This week I published a feature article on Medium.
I have published many things online before. Videos, training content, social posts, designs. Still, clicking publish on a written feature felt different.
The article was called “What Came Before the CEO Title.” You can read the published piece on Medium.
It was about Dr. Mélodie BOUEYA and the part of her story that people may not see when they only look at her current professional position.
I had her portrait ready. I had the interview. I had the research. The article was finished.
And I still read it again.
There was one thing I kept checking: whether the article was making her illness too important.
That was my hesitation.
Sickle cell disease is part of her story. Leaving it out would make the article incomplete. But putting it everywhere would make the article about the disease instead of the person.
I eventually kept the health information because it explains part of the pressure she has lived with, but I tried not to turn it into a dramatic device.
Publishing also made me notice the difference between writing for Canvas and writing somewhere public.
Inside Canvas, my professor already knows this is an assignment.
A random person on Medium does not.
They do not care that I needed 700 to 1,000 words or three sources. They just see a title, a photograph and the first paragraph. I noticed something similar when I started this blog — publishing regularly has a way of making me pay closer attention to how I actually write, not just what I write about.
That changes the pressure a little.
I think it is useful pressure.
It made me ask whether the article still works when the rubric disappears.
I hope it does.
