If you feel like there is something out there that you are supposed to be doing, if you have a passion for it, then stop wishing and just do it.
Wanda Sykes
One of the most popular idiomatic phrases in Filipino is “ningas cogon” which literally means a fire that extinguishes quickly and is used to describe someone who is only doing well, in whatever it is that they’re doing, during the beginning. Ladies and gentlemen, that someone is me. Perhaps this is my fatal flaw—I start so many projects but I lose interest in a snap and I abandon them all like an unwanted lover. However, this time I created something that I truly want to commit to and I believe I got the one thing that will help me fix this fickle passion of mine, purpose.
I wish I was one of those writers who writes every single day. Sitting at my living room, the sun hitting my face and looking regal and serious as my pen takes control of me, that is how I envision myself when I think of writing. Sadly, most of my writing happen at 3:45 am, my brain drunk with a mix of misery and ideas and my hand dragging my pen. I wake up the next day unable to read my own words. Then one sleepless night while I was reading “The Bad Feminist” by Roxane Gay something snapped within me. I rushed to my laptop and opened this blog after leaving it for a year to be devoured by internet termites. The desire to write again consumed me and so I did.
“The Bad Feminist” started as a place on the web where I dump all my mind’s ramblings. I posted random think pieces, short stories and photos and named it “girl with paper wings”. I did not give a care about who would read it and what they would think of me. Things changed when I pretended that I was a writer for Scarlet magazine, a fictional magazine in The Bold Type, a show I was binge watching. For a night I was a junior writer in New York, caffeinated with drive and ambition. I submitted “Why I read more books by women” to my imaginary editor and for the first time in a long time I was proud of something I have written. The next day I woke up to messages from friends and strangers telling me how my piece made them think about their reading choices. I was reminded of I why I have always wanted to become a writer, not only to share stories but also to write pieces that would push people to think and question. Ideas flowed from my head and they looked like a web of nonsense on paper but when I gave them a chance to reintroduce themselves to me I began to see what they wanted me to write: women and their stories.
Once you find the purpose of something you are working on everything else just follows, they might not fall immediately into place but knowing where you are going gives you courage. “The Bad Feminist” last month is my personal blog where I write book reviews to promote books by women. That remains to be true, but now I don’t want it to end just there. I aim to create a platform that will help budding female creatives. I intend to create a community where women can talk about issues that matter to us—a safe space of understanding and growth. That is not to say that men are not allowed. Feminism is not a female exclusive movement, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says in her TED Talk, We Should All Be Feminists: “My own definition is a feminist is a man or a woman who says, yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better. All of us, women and men, must do better.”
I know that the words I will be writing here might be just a shout into the void but I do hope somehow this reaches anyone who needs it. I pray that it reaches you and it gives you the push to do that one thing you have always wanted to do.
P.S. Please follow us on our Instagram for more content coming: @thebadfeministwriter https://www.instagram.com/thebadfeministwriter/ If you are a budding woman writer please feel free to send us your work for review at lyndethegrande@gmail.com
the bad feminist 
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