Everyone loves. We want your love stories. The who, the how much, and most important, the why.
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Love is surely the most written about thing ever, and yet, there is somehow always more to say—and an original way to say it. Every love story is different, not just because the characters are different, but because each person’s feelings are different, and each person experiences love differently. If there are 50 shades of grey, there are 50 million shades of love, each as vibrant as the next.
You may think your love story is ordinary. It is not. Because you are not. The circumstances may be familiar to all of us, and how the story ends may be entirely predictable. But what makes a love story—your love story—so compelling is not the stage set or the final act, but the motivation driving the drama. And this is what we’re looking to share in our series, Why We Love.
The love birds above make us think of romantic love, but your stories can be about why you love friends, family members, colleagues, even strangers. A partner will sometimes ask, “Why do you love me?” and finding the right words to respond with can be challenging. But asking yourself why you love someone is different. It’s a journey towards the truth rather than a justification for your feelings.
Words along the lines of “Writing is easy. You just open a vein and bleed,” have been attributed to various writers, including Red Smith and Ernest Hemingway. But you don’t need to bleed to write about love. You only need to open your heart and share.
Entries should be short first-person stories of approximately 1,000 words. Please send your submission via email to thomas.fiffer@goodmenproject.com or submit online here, or email your submissions to your favorite editor found on our About page.
Photo—Raymond Bryson/Flickr