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I’m Starting Medium, An Amazing Writing Platform

Medium Website

There are a lot of different platforms out there for sharing your writing but not a lot of them work as well as Medium does. I discovered Medium through Scribophile (Yes, I do spend way too much time there). I was on the forum when I found a thread that is now over a 100 pages long with people discussing the website. With so much discussion I figured it was worth taking a look at.

It turns out Medium is a writing platform that allows writers to post their work to the website. It reminds you of a large blog with a lot of different contributors, or maybe a newspaper. Either way, the number of writers that power the website is pretty big.

I was curious as to what level of content I would find when I went to the website and was incredibly surprised. The three free articles I read for the month were all great. In fact, I even recommended one to a bunch of friends who also liked it.

You noticed that I said free there? Medium is ad-free and as such allows free accounts to read only three articles a month. If you want to read anything more you will need to create a paid account. I believe its $5 a month? Not too bad to get access to a huge amount of written content for both education and fun.

So I saw that you could become a writer at no cost. Guess what I did? Created an account. So far I really like it. It is a versatile writing platform with a lot to do. I have published 4 pieces with more to come. Here is my first piece: Adoption: A Road To Discovering My History.

My Medium Profile

The only thing I don’t like about Medium is the very long links that articles have. Try sharing one of these without copy and paste: https://medium.com/@iandustinscofield/adoption-a-road-to-discovering-my-history-8a3b52a6cdaf?source=linkShare-e35a2a8480d8-1535366475. That is the link to the article I mentioned above. You see how long it is, and it is a bit of an eyesore. But with that many articles from so many authors, I guess they had to come up with a solution.

I hope my Medium articles provide you with some reading entertainment.

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Calligraphr: Turn Your Handwriting Into a Font

As a writer I spend a lot of time typing on the computer and I like to break up the monotony by changing up the font.  While I can’t deliver most orders in handwriting fonts, I have a special attraction to writing with handwritten fonts.  One thing that I thought would always be cool would be to have my handwriting turned into a font.  In the past though, they used to charge for such as service and that was frustrating.  Now you have an option, Calligraphr.

Calligraphr is a website that allows you to write on a piece of paper then scan it into the computer.  Once scanned into the computer, your handwriting can quickly become a font.  The website can automatically convert your handwriting with no additional work needed by you.  I saw this and had to try it.  On the same day I found out about the website, I created an account and started to make my handwriting a font.

My first try was not that impressive.  It came out looking all uneven with sizes not matching.  Then I realized that it was because the printer printed the lines on the boxes haphazardly.  Now I went through and redid the writing and subscribed to a premium account temporarily.  This allowed me to add more characters and to edit them once I uploaded them.  My font is now nice enough that I can read it easily on the computer.

Here is a sample of it:

Calligraphr Sample

I am not getting paid to talk about Calligraphr so when I say that I have really enjoyed it as a fun writing tool, you can take my word.  Head on over and try making your own font.  With a little bit of extra work you can even make a really nice font for free without having to subscribe.  I just wanted to save some time and make my font extra nice.

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NaNoWriMo Printed Copies

As I mentioned before, I had the FedEx store print out two copies of Shao Island for me.  I have picked up both copies and they are great!  Way better than I expected.

My order was about 69 pages long, double sided.  I ordered both books to have a “antique” colored cover.  The cover color was not quite what I was expecting but it does differentiate the cover from the rest of the document, which, I guess was its purpose.

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