All you have to do is highlight a bit of the text, and then select the private note icon to create the message. Let me see if I can take a screenshot to show you what I mean.

Ah, here we go.

So, below is my story from yesterday. Note that I have highlighted a portion of the text. Now look at the options I have. The one on the right looks like a dialogue box with a lock. It’s far from an intuitive graphic, but that’s the private note icon.

Once you click on that graphic, you get the following:

You probably recognize that as the ordinary private note box like those you’ve been responding to. You can type as usual:

Once you hit send, the note will appear when you are in edit mode as a clickable asterisk labeled, “note to self” →

That’s how it’s done

As I mentioned before, though, the editor(s) will not get a notification of your note. I always look for a “note to self” when I get a new submission, because that’s how writers often communicate with editors on Medium. But if for some reason you initiate a new note after the submission process, you would want to alert the editor with a tag, email, or social media message. Because they won’t automatically know you initiated a new note.

So that’s the long and short. It’s clumsy but workable. Mostly.