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Paying By Read Time Is Wrong
I have read some revelations on how Medium is calculating who to pay. I have to admit I am not all that booked up on the matter, since I do not write for money. I write because I must or I may actually go crazy. To those who struggle to put the time in and are envious, don’t be. Writing because you MUST is a bit trying. Sometimes if I do not write I find myself very upset and unable to even be civil to my fellow humans.
Of course, I do put things behind the pay wall most of the time these days with the idea I should get paid if for some crazy reason what I wrote “went viral”. LOL Occasionally, though things do get shared out. I do get some traffic and it is nice to see a few pennies come from my compulsion to document the arc of MY experience. Still I think writing for money is a bad idea, because you are so tempted to tweak what you write to make more money.
I want to write what I want to write when I want to write it, so doing it for money starts to make it a job and less of an artistic endeavor. In fact, I came to Medium, because I felt I should support the artistic endeavors of others. I did not come here to make money, but rather to participate in the act of writing.
As I learned more about Medium and how it paid its contributors, I very much appreciated the idea of applause being the coinage. It is quite correct for writers to be paid on…