I have been meaning to post to Medium since the first invite. I haven’t, in part, because I can’t find or create the right cohort. I have enough places to publish my professional and promotional writing - and, as has been suggested elsewhere - for now I can get better “reach” in those places.

What I can’t do in any of those places is social writing. The literary equivalent of a seminar or salon, or dorm room. The other opportunities are either too limited in size (Twitter) or are basically invitations for abuse (comments sections).

A “collection” isn’t merely a collection of pieces but a collection of people. That’s the opportunity I don’t have in the siloed world of individual blogs.

The other biggie, of course, is that this is a place for more thought-out work than one does in a typical blog. I remember I used to get criticized for misusing Blogger; I wrote just once a week or less, and posted 1000-word OpEd-like pieces. Ev himself told me I was allowed to do whatever I wanted, but the medium itself was biased toward short, daily bursts.

So this place is actually different: it encourages extended thinking and collective writing. I’m looking forward to writing the way I actually write in an environment that supports the kind of culture in which I write best.

My first instinct was to join the Writers Room that Steven Johnson set up. He’s already a friend, and his issues - particularly the writerly ones - are my issues, too. But even though it’s listed as an Open Collection, it’s actually closed. So I spent a bunch of time clicking on the Open collections to find one that had the green button and was actually open to me.

So I’m here.

But what I’d love is some way of finding people and making collections with them. Or requesting to join collections? How do we find the others and aggregate into little groups? I would think a third option for collections, open but selective, might help - but it might be too complex. I’m just hoping for a way to encourage writing with or alongside others. How do we create cohorts?