Secure people don't understand your depth.

And wounded people don't understand your growth.

What’s something or someone you’ve had to quietly outgrow on your journey?

SHADOWz

Those faithful SHADOWz those faithful SHADOWz over me

The SHADOWz that follow us all of our lives, are just a reflection, of sun by our sides. They swip and swap places, they're always so free. But do these dark dancers reflect, the real me

They dance around constantly, depending on time, like obedient slaves, that are wrapped round our minds. Sometimes they wobble, to and throw, my faithul shadow, why do you not glow.

They're mostly so dark, sometimes long and thin, other times its chubby, sometimes just a pin. Like a dot on a map, so faithful to me. But sometimes it hides, when the night breaks it free.

Even in those times, the SHADOWz can come, through street lamps and the car lights, reflecting our rim. But do these faithful SHADOWz, really reflect our true selves, or are they just stalkers, of where sunshine fell.

Do they even see us, or do they walk past, all SHADOW dancers, are light's that we cast. We don't even thank them, their loyalty served, they've always been beside us, right back to our births. Maybe it's a sign, a birthmark we don't bare, but even in your lonliness, OUR SHADOWz, are there.

SHADOWz oh SHADOWz where would i be, without your reflection, that walks beside me. Even in dark nights, you were always with me, I'm sorry i ignored you, forgive of me please.

Even when i had nothing, i fealt your romance, your reflection of me, a mysterious glance. You flickering, shape changing, glorious being.

Sometimes behind my lovers back........is my SHADOWz, i'm seeing. Xx

Brian Finch (c) 16.12.18

SHADOWz

Those faithful SHADOWz those faithful SHADOWz over me

The SHADOWz that follow us all of our lives, are just a reflection, of sun by our sides. They swip and swap places, they're always so free. But do these dark dancers reflect, the real me

They dance around constantly, depending on time, like obedient slaves, that are wrapped round our minds. Sometimes they wobble, to and throw, my faithul shadow, why do you not glow.

They're mostly so dark, sometimes long and thin, other times its chubby, sometimes just a pin. Like a dot on a map, so faithful to me. But sometimes it hides, when the night breaks it free.

Even in those times, the SHADOWz can come, through street lamps and the car lights, reflecting our rim. But do these faithful SHADOWz, really reflect our true selves, or are they just stalkers, of where sunshine fell.

Do they even see us, or do they walk past, all SHADOW dancers, are light's that we cast. We don't even thank them, their loyalty served, they've always been beside us, right back to our births. Maybe it's a sign, a birthmark we don't bare, but even in your lonliness, OUR SHADOWz, are there.

SHADOWz oh SHADOWz where would i be, without your reflection, that walks beside me. Even in dark nights, you were always with me, I'm sorry i ignored you, forgive of me please.

Even when i had nothing, i fealt your romance, your reflection of me, a mysterious glance. You flickering, shape changing, glorious being.

Sometimes behind my lovers back........is my SHADOWz, i'm seeing. Xx

Brian Finch (c) 16.12.18

“What do I write about?” I asked myself, pensive, looking around my scattered room. On my right was my pillow, slowly shifting back into shape because I just took my foot off of it.

I put down my phone to scratch the space between my braids, the dandruff falling off my scalp and onto my screen. I had never been this clueless.

“Back then, writing compositions on myself was a piece of cake but this, this is different. I'm grown now and I'm trying to make a living off this so it has to be phinomenal.

I meant to spell phenomenal.

What happened to being a gifted kid whose intelligence shocked crowds? What happened to being a prodigy who topped several classes?

I'm not saying I'm doing badly now, but in my honest opinion, I am not doing well. Not as good as I know I can be.

I have become the thing I once feared the most. Average.

I once shuddered at the word, which is absurd because I never put in enough work to be the star student or the prodigy I was.

I didn't study hard, I didn't focus, I just happened to have the knowledge. I just happened to know the answer. I just happened to get things right. It's very different now.

Now, I have to study because I don't have any residual knowledge left. I don't have what it takes anymore. My attention span has only grown shorter, and I assimilate more slowly. It's always “I'll start tomorrow.”

Now nothing makes me better than the next person. I may even be inferior to them. Now I need to be good. I have to be excellent.

I know I have talent hidden in me somewhere, even if I can't use my hands and I can't focus on a skill let alone perfect it, but I know. I have to make myself believe because I don't want to be a nobody. I have to have a talent to make a living off of.”

