"Dear `phfina, I'm thinking about writing my own story ..."

I don't think you should 'think' about writing your own stories. I think you should start writing your own story, and right now. That way you will know, first hand, what it is to create, and how it feels to get a review saying that your story is 'different,' but telling you nothing else. Or not getting a review at all, and knowing you have to keep writing, anyway, to be honest to yourself and your characters.

My stories are 'different,' because why? Because I put my heart right out there, and risk it, every time with every chapter, and what's going on in my characters' lives matters to you because it fvcking matters to me. They've been hurt, I've been hurt, they want to love and be loved, I want to love, and be loved. They hope, even though the world is a hopeless place that doesn't give a fvck, I want to hope in a hopeless world that could care less.

And when I risk my heart, there is the risk that my heart will be stomped on, and it is, often, by readers, reviewers and ffn itself.

But the point of writing polite, detached, impersonal stuff that conveys nothing of yourself is what again?

Please write your own stories. There are people, right now, in the same situation you are in, feeling the same feelings, struggling with the same issues, that need to read your story and know that somebody else understands, and wrote a story about it, so they could read it, and make it through one more day.

Your story may actually save somebody's life. Like mine have, at least three times I've been told so far. You don't write your story, that person doesn't have your voice to carry them forward one more day.

Don't 'think' about writing a story.

Write it. Today.