Top Writer in Fiction?
By: Remington Write
Tags: Writers On Writing, Nonfiction, Fiction Writing, Writing, Reading

Update on 1/10/20 — I’m now a Top Writer in Movies, Travel, Reading AND Fiction now. W.T.F.?

I’ve been writing fiction since I could hold a crayon. By the time I stumbled upon Medium I’d accumulated a nice fat folder of short stories, flash fiction, long-form fiction, and three novels. I’ve had six short stories published over the course of thirty years and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2011 and was interviewed by the editor who nominated me.

I never made a penny from my fiction

Then I found Medium. You’ve heard this one before. You may very well have experienced this yourself. Readers! I found readers for my stories.

Amazing!

If you’re writing on Medium you know that you have to feed the beast daily. It’s not just Medium. The entire digital world is one big, ravening maw that needs fresh content to devour daily. Once you start down this road be ready to move and move fast.

About three months ago I was thrilled and delighted to discover that Medium had seen fit to pat my head and award me Top Writer in Fiction status.

WoooHOOOOOOOOOO!

My secret? I’ve been mining my folders filled with thirty, forty years of fiction.

Literally Literary, The Non-Conformist, The Narrative, Plan B Vibe , London Literary Review, and For Members Only have all published my fiction over the past year (a humble and heartfelt thank you!). Some of that work was finished, polished, perfect and beautiful when I submitted it but a lot of it was rough and sketchy. Thanks to Medium, to the editors of these publications and to readers, I had the opportunity to work on those half-formed stories and bring them to life.

Again, thank you.

In those folders on my hard drive, there also existed a number of half-formed personal essays that I’d never bothered to complete because there was no way those were ever going to find publishers.

Here on Medium and thanks to the publishers of The Ascent, Live Your Life on Purpose, P.S., I Love You, Candour, and Tenderly I have found readers for my non-fiction work. Again…….wow!

But I’m certainly going to lose my Top Writer in Fiction status because I’ve exhausted my store of fiction.

Writing fiction takes time and concentration and, for me, it’s kind of hit or miss. I can’t tell if a story is going to work while I’m in it and there are numerous times when I have to backtrack and find my way again. It’s a process that does not lend itself to daily publication. I’m sure there are fiction writers who can and do slam new stories out and are able to publish daily.

It ain’t me, babe

Meanwhile, my mind teems with new ideas for essays. If I’m awake, I’m percolating multiple story ideas and my draft folder is filled with outlines and titles of pieces you’ll be reading tomorrow and next week and next month.

I absolutely can and do manage nearly daily publication of my essays and thanks to being an editor on The Partnered Pen and Plan B Vibe, I have the luxury of being able to immediately publish my work in widely-read publications. Huzzah!

However, even in non-fiction, I’m probably not going to nail top writer status in anything.

I can’t be bothered with niches or SEOs or killer keywords. I’m never going to even try to limit or redirect or tame that bubbling froth of ideas that fills my brain and zip out across the keyboard every day.

Nothing lasts forever, not even Medium, so the day will come when I reclaim the time, the concentration, the hunger to immerse myself in making shit up again (aka fiction writing). In the meantime, however, I’m not worried that I can’t write fiction anymore, that I’ll lose my “touch” and will only be able to slam out these ponderings and memoir lite pieces.

I may even figure out how to manage my time so that I can block off writing time for fiction in addition to writing pieces like these and promoting them across the social media spectrum. It could happen.

But here we are poised to start 2020 and I’ve renewed my subscription to Medium for another year. I’ll be reading your work and writing, publishing, and promoting my work at the kind of clip being unemployed allows. Thank you for reading my work. Thank you for responding, for highlighting, for clapping and, most of all, (to my fellow Medium writers) thanks for continuing to enrich my reading life with your work.

Onward!

© Remington Write 2019. All Rights Reserved

Here’s the first chapter of my most recent novella, “Graceless”, which I published as a series on Medium. It’s accompanied by my partner’s photography.