WRITING

Finally, I have read many more stories about the topics I love to read on Medium. Don't get me wrong. I have writers I read from occasionally who write amazing stuff, but after I read from them, the struggle would be to search through a sea of Medium-meta stories to find something different. I love to read about writing, but now I feel the way to learn the craft isn't by reading stories on how to write but by reading good writing. Yesterday, I read amazing stories about love and relationships. They were generic stories.

I was looking for personal ones that weren't about heartbreaks — personal stories about how the writer noticed he or she was being cheated on. Then I told myself that if I couldn't find these stories, I could write them. I could write the stories I'd like to read. Because lately, all I have been doing is writing opinion pieces. That's what I realised about the stories that I wasn't interested in anymore. They were opinion pieces. You think aliens should have their own girlfriends? Fine by me. I have a couple of exes in mind. Those stories are great and informative, but they remind me of this hard life I'm living. When I find stories that make me think, finally a writer with my scars and mistakes, I really appreciate those stories. Pieces like that make me feel like I'm not the only human being here. There are other imperfect ones. Yesterday, I sent a piece to a publication. It was published this morning. It's an opinion piece about financial abuse, but I'm having second thoughts about it.

I wrote that piece because I want to raise awareness of that form of abuse and hopefully educate women, but now I'm worried about whether those stories are worth writing. I think someone who has actually been financially abused should be writing a piece like that, not a man who knows a friend going through that abuse. I may be wrong. Maybe I'm writing this because I didn't get a good night's sleep.

But the takeaway is I think going forward I'll write the stories I like to read on Medium. Maybe that opinion piece about financial abuse is really one of those stories I'd like to read. I need some distance from the story to be sure of my biases. But that's my point. Because if I don't want to read that story, why should anyone?

And, if you don't know what to write. Well, that makes the two of us.

Is this an opinion piece?