My mother might have been an idiom expert. She would use them all the time in everyday conversation. I think many of us, of a certain generation, do just that.
After something went wrong, I would often hear her say. “Well, it’s back to the drawing board then.”
When I was very young, I might wonder where or what this “drawing board” was. Whatever it was, we didn’t have one.
It’s a familiar idiom that is used when a plan hasn’t worked out as expected. It means we must start again from scratch. It carries a sense of disappointment with it, but it suggests not giving up. Time to have a rethink and try again.
It has been around six months since I left Medium (you can find out why in this six part series — The Truth About Medium).
I no longer post on Medium as much as I once did. Most of the time, I will import a post from this blog, to keep things going, and see if anyone reads it.
That was one of the difficulties at Medium: finding the audience and getting reads. It is a site that says it does all the SEO stuff for you. If it did, I’m not sure that it helped in any way. It sounds like a good idea, just post and trust the algorithm to find readers for you, but I can’t say it worked that well.
I tend to do my own SEO and keywords on this blog, with a little help from ChatGPT. AI is useful in that regard. In fact, I would say that I get a better response doing this on my own blog than I did on relying on Medium's algorithm.
Every writer is told, sooner or later, to find their authentic voice. That we should try to write true to the person that we are. For me, that is good advice, because my authentic voice is a simplistic one. It has to be given my background. I’m not sure that I could change it to anything else, even if I wanted to.
Let’s start at the beginning.
At school, writing was something that we had to do, once we had learnt to write, that is. For me, I don’t recall being a natural when it came to writing. If anything, like most things at school, it was a chore. I tended to prefer lessons like games or art.
Writing could be hard work, especially the grammar side of it. Turning an idea, a story, into something that read as it sounded in my mind did not come easy to me. I’m tempted to say that is still the case. I have to work on that all the time.
One of the things that I have noticed about grammar checking software (especially AI), is that it doesn’t always recognise the authentic voice when making recommendations.
I was reading an article recently about the average life span. It informed me that, on average, we have about 4000 weeks of life. From birth to death, we have 4000 weeks to live.
If you’re reading this at age forty, you have around 2,000 weeks left to live.
At sixty, which I reached five years ago, it is approximately 1000 weeks.
It’s a startling thought when you first encounter it. Not because it’s dramatic, but because that is the calculation. Most lifetimes, at least in advanced industrial nations, stretch to roughly 80 years — about 4,000 weeks. By midlife, at the age of forty, half of those have already slipped quietly behind you, often unnoticed; time has just passed.
But the average life expectancy will be different depending on where you live in the world. There are many factors that will determine how long we might live, and they are not equal across the world.
So, I looked into the numbers a little deeper.
According to the United Nations, the current average age at death for people across the world is around 73.3 years, which is 3822 weeks. For women, the average is 76 years (3963 weeks/912 months), and for men, 70.7 years (3687 weeks/848.4 months). It is well known that women, on average, live longer than men.
Weeks are an uncomfortable unit of measurement, and 4000 does seem a lot. Years can feel generous, decades abstract. But weeks are tangible. They are ordinary, repetitive, something that we feel and easy to waste. It is seven days of life — the here and now — they come and go.
Many of us spend the first half of life building careers, working, raising families, chasing stability, and waiting for the “right time”. Somewhere along the way, we forget to ask what we actually want our remaining weeks to look like. We assume there will always be more time later.
There won’t.
Our time on this planet is finite, and the clock is always ticking. Life is full of numbers and averages.
A writer rarely enters a room without quietly taking notes. Not with pen and paper; that would be too obvious, but with something far more instinctive. I find myself observing what is going on around me, and the potential for a story forms in my mind.
A writer notices the way a conversation develops or stalls, the glance that lingers too long, and the sigh that says more than words ever could. The looks on the faces of everyone in the room, friendly or grumpy, hostile even, every room has its own look and character.
I was in one such room last Friday, when I had to pay a visit to a local hospital. A hospital waiting room is not a place where most people would want to be. Uncertainty about our health takes most of us there, unless you were in support or there to assist someone.
The hospital was busy; they always are, but the first thing I had to do was find the waiting room. Report to Ward 34, I was told by my local surgery. I diligently wrote down the details, including a long abbreviation that must have been code for something. It was the only writing that I had done for a few days.
Ward 34? I began to wonder about all the other wards (33 of them), and then how many more there were after 34. The hospital was a big place. I arrived at the main reception, where I noticed someone, who looked like he might be a volunteer, advising others on where to go.
