From a U.S. news perspective, January 2025 was a year in a month, beginning with the devastating wildfires in Los Angeles and followed by the presidential inauguration in Washington D.C.Throughout, writers came to Medium to share their stories. Ajounisingh asked, Your house burned down in a wildfire now what? and Loren Kantor shared a moving tribute to David Lynch. I highly recommend checking out our Staff Picks for more great examples.Reading such great writing makes me want to write more, but Ive been in a rut as of late. I dont know about you, but Im horribly susceptible to blank page syndrome. The specter of a white, empty screen is enough to make me never play with words again. So living in these non-stop unprecedented times, I feel like the firehose of everything just prevents me from picking anything to write about: Water, water, everywhere, and I just cant figure out how to get myself to drink.In January, David Todd McCarty published Thats Not A Story in Ellemeno. In it, he describes the difference between anecdotes, which we all have, and a proper story, which is a complete essay with a beginning, middle, and end, where the writer overcomes some obstacle, a truth is learned, or some other sort of meaningful shit occurs. His piece weaves together advice and examples from famous writers and humorists that you know, but also includes examples from McCartys personal writing practice, and those parts of the piece were most valuable to me.For instance, the simple statement that McCarty takes notes as he goes about his life so that days dont pass by in a blur. Of course, we all know that writing more means you have more to write, but using writing as a way to stop time and prevent loss of memory? That hit me hard in a time when the daily news tsunami somehow washes away my ability to capture individual moments in my life.People like to sneer at the term expert, but the truth is that everyone is an expert on their own life and writing about that is the clearest path to sharing your real and human wisdom with others.So Im going to think about which personal anecdotes I can turn into a story, and I hope you do too theres no better time than now to do it. Amy Widdowson, VP CommunicationsMedium by the numbers634,000: Number of unpublished drafts created in January (and yall know how much we think you should publish those drafts!)74,900: Number of new stories in publicationsNearly 4,000: Number of accounts suspended in January for Partner Program abusePlatform updates from our teamIf a story was featured by a publication, we added Featured labels on story pages and writer stats pages.In your notifications, we now show response previews so you can more easily see how readers are reacting to your work.We made it easier to report and hide comments you dont want to see on your post.We continued to address spam and comment abuse.Over at the Medium NewsletterMedium Newsletter editor Harris Sockel reports that the most clicked issue was Use this flowchart to make tough decisions easier on January 23. Our most commented issue was on January 17, What the end of Metas moderation means.Two of Januarys most-commented on storiesMuch-highlighted passagesI got fired from that corrupt publication because I refused to let AI replace passionate, competent writers, and I wear that job termination like a badge of honor. Maria Cassano , Im a Professional Editor and These Phrases Tell Me You Used ChatGPTGifts should add joy, not stress or worse, clutter. B.R. Shenoy in The New Rules of GiftingI had forgotten the joy of having energy and not being tired. pockett dessert in 2024, A Year Being Sick And Tired, Willpower and SpiritualitySpring will comeHope rewardedLife is good John ONeill in Winter ReflectionsTop stories from new (or new-ish) writers on MediumIn the vein of shoot for the moon so you fall amongst the stars etc., this is definitely a moonshot achieved: A Comprehensive Review of Rolling Stone Magazines 500 Greatest Albums of All Time by Tom Morton-CollingsI dont know much about baseball, but I really enjoyed Cardinals Top 30 Prospects by Taylor Crews. Crews mentions he used to put his top 30 prospects list on other platforms, so Im pleased that hes bringing his obsessive attention to detail to Medium.I took a playwriting class or two in college the practical advice in The Simple Fix When Your Characters Dont Grip The Audience by Leticia De Bortoli in Screenwriting & Storytelling would have been super helpful for those final scripts.Notable new publicationsDesign Systems Collective, a welcoming community for designers and developers passionate about scalable, consistent design.Looking for advice, insights, and ideas from the Medium data science community? Check out Data Science Collective.Some of the the most-shared stories in January