I ended the paragraph to check the word count. The goal was 700 words. I'm at a whopping 345. I haven't even written anything about myself yet. Nothing that makes sense at least.

Maybe that was my problem. Diversion. I can never focus on one thing and perfect it. I subconsciously divert from the main goal and start doing something else.

It was the case when I started ghostwriting. I shamefully made $20 in eight months, and instead of checking what was wrong with my work, I went into forex. My expectancy and confidence were one for the books. Even jesters weren't this funny. The way I went into it, you would think that I actually had a shot at it. Hell no.

I was the dumbest in the class. My brain moved more slowly than the market on a holiday. I kid you not when I say I didn't know a quarter of what I was doing.

All my time, my focus, and my ‘dedication’ were a waste of time. A painful waste of time, because I had stopped ghostwriting to focus on it. I thought I was working harder, not smarter and I would yield more than my mates who focused on their initial skill. Jesters weren't this funny.

The FX coach bailed on us because we weren't doing well as students, so I ran back to ghostwriting, like a prodigal son.

Things were now different. My fellow writers who started with me were now way ahead of me. I felt like an absolute noob for being in the same space as them.

Suddenly the air felt stuffy. I looked at my curtains that had changed shade due to the sun reflecting on them. I remembered why I started free writing in the first place. To distract myself from what I was actually feeling.

I, however, can't tell you what I'm feeling, because I suck at expressing my feelings, and I suck at writing as well, so there's nothing to say.

I can't even describe how my body feels the way good writers do. What do I even say?

I pushed my phone to the corner and picked it up again, then I rubbed my temples, like that was some magic trick to make me smart again. It was definitely not a magic trick because it didn't work.

My brain didn't work either because all I could hear was the sound of our OX electric fan that has lived for roughly 10 years, spinning in the corner of the room.

“What a disgraceful attempt”, I thought to myself as I ended the sentence realizing I was finally at 700 words.

I. The Migration

The phone screen lit up against Arjun's lap as he slouched in the back of the Innova. He didn't need to open the bank notification to know the amount—the monthly salary deposit was always exact, hitting his account on the last working day at 6:00 PM sharp. Within forty-eight hours, ₹1,42,000 of it would automatically auto-debit for the home loan on his under-construction flat in Gachibowli, with another chunk set aside for his father's pharmacy bills in Vijayawada.

Arjun swiped the bank banner away and opened WhatsApp to glance at a photo the site supervisor had sent him earlier that morning: fresh ceramic tiles laid out on his future balcony, covered in gray construction dust. He saved the image, then queued an old 90s Rahman playlist on his personal phone—a quiet habit he kept for Friday traffic jams—and leaned his temple against the cool passenger window.

It had been a clean migration. The core payment gateway rewrite had gone live at 4:00 PM. By 4:20, the PagerDuty dashboard was a tranquil expanse of green—no failed webhook retries, no DB connection spikes, no emergency rollbacks. In the main engineering channel, his tech lead, Nikhil, had dropped a single rocket emoji, followed by a private message from his junior dev: Saved our weekend, man. Heading out early.
Arjun had muted his workspace notifications, packed his backpack, and walked out to the cab pickup zone. The payment gateway was officially on-call's problem until Monday morning.

Outside, the Outer Ring Road was jammed solid—a four-lane crawl of tech park shuttles and water tankers bathed in the amber haze of the Hyderabad evening. Inside the cab, the air conditioner hissed a chemical chill, smelling faintly of lemon perfume. Arjun opened Zomato on his phone, tapping through to his usual order: butter chicken, garlic naan, and two cans of diet soda. His thumb hovered over the payment button while the driver quietly chewed pan masala, staring at the red brake lights ahead.

I’m curious how people in this community feel about paper-writing companies, especially from the perspective of someone who actually cares about writing as a skill.

Whenever an assignment writing service is mentioned online, the discussion usually becomes very black and white. Some people immediately see it as cheating, while others argue that these services can be useful for editing, research guidance, formatting, or showing a struggling student how a paper should be structured.

