How Ted Czukor Made Me A Better Medium Writer In Less Than One Minute
The Medium community is about writers helping writers.
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I wanted to take a few minutes to say thank you to Ted Czukor (@noratedczukor), a fellow writer on Medium. Ted and I do not know each other and we have never met. The only connection we have is that we both write on Medium and that we follow each other.
But Ted did something incredibly thoughtful and brave. He made a critical and helpful comment on one of my stories.
He basically expressed concern that my grammar had been poor recently and that my stories were a bit frayed and not as well-organized as before.
And… he was right.
As I read Ted’s heartfelt comment, two thoughts came to mind. First, if I ever get bad news again, I want Ted to deliver it. He was magnanimous and polite. He is a treasure.
Second, I thought to myself that this is really what the Medium community is all about. It is about writers helping writers. It is about taking an interest in others, taking the time to meaningfully participate in their writing journey, and about offering both praise and advice.
So, what did I do?
Of course, I went back and reviewed my last few articles. Sadly, I had to correct a few silly and glaring grammatical errors. But I would have never found them if a concerned writer had not pointed them out to me.
I also re-learned an important lesson about writing.
It is extremely difficult to check your own work. When we review our own work, we have a tendency to see what we wanted to write, not what we actually wrote. I am guilty of this. As a remedy, I am going to experiment with reading my stories slowly out loud before submitting them. Honestly, I am always a bit hurried when I write my Medium stories. Hopefully, this will slow me down and allow me to catch embarrassing errors.
That’s it. Thanks again to Ted and best wishes to everyone on their writing journey!
James McGinley, PhD is a professor, author, certified life coach, and licensed counselor.Books/Blog — Facebook — Instagram — YouTube, The Coping Expert, Twitter
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