Was your Medium broken?

Mine was. Also, thank you. More inside...

Happy Friday,

Weirdest thing happened yesterday. Would have been stranger if I was an Aussie and it happened Friday the 13th since they’re a day ahead. Cue the Twilight Zone music.

I’d scheduled a post to go up on Medium early Thursday. Usually I get up, pour coffee and read Medium with my morning coffee before I get writing or working. But I had an early conference call Thursday, and I slept in. Gah! No time to check Medium.

By noon, I’d seen a few comment notifications woggle in via email. In the afternoon, I popped into Medium and what I saw was—weird. Just plain weird.

I had comments on the new story, but it was showing 0 views, 0 reads, 0 read rate.
How can a story have comments, but no views or reads?

Was Medium broken for a while Thursday? For me, it was…

When I looked at notifications on Medium, the most recent was a response posted 18 hours ago. That was odd. There were comments on my new story, but the notifications didn’t show and it was still showing 0 views, 0 reads.

By evening, it started showing views, but there were still less reads than comments. Which makes no sense.

Also?

Normally I get 1000 - 1500 views a day.
Yesterday my stats shows 129 views.

Ouch. I don’t know if it broke for everyone, but it sure did for me.

When people tell me they don’t have a website, just a Facebook page, I tell them it’s dangerous to build your house on someone else’s land.

That’s what came to mind when my Medium broke.It made me so grateful I started this list, because if Medium broke for longer than a day, I’d still have a way to stay in touch with you, and that means a lot to me.

You are why I write.

Before I started this list, I wrote sporadically at best. Knowing you’re out there keeps me writing and moving forward, even if life gets crazy or bad stuff happens.

It’s really easy to crawl into a hole and stay there too long if no one is looking for you in the first place, or out there waiting to hear from you. Know what I mean?

And I wonder if you have that, for and with your readers.

I hope you do.

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On Bad Writers and Punching Down

I’ve seen one too many people writing “why you’re a bad writer” lists lately and it makes me cussing mad. I’ll tell you why.

Have you ever heard of punching up vs. punching down? Punching down is when you insult or ridicule someone that has less power, status, standing or influence than you.

That’s what those articles are. Punching down.
At new and novice writers. For clicks.

So I wrote about that. It’s the piece that got comments but no views, apparently.
Pity. I thought it was a good one. I hope you’ll read it.

• Those “why you’re a bad writer” posts are punching down. And, they’re wrong.

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From the archive…

If you don’t have a mailing list, you might find this helpful.

• 5 places to build a mailing list, free.

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Thanks for reading. If you liked this, please click the little heart to like, or share with someone who might like it. I’ve turned comments on, too, in case you didn’t notice.

And thank you. I appreciate you more than you know.
Happy Friday the 13th, and have a great weekend.

xo
Linda