“Do you know where you need to go to?” He asked.
“Ward 36.” I replied, without realising that I had given the wrong number.
“I’ll take you to the lift. From there you go to the second floor and turn left, and the waiting room for Ward 36 is at the end of the corridor.”
I recently caught a winter cold, which turned into an infection, or it came with it, just before Christmas. It was just a cold, or so I thought.
The common cold had taken a backseat in recent times, as COVID-19 got all the headlines. But it has been around a long time; there are about two hundred strains of it. It was just waiting its turn, or a new strain was around. Old or new, I got it from somewhere.
And it was a lingering cold.
A continuous cough is not just something that comes with COVID-19; mine from this simple cold lasted three weeks, and I’m still not over it. The cough pounds away at the rib cage — it’s like going ten rounds with Mike Tyson at his peak.
It all meant that I struggled to write. That’s the way it is when I’m ill. I might have good intentions, that having all that time, I will write. In reality, that doesn’t happen. Being ill drains any desire to do anything, other than to get over it.
You eat a meal without tasting a bite. You read a message twice and still don’t absorb it. Watch a YouTube video, without taking it in. Somewhere along the way, you forget to write. The hours drag on.
And this is where writing lives.
To be a writer is to exist half a step removed from the world, constantly translating experience into language in a way that, hopefully, someone will like and understand. The writer is always watching, listening, and storing fragments away in the mind for future use. Even in moments of rest, or illness, thoughts are working, shaping sentences, rehearsing conversations, rewriting endings that never happened.
I never used to check my writing with an AI detector before joining Medium. And even when I first published on the platform, I didn’t check.
But then I read a few stories from writers who indicated their writing, or some of it, had been flagged as AI by an AI detector checker. I thought that I had better check my stories just to see.
For the most part, they pass with a big zero.
But occasionally, I receive a return that tells me that anywhere from 3% to 10% is most likely AI. My usual reaction is, “Really?” Often, it is only one line, one sentence, or at most a paragraph. Occasionally, it may consist of just a few words.
I ask myself why would the detector think that an occasional line in a story of several hundred words, or even a few thousand, is most likely AI-written? What is it about the words that makes the detector algorithm think that it has been written by AI? And typically it will say, 100% certain.
It was part of a story I wrote about the two end dates of summer in the UK, meteorological and astronomical. I wrote it for the reason given; the end date of the astronomical summer is later than the other date.
It was a simple enough sentence. Anyone could have written it. But the detector thought that AI wrote that line. It didn’t make sense to me. Was it because I had used a fancy word like ‘astronomical’? Or maybe it was the exclamation mark at the end? Perhaps AI did not think that a human would write that way, to emphasise being happy?
It’s a question I’ve found myself asking quite a lot lately.
I read that people want real stories, the personal, authentic glimpses into someone’s life. I was watching a YouTube video on this yesterday, and I thought, “Yes, I’ve been there.” But scroll through your average feed, and you’ll see something else entirely. A parade of how-to guides: how to write better, how to be more productive, how to succeed at something (anything!), how to do this and that.
Then there are the ‘how-to’ stories — which, ironically, often don’t contain much storytelling at all.
And that’s fine, for a certain type of writing. There’s a huge audience for that kind of thing. The self-help and “personal development” world is thriving. But that’s not always storytelling. That’s instruction. It has a purpose — but it’s not quite the same as sitting someone down and saying, “Let me tell you what happened to me one summer…”
Or, “I wrote a book of good stories that might offer a life lesson or two. Hopefully, you enjoy the read.”
A story doesn’t need to solve a problem. It doesn’t need to teach you how to fix your life or build a better version of yourself. Sometimes, a story just needs to help the reader drift off into a different world for a few minutes — escapism.
But surely, storytelling is, and always has been, about entertainment.
I remember the moment the title came to me. I was pacing around my home, thinking — searching for a phrase that might hold the whole story together. Titles can be elusive things, they are jotted down, forgotten, some look great, then they don’t. I had a handful of ideas, each discarded for one reason or another.
None seemed to bring the chapters together in the way I wanted.
At one stage, I had an idea that I felt could really work — to open each chapter with a subheading drawn from a song of the time. A piece of music that had shaped not only my personal experiences, but also the atmosphere of the era I was writing about. I imagined each song acting as a lyrical thread connecting memory, mood, and meaning to the story.
