Member-only story
Why I Abandoned A Medium Publication I Struggled to Join
The only time someone blocked me on Medium
If you wanted to be someone on Medium, you needed to write for his publications. That’s the idea I got when I started here on Medium.
I began publishing on Medium in July 2018, not too long after Shannon Ashley. Everywhere I looked, I saw the advice to brand yourself, to find a niche — “You can write about parenting or sex, but not both” — so I loved that Shannon, like me, put all that aside and wrote her messy, beautiful truth. And she was successful doing it! That was my model: stay true to myself, write what I feel passionate about, and hopefully find a way to be successful doing it.
His publications caught my eye because I looked at what publications she wrote for. I checked out his Medium publications because of her, and I found that other writers I’d already grown to love on Medium were also writing for his publications. That’s where I wanted to be. The submission guidelines said invite-only, but I emailed him anyway, asking to be let in.
I submitted this piece to him. He rejected it, so I submitted it to P. S. I Love You, and they featured it:
