I’ve never quite understood my own resistance to how-to articles. They’re easy enough to do, they pay superbly well (much more than the research-intensive pieces I suffer with), and if you do enough on one topic, you’re an expert.

I started my own career writing those how-to’s, of course. Maybe because they’re the easiest to write, but also because I believed those were the only pieces that were available to a freelance writer. The meaty, juicy, real-life investigative stories were for the full-time journalists.

I was wrong, of course, and once I discovered my error, I changed my direction pretty much completely.

But I’ve always held a grudge towards those how-to pieces. I’ve never quite understood why.

Is it because the whole basis of pieces like this is that editors have made up their minds and really just want you to go out and find five experts who will reinforce the premise? Or is it because most how-to articles say the same thing over and over in creative ways? Or is it because I know that when it comes down to it, most of the advice presented in the how-to article just does not work?

I’ve seen the so-called experts in action. One of the health editors I once worked with was a chain-smoking, chocolate-craving insomniac, who wouldn’t know health if it moved in with her and shook her out of slumber every night. And then there’s me. My mother once said that I was going to die for lack of eating and the headlines would read, “Nutrition writer dies of hunger.”

I’ve written articles on how to be better organized,how to eat right, and how to get those wonderful eight hours of sleep. All while frantically ripping through my piles of notes, eating a dozen cookies, and working a straight twenty hours on no sleep.

No wonder I don’t miss it. Even if “Mridu Khullar, Fraud” does have a certain ring to it.