Then reality intervened. Copyright.
Yes, “fair use” might have allowed me to borrow a few lines, but even that felt like a legal grey area. The deeper I looked, the more it became a potential minefield of permissions and costs. Reluctantly, I let the idea go.
Still, once music had entered the conversation, I couldn’t get it out of my head. Songs have a way of unlocking memory, and as I sifted through those from my past, one stood out: Son of My Father, a 1972 hit by Chicory Tip.
I can’t say the band were favourites of mine, nor that the song had any special place in my life at the time. I remember it being played on the radio and Top of the Pops, but I was more into music by T Rex, Slade, Sweet and ELO. Years later, the song — and something in its story — resonated. It felt as though it was an ideal title for the book.
Here’s the song:
I later discovered that the title had been used before — in books, in other contexts — but that didn’t matter. For me, it fit.
Because although my book isn’t solely about my relationship with my dad, he is the presence that runs through it. The man, the mystery. As he left my life almost fifty years ago now, the book is most of what I know about him.
Writing Son of My Father was, in part, an act of discovery — not just about the past, but about what remains when memory fades and imagination takes its place.
One of Medium’s biggest attractions for writers is the chance to earn money right away. You join the Medium Partner Program (MPP), write, publish, and with every read from a paying member, you earn a little something in return.
Exactly how much per read? Well, that’s the mystery.
There’s a formula used — some calculation involving views, reads, and “engagement.” I’ve tried to figure it out, but like many others, I never cracked the code. Only Medium and the algorithm have the answer to that.
Still, some writers were making good money on Medium. It felt like if you show up, engage, publish regularly, and build a loyal following, you too could join the platform’s top earners.
Then comes the reality check.
Where the Money Comes From
Let’s start with where the money for writers actually comes from. It’s drawn from the pool of funds that paying members contribute — the same members who subscribe through the MPP.
Here’s where things get tricky.
How many people join Medium to just read? And how many sign-up hoping to write and earn? We roughly know the number of members, but Medium doesn’t break it down. If most members are writers, not readers, then for every person making a decent monthly, "side-hustle" income — say $500 — hundreds of others would need to make almost nothing. The money doesn’t stretch far enough.
The reason is simple: the money writers earn comes largely from the same pot they pay into. If the membership is mostly writers, it is clear that most cannot get back more than their membership fee.
If Medium had millions of paying readers who didn’t write, the pot would be much bigger, and there’d be more to go around.
Medium tends not to release too many details of stats relating to the platform. The details provided here are based on finding numbers across the web. Many are probably out of date.
How many members does Medium have?
I read elsewhere that to find an up-to-date number of registered users on the platform, you should check the number of followers of the official Medium Staff account for news and updates.
As of writing, Medium has 108 million followers.
Does that mean 108 million active accounts? I would guess not. It probably includes inactive accounts, including those who were once members of the MPP.
The number of subscribers who pay to read content on Medium?
Figures that I found on the web:
2019: 400,000 paid subscribers
2021: 725,000 paid subscribers
2024: 1,000,000 paid subscribers
I asked GPT-4o for user stats.
Monthly Readers: Over 100 million.
Monthly Visitors: Approximately 45 million.
Monthly Payout to Writers: Over $2 million
I have read variations on that 100 million figure — up to 110 million.
The numbers are important, because writers are paid from member reads.
You have to be a member of the MPP to be paid.
The 100 million+ reads a month figure looks impressive, but writers do not get paid for non-member reads. And non-members only get three “free” articles/stories a month to read. It is also possible to provide a free read link with each story, but I’ve found that most writers don’t use this.
As a writer on Medium, it is the member reads that will pay you.
So, I decided to try writing on Medium as a member of the MPP, just to see if things improved.
And they did — a little.
My first decision was to be accepted by a publication. There is a clear advantage to this, in that each publication has its own built-in audience — at least in theory.
When it comes to being accepted by a publication, there is a lot of choice. There are specialist and generalist publications in terms of what they will publish.
And with some, it is easier to be accepted than others.
I tended to go for the publication(s) that had an “open door” policy. They generally accepted anyone who adhered to Medium’s rules. They would publish a story, unless it was really bad or poorly written.
All of my stories were accepted and published, and I began to get some views and reads.
The biggest surprise was that by the end of my first month, I qualified for a payment — $11.55. I had decided to only check at the end of the month, so I was happy with the result.
