worth reading. Thanks.

Only $300 to $400 per article? Not big numbers? Seriously? Those are astronomically humongous numbers! I guess it’s all relative.

I recently did a cursory examination of my stories that got curated and I discovered a few interesting facts.

First of all, I learned that over 90% of my stories that got curated were published on either Sunday or Monday. Most of the rest were curated on Saturdays. But I almost never get curated between Tuesday and Friday. I have no idea what that means but it was glaringly obvious.

Something else that is obvious is that fiction simply does not get curated anymore. It doesn’t matter how good or how well written it is. Anyone hoping to get curated in fiction is setting themselves up for guaranteed disappointment. For me this is sad because my two main areas of writing are short fiction and non-mainstream, non-religious metaphysical spirituality — another topic that simply does not get curated (unless your name is Deepak Chopra).

I learned that most of my stories that got curated were in topics I normally don’t write about and in which I am not an expert. In the 4+ years I’ve been on Medium I have only written one single solitary story about photography. I’m not a photographer. I’m ignorant about photography! But that one story got curated and is one of my all-time best performing stories.

Logic-centric folk would say that it is obvious that I need to write more articles on photography. But I don’t know anything about photography and I’m not interested in photography so for me that’s not the answer.

I have to admit, though, that I’m a bit of a sell-out when it comes to poetry. I’m the first to admit that I suck at poetry. I don’t like writing poetry and I don’t even like reading it much. It’s not my thing. But every now and again I get in a certain mood and I’ll whip out a quick poem. I almost never feel truly proud of my poems but lo and behold they get curated at a much higher rate than my other writing which I spend so much more time and effort on (provided, of course, that I publish the poems on Saturday, Sunday or Monday).

I’ve said many times that I don’t write for an audience. I write for the story that is trying to come through. I certainly don’t write for the curators. Adapting your writing to please curators who are looking for a very narrow spectrum of mainstream topics and styles is a huge mistake in my opinion. If you happen to accidentally get curated go ahead and rejoice in the handful of extra views and claps and the couple of extra dollars but don’t make that a goal. If you feel good about your story and it touches someone’s heart that is a far better reason to rejoice.