Boy, Do I Have a Story for You…

Did that get your attention?  Seems that writing nowadays is all about getting noticed in what a publicist in 2009 described to me as “a noisy world.”  Twelve years later, it’s even noisier.  

If that headline grabbed you, and you’re still reading, I’ve got a hundred stories for you.

If you subscribe to this blog, you already know that (a) I appreciate it, and (b) I’ve been putting my more recent stories on Medium.  If you’ve never been here before…

• Some are about adventures in Paris (“Someone Stole My Caddy”)
• Some offer advice (“A Forever-After Valentine’s Gift”).
• Some are cautionary tales (“Scam Alert…”)
• One of my latest is about being a family-centered parent (** “Tiger Mom, Helicopter Dad: You Have it All Wrong”).  (Note that this and other links have ** in front of them because I have NOT previously mentioned them here, so please check them out.)

Medium hasn’t been easy for this old-school journalist to grasp.  It’s a sprawling conglomeration of over 12,000 “publications” and a gazillion writers–veterans like me and newbies.  It’s not easy to learn the rules. 

Luckily for me, a recent story of mine on this very subject, ** “Finding Myself: 10 Months on Medium, 43 Years in Journalism, attracted attention (there’s that phrase again), and I’ve begun to be “seen” and to get advice from those in-the-know on Medium.

One of them, a brilliant, multi-faceted guy, Dr. Mehmet Yildiz  (founder of Illumination and other Medium publication) advises newcomers to write bios about themselves.  Thanks to his prompting, I published ** “Melinda Blau–About Me Story” — an adaptation of the bio I wrote for this website. 

Dr. Yildiz then challenged me to write “another version,” for Illumination. To my surprise, what came out was a poem-like offering, **My Second Bio: What I Could Never Have Imagined 20 Years Ago.

Again, a great reception.  Perhaps the truth is that everything I write is at least a piece of my biography (I’m working on that idea for a new Medium article).  Thinking about this, in turn, prompted me to search and then upload to Medium **“Things of This World,” an op-ed piece published by The New York Times decades ago about cleaning out my father’s apartment after his death.  

To my delight, Dr. Yildiz immediately “boosted” it in “Has Anyone Seen A Medium Article Dated 1996?”

I smiled for days afterwards.  I still have many questions about Medium.  I struggle about what to write next.  But I keep going…

I hope you enjoy reading me here and there.  As I said in Finding Myself, Medium has inspired me to write regularly and post more often. Being in lockdown helps, too!  (In Paris, no restaurants or cafes are open; non-family socialization is restricted to the often-cold outdoors, and since January 16, curfew is at 6 PM–or as they say here, couvre-feu à 18:00–and not much hope of vaccination.

What else is a girl to do but write?

Please keep reading.  More than anything, that is what keeps me writing.  Also, I love feedback.  To borrow that old line: Enough about me. Now tell me what you think of me!

And by all means, tell your friends about this website.  Let them know that if they subscribe to MelindaBlau.com, I will NOT sell their email address, nor will I overuse their inbox!

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Important Note: The above links are what Medium calls “friend links”–you don’t have to be a subscriber to read them.  But if you’re not a subscriber you can’t clap for a piece (and, I assume, you also can’t comment or read other people’s comments either).  Click here to subscribe to Medium.  The site has some excellent writers, news, ideas — in my opinion, a bargain at $5 a month or $50 a year.  Let me know if you decide to subscribe.