Hi JoAnne,

I have only been writing on medium for 5 months.

You and our dear editor Christine together have influenced my reading and clapping. Since you asked I will tell you:

When I first started, I would give one or two claps for an article i had scanned by and found a tad interesting. I guess I was behaving as an instagram consumer and just passing by headlines and giving a like. Many many one like scroll bys a day.

Then, Christine wrote to us Haven writers, somewhere I think In the writing school, and told us that we would be more successful if ALL The Haven writers read all the other Haven writers work every single day. Like a busy beehive of reading and writing, just us writers here within our own publication concentrating the energy. ... and I thought...huh that does make sense.

So than I started reading other writers work. I have to admit I started out self focussed, only writing and publishing. Reading articles only about how to become a better writer, how to structure my ABA format refrences etc. I would read everything The Haven Editors puts out to us writers in terms of developing etc. So every single day I start by reading every single article thats been posted on The Haven only. Theres ususally about three four every morning. I read them all. I love to highlight as a self diagnosed dyslexic person I just let the highlighter sink the message into my brain. I also like that the writer knows that the message has sunk into my brain and they can see I have read the whole thing from my highlights.

Once I started reading all of my fellow Haven writes work, I came across your article "Did you know that you can clap up to 50 times for a story?" And I thought to myself, dang I did not know that. They point that hit home for me is that it takes as much effort to give the full 50 claps as it does to give one clap, since you just need to click and hold for 30 seconds as you watch the clap number go up. Right?

So now my Medium routine is:

1. Open the Haven, read every single new article I havent read yet.

2.Highlight every interesting part all the way to the very bottom. Read things I dont agree with, read things I would have never normally read etc. etc. hightlight highlight.

3. Give 50 claps... also go into the comments too and give 50 claps. If Ive read it, I give it 50 claps. I dont care If i like it, dont like it, usually I like it though lets face it Haven writers are freak hilarious.

So I dont know if It makes a diference or not but I think this strategy is supportive of our community and the quality high levels of clapping just concentrated withing our publication is better than just giving our single claps left and right all over the internet.

As for followers and following, I have no comment and havent thought about it in the slightest, which is weird because I have thought so deeply about the reading, highlighting, clapping and writing.