I wrote a new story yesterday, and I was pleasantly surprised to see, when I woke up this morning, the following email.

Double curation in Sexuality and Parenting!

Can you tell I’m excited?

I thought the story was pretty good, but I’d thought most of my other recent stories had been pretty good too, and none of them were curated.

In fact, I have published 19 stories over the course of three months that have NOT been curated.

This is a big deal to me because over the past year and a half, I have published 79 stories (this one will make 80). That’s about 4 stories per month. Out of those stories, 10 have been curated, so that’s about 1 in 8. For a while there, my stories had a curation rate of about 1 out of every 4 or so.

Then the drought hit. And I started to believe that I would never be curated again.

I guess I was wrong.

What’s going on?

At first I thought it was because I was writing about sex. Another of my stories that was (indirectly) about sex was also curated in two topics: Family and Relationships.

I thought maybe Medium curators just like sex stories.

But then I thought maybe that wasn’t the case. I’ve had plenty of stories curated that had nothing to do with sex.

Maybe it’s not about the sex.

Then I started looking for patterns

I started publishing stories on Medium in June 2018. That was before curation was a thing.

June 2018: 18 stories published, 1 curated (Writing)

July 2018: 13 stories published, 1 curated (Fiction)

August 2018: 6 stories published, 1 curated (Family/Relationships)

September-December 2018: 0 stories published, 0 curated

January 2019: 2 stories published, 0 curated

February-April 2019: 0 stories published, 0 curated

May 2019: 2 stories published, 1 curated (Religion/Spirituality)

June 2019: 17 stories published, 3 curated (Religion/Writing)

July 2019: 8 stories published, 2 curated (Parenting/Religion)

August 2019: 1 story published, 0 curated

September 2019: 7 stories published, 0 curated

October 2019: 6 stories published, 1 curated — so far

More stories = more curation?

It makes sense that the more you write and publish, the more likely it is that you will be curated.

It’s a numbers game.

It seems simplistic, but I really think it’s the only explanation for why some of my stories get published and others don’t. I don’t change my writing quality that much from piece to piece.

I just change my Medium engagement periodically.

When I show up and publish, I reap the rewards. When I don’t take the time to be here? My stats and curation status suffers.

I’ve said it before, but I think it bears repeating: Medium is a social media platform.

Engagement is key.

I really wish I had some brilliant curation tips to share with you that would get you curated every time. I just don’t.

Believe me, if I did? I’d be using them!

But I know what works for me, as far as I can tell — showing up frequently and consistently, and getting the words out there.