I did not expect it at all.
Now, $11.55 is not a life-changing amount, but it was a start. One of the things that drew me to Medium was the possibility that over time you could build up a passive income. Old content qualified for payment for as long as you were a member.
When I first joined Medium, I was not a paid-up member. I decided to give the platform a try, and the free membership allowed me to do that.
I thought it would be a good idea to see what kind of response I got. How much of an audience would there be? It would give me a chance to see what it was like and then use the option to join the paid programme later.
At first, I decided to write one or two longer-format stories each week. After all, everything I had read indicated that it was long-format, personal stories that do well on the platform.
As advertised, the platform was easy to use.
The only criticism I would make is that there is not a grammar or spell check option, but other blogging sites don’t have that either. I just had to use other available options.
I wrote my first story, posted it and waited.
In fact, I didn’t have to wait long before I got a response.
It is September 2025, and I have just completed one year of being a paid member on the writing platform, Medium.
Having completed that year, has Medium delivered what I thought it would?
Read on.
But first, what is Medium?
Medium presents itself as a unique online writing platform that has transformed the way individuals share their thoughts, stories, and expertise with a global audience.
It was launched in 2012 with the aim to provide a space where writers could express themselves freely. A platform where readers could discover high-quality content across a wide range of topics.
It was to be a community of writers, and readers.
The platform itself offers the writer simplicity and accessibility. The user interface is fairly straightforward to understand and minimalist in design. It is not complicated to use. It allows writers to focus on their writing without the distractions often found on other platforms.
It also helps that you do not need to be a tech genius to write on the platform. No widgets to install, or updates to deal with.
I recently read an article that had over one hundred one-line sentences in it.
Most were short sentences, but it had the occasional long one, like the last sentence above and this one.
I got a brain freeze halfway through.
I couldn’t cope with it.
By line twenty, I had lost track of what the article was about.
Where was it going?
Did it have any meaning?
And
what’s wrong with using a paragraph occasionally? I might start now.
The humble paragraph has been used throughout history; why shouldn’t it
be used? What did it ever do wrong to offend people?
Actually, I’m having some fun. I don’t mind the occasional one-line sentence in my writing.
When I was a young lad, if ever I got a little too ambitious, my mother would say to me.
“You need to come back down to earth.”
Sometimes, when I was being far too ambitious.
“You need to get off your high horse.”
Meaning — stop acting as if you think you are better than others.
An idiom.
I grew up in a time when idioms were popular.
But I had no idea what an idiom was. I was probably not paying attention to the teacher at school.
I think it was my mother’s way of letting me down gently.
Life was regularly a letdown.
I did wonder about the high horse, though.
I
lived in an inner city in middle England, so the only time we ever saw a
horse was on television. The racing from Newmarket, Chepstow, or some
other place that I would only ever see on the magical television screen.
The
television also bought us a popular series for children about a horse
called Black Beauty. It was based on an original story by writer Anna Sewell. It was published in 1877, and she was paid a grand total of £40.
£40
is not much for writing a book, when you consider all the time and
effort. In part because of ill health, it took her several years to
write it.
But it was in 1877, and back then it might have been a lot of money.
As I have been thinking about changing the cover of my book, I asked ChatGPT to come up with something that was more upbeat and colourful than the one I had originally designed. I thought the original might be too dark and unappealing.
And this was its first attempt.
I thought it was colourful and bright, but wondered why the face features were missing.
Do you have a happy place? A place you can go to where you feel better just by being there?
I do. I found a happy place, and it was on my doorstep.
Just a few minutes walk from my home, there is a wildlife park. It is a large park with artificial lakes, and I frequently take walks there. Walking in the park has become part of my regular exercise routine. It also helps to clear the mind.
The park is a place where I go to escape the real world.
Back to nature.
I find that early morning is the best time to go, before the rest of the world wakes up. Apart from the occasional dog walker, it often feels like I am the only person in the park. That suits me fine, as there is a silence early in the morning that I haven’t noticed at any other time. That might just be me, but most of the time the only noise comes from the birds.
I’ve also walked through the park at night, early evening, mainly because it is a shortcut to another area of the city where there is a shopping centre. In winter, to say that it is dark at that time would be an understatement. While the lights of the city can be seen in the distance, the park is in total darkness. A torch is an absolute necessity. Despite the darkness, I have never felt unsafe, but it can be a spooky adventure!
