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The Sure Fire Key to Writing is Your Love of Reading

But what happens when you read something better than yours?

Malky McEwan
E³ — Entertain Enlighten Empower
6 min readJan 13, 2025

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Woman reading on park bench.
Pexels

The hunger hormone is a nagging shrew incapable of differentiating between my writer’s flow state or if I’m merely reading the newspaper.

I chose to satiate the pang with homemade soup and toast.

As I spooned in my delicious nutritious broth, I opened my tablet and caught up on my feed and there it was …

That damned article

I was halfway through writing a post when I read another article about the same topic. The author got there before me.

When I come across a piece of writing that’s so breathtakingly good, it makes me question my writing abilities. This was a better article than mine. The author was more expansive and had a higher skill level. The clarity of thought, the turns of phrase, and the overall style put my writing to shame.

Self-doubt can scupper the best of us.

All the grease and graft I put into my craft that morning seemed wasted. How could I post it when a higher-quality story was circulating? There was no point. I felt like I was sitting on a train stopped between two stations and no sign of moving.

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Malky McEwan
Malky McEwan

Written by Malky McEwan

Born storyteller. Born curious. Fascinated with what makes people tick and how the world works. https://malkymcewan.medium.com/subscribe

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