Has Medium Made Me A Better Writer?

Photo by Ashley Batz on Unsplash

I used to write for Cornwall Today magazine. A monthly publication catering to the petty whims of middle England. We focussed on food, bland cultural events, property, tourism, bourgeois craft fairs, and yachting.

Rolling Stone Magazine it was not. Political views were left at the door. Social criticism was considered bad form. Philosophy and academia were deemed too highbrow. And serious art, music, and literature, weren’t encouraged.

In fact, anything that might offend the Tory voting middle class, was off limits.

‘Write like you’re writing for your Grandma,’ the editor told me on my first day.

I got quite good at it after a while, and I rarely, if ever, veered away from the norm. I was fine with it. I was getting paid to write, then I would go home.

On the back of that I got a better job, and a few jobs down the line, I quit magazine journalism altogether, and moved to France to work on a dairy farm.

Then I started to write for Medium, and everything went to shit.

Not my life, my life was great. New country, new language, new job, new experience. It was fantastic.

But I couldn’t write. Couldn’t even think of an idea, let alone start composing one. I thought that after years of magazine journalism, I…