My Best Advice for Medium Writers with No Followers

Jarred awake by my alarm at 6:47am. Thirteen minutes early, which meant I’d set it wrong again. November morning in Calgary. Pitch black outside my window, frost crystallizing on the glass in fractals I couldn’t quite make out. I sat at my desk in the dark, hands wrapped around lukewarm coffee from yesterday’s pot that I’d microwaved. My ritual begins. Open Bear, write garbage for thirty minutes, delete half of it.

## The 7AM Revelation

After, I saw the calendar notification. *Medium Writers Circle—NOW*.

I’d completely forgotten. Signed up months ago when I was feeling optimistic and excited. Now here I was, unwashed, unshowered, clicking a Zoom link I’d buried under a dozen other forgotten commitments.

<figure> <img src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/800/1*940rJwEQg0S3iIJWZhGGWQ.jpeg" alt="Facilitated by the lovely Kassandra @ Medium and others!"> <figcaption>Facilitated by the lovely Kassandra @ Medium and others!</figcaption> </figure>

Five hundred people flooded into the call. The chat exploded.

*“What’s the prompt?”*

*“Can you hear me?”*

*“I can’t find the breakout rooms”*

*“Is this recorded?”*

*“What’s the prompt?”*

*“WHAT’S THE PROMPT?”*

A torrent. The same questions cascading over each other, nobody reading what came before, everyone shouting into the void simultaneously. This was community? This was connection?

The facilitators—gracious, patient, *probably underpaid*—explained we’d have fifteen minutes to write on one of four prompts: > What belief have you changed your mind about? What cultural norm deserves to evolve? A fictional world where everyone believes your old belief? Or just work on an unfinished draft. “Publish whatever you write with the topic #TheWritersCircle,” they said.

I picked the unfinished draft option. Coward’s choice. I’d been avoiding finishing a piece about how [*Annoyance is the Price You Pay for Community*](https://medium.com/@brennanbrown/community-will-save-your-life-e417c86b4b1f). (Hm, relevant?) The words weren’t coming. They never do when you need them.

Then we broke into rooms.

## The Heartbreak

Ten of us. Smiling lovely faces in squares. Names I try to remember even though human memory doesn’t work that way in Zoom’s grid layout. We went around introducing ourselves—*name, location, what you write about*. The usual performance of digital gathering.

[Yanmife](https://medium.com/u/70300888b66b), [Bright Horizons](https://medium.com/u/bb012dd665ff) who used to go by Graffique and writes children’s books, [Lauren A Pink](https://medium.com/u/4a6393c22b18), [Kriszti Van Aster](https://medium.com/u/e8b4a1ba4cbd) trying to get back on track after a long writing block, [Chike Onyeoguzoro](https://medium.com/u/66a9ccac1f2) writing poetic theology, [Baykuş Abinizin Seyir Defteri](http