Member-only story
Great Medium Editors Are Superheroes
From a sample group of one — me!
38% → 34% → 28% → 10%. Those are the rates at which my submissions on Medium have been rejected from January through April. (Yes, I keep a spreadsheet. No, I’m not a crazy person… not entirely.)
Looking through these figures, I thought, You’re getting better at this, Wildstein! It hasn’t been a solo journey, though — even if Stephen King tells us, “Writing is a lonely job.”
Enter superhuman Medium editors.
I’ve been here for about one year, but only really started taking it seriously in early 2021. I credit this “serious start” with one particular piece that showed me how an idea can be hugely improved upon by working with other human beings. (I can’t thank Marta Brzosko and Chad Prevost enough for taking a chance on me — more on them later!)
Editors Aren’t Bouncers, They’re Guideposts
Editors are not hindrances to your work getting out there. Especially on a high-volume platform like Medium, there is simply… a lot of content. (J.J. Pryor suggested upwards of ~1.4 million new stories added each month.)
I used to get fussy with rejections, thinking: I’ll just publish it myself, I don’t need [Publication X]. That was a mistake. I didn’t realize just…
