Member-only story
My Comments Get More Views Than My Posts
What I’m Learning about “Gut Writing”
When it comes to feedback on my Medium performance, I am a desperate lab rat on a wheel of little cheese chunks, otherwise known as “views” or “reads.” I scan constantly for hits. The magic green bell is enough to make me salivate. But a bell with numbers in it. “Be still my heart!”
In the past few weeks, my little green bells have been stuffed with numbers like I’ve never seen. I’d been convinced that the quality of my writing, or readers’ interest in it, had skyrocketed. I didn’t care what anyone thought. I was my own Top Writer.
But then I realized that the green numbers had nothing to do with my posts. When I started investigating my posts, my views were essentially the same as they’d always. People were equally indifferent to my compelling or amusing posts.
No, it wasn’t that. They loved my comments!
I write very few comments. I avoid the “Thumbs up/Thumbs Down”or 'You’re brilliant or shameless” responses. But I like it when I read someone’s post and my blood pressure ticks up or down and my words shoot out fast and full. When that happens, I check out the other comments. I am hungry to respond to the person at the end of the post, to continue the discourse, to form some extensions between her thoughts and…
