The Death of P.S. I Love You
By: Carl L Lane
Tags: Goodbyepsily, Writing, Publishing, Médium, Relationships

P.S. I Love You, the Medium publication affectionately known as “PSILY,” is gone. After the 30th day of June 2021, they will no longer be accepting new work since Medium has pulled funding from the publication. In pandemic language, this means they have been deemed “non-essential.”

When I first started writing on Medium last year, writers openly dreamed about being published in P.S. I Love You. They still did, until the sad news came. On social media, anxious writers asked how they could get into the publication that focused on matters of the heart. How long do they normally take to respond? they asked. Why do you think they turned down my latest piece?

But there was no trick to being published in P.S. I Love You. They were simply the only publication on Medium that actually required that you have some talent. A click bait title wouldn’t get you in. A listicle that dangled on Medium’s homepage like a frisky worm on a hook wouldn’t get your story published there. P.S. I Love You was edited and published by writers, real writers.

I’ve published a few stories in some good literary journals, and one of my proudest moments as a writer was a rejection letter I got from the prestigious literary journal, Kenyon Review, where after rejecting my story the editor said that I was “obviously very talented.” One of my favorite writers, Edwidge Danticat, whom I met at a reading, agreed to check out one of my stories. Six months after I emailed her the story she responded with her apologies for taking so long to get to it. My heart danced with every compliment, and when she twice responded to a passage in my story with “Wow!” I could have sworn I felt angel’s wings flapping on my back.

I know what good writing is. Even when I have fallen short of this goal, I know I have read enough great writing by great writers to know what it feels like, what it sounds and looks like. On Medium, P.S. I Love You is where I read the most good writing. And this was because of the great writers who were editors and contributors there. They know what it is to be a real writer, and not just someone who is frustrated with their job or hates their boss, and is looking for a way out.

Each time I submitted to PSILY, I was excited to hear what Kay Bolden thought, because I loved her writing. She is a real writer, not just some guy from a tech company or the oil and gas industry who has figured out a way to go to work in his underwear. Felicia C. Sullivan is perhaps my favorite writer on Medium. I’d love to read her work in The Missouri Review, The New Yorker, or The Paris Review. To Dan Moore, writing actually means something, and we were all lucky that he took the time to help writers new to the platform.

But fortune favors the talentless.

I’ve always been excited when they’ve published some of my work. I’ve respected their decisions to turn down work that either didn’t fit, or just wasn’t good enough. It’s a writer thing; perhaps you wouldn’t understand. No one understands war like another soldier who knows what it’s like in the trenches. Writing is war. The pen of a good writer is nuclear.

The stories that I’ve read in P.S. I Love You have not only touched my heart, they have satisfied that part of my heart that belongs to the written word. Much of the writing I’ve read on the platform is like Auto-tuned music. It’s meant to cover up the fact that the author has no actual writing talent.

I’m thankful to Dan Moore, Kay Bolden, Felicia C. Sullivan and each and every writer and editor who gave something of themselves so that there could be a place for actual writers on Medium. Everybody writes something, but very few people among them are actually writers.

I will mourn P.S. I Love You just as I have mourned the slow, painful death of the American bookstore. The editors have said they will not delete the publication. Instead, it will stand like the crumbling walls of a Roman Coliseum as they are devoured by time. The stories of P.S. I Love You, my own included, will eventually be scattered by the winds. Many will not find a home in this new Medium. We can only hope that the world will remember the sound of their echoes.