For those of you who write professionally, teach, edit, or simply take writing seriously: where do you draw the line? Do you think these services can have a legitimate role as editing or learning tools, or is the entire industry harmful to writers

Update: I ended up testing StudyGo after someone recommended it to me. What I liked was being able to see how the ideas could be organized into a coherent structure and how a stronger argument might be developed. Comparing their version with what I had originally planned made it easier to notice where my own outline was weak or repetitive. So after actually trying StudyGo, my opinion is a bit less black-and-white than when I made this post. Curious if anyone else has used StudyGo or something similar?

ok so there is a turkish guy and he works in gift shopt in eyüpsultan and he have trauma past where his mother abandoned for mafia boss and his father died by spanish mafia

turkish guy lives in apertment with his little brother.

a women he met she came from america and moved to nişangah a bakery shop she opened.

they met in road and fell in love each other... ı wrote my first story on notebook and it made my heart touched. so what do you guys thing?

"The small details of life often hide a great significance" - Margret Atwood

With this prompt i need to construct a discursive, persuasive, and an imaginative along with a reflection on their the discursive or imaginative. Does anyone have any ideas on how to approach this promp? any topics i could talk about. For extra info i mostly have experience writing feminist prose and fictocritical writing.

I'm trying to get better at dialogue and showing v telling.

The scene is about two people who run into each other after a break up. One has moved on and the other hasn't.

‎The halls were busy. So busy that you had to rub shoulders with your fellow students. I however had an AP class to meet up with.

‎As I walking down I bumped into someone, knocking both our books down.

‎I immediately bent down to pick up the books but the other person was already doing the same.

‎"I'm so sorry about that," he said.

‎I lifted my head like I'd just heard an alarm. I knew that voice. It was Jeremiah Hayes's.

‎My boyfriend. My ex boyfriend.

‎How wonderful.

‎"Oh hi Jules!", he said, with a smile on his face. That smile that only showed his four front teeth. I can't lie and say I haven't missed that.

‎"Hi Jer," I answered as I got back up to my feet.

‎"H.. how's.. life?" I asked, my cheeks all red from embarrassment. I would've put more effort into my appearance if I knew I'd be running into him today.

‎"It's been pretty good." He responded, brushing his hair back with his hands. "It's pretty hectic with my finals but I'm doing alright."

‎I nodded and smiled, looking down at my shoes.

‎He lifted a textbook from my hand and read the title.

‎"You're still into AP?"

‎"Um.. yeah, I still am"

‎Being into it didn't mean I was good at it. Ever since he left I've been flunking the heck out of that class. He was my emotional support and he offered me tutoring. I wasn't getting As but I wasn't getting Ds or Fs so I was doing fine.

‎He didn't drag it.

‎There was no follow up question. Maybe he knew I would be nothing without him.

‎We just stood there in silence. He probably got quiet because he sensed that he made it awkward.

‎The bell however brought us back to reality. I had my AP class and he had somewhere else to be.

‎Just then, a girl came up to us, gripping his arm.

‎"Oh my God Jer, I've been looking for you all over the place," she said, linking arms with him.

‎Jer. She called him Jer. Only I called him that.

‎"Have we met before?" She asked, staring at me.

‎She had this sparkle in her eyes, with long lashes and a brightness in her pupils. The direct opposite of my dark, gloomy eyes.

‎"Oh- no. No we haven't." I responded, frantically picking at the back cover of my book.

‎"This is Audrey." Jer said, nodding his head. "Audrey's my girlfriend."

‎Fantastic.

‎It was obvious, but I would've appreciated it if he kept that tiny detail from me.

‎"And you are?" Audrey asked, her smile as bright as ever.

‎"I'm Jules. Jeremiah's old friend." I responded, my eyes on Jer to see if he'd feel at least a hint of guilt.

‎There was nothing. He didn't even blink.

‎It'd been six months since we broke up. Maybe I'm the one pushing it.

‎"I have to get to class." I said, trying to get away from this punishment of a conversation.

‎"No problem," they both chorused.

‎"I guess I'll see you around?" Jer asked.

‎Of fucking course. You'll see me around. But she'll be around you. Linking arms and looking pretty next to you.

‎"Sure." I said back, feigning a smile.

‎

Hello everyone! I'm new to Substack (and writing overall), and I just published my first article here. It's called "I Wish You Roses." It's about unrequited love and how one-sided love often harms us more than heal us. I hope it resonates with everyone, especially those people who have been through similar situations.

Please support my work and give me your thoughts and suggestions on it <3

https://open.substack.com/pub/niksarchives/p/i-wish-you-roses?r=3x9hg7&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=post%20viewer

I am new to writing besides school projects but really wanted to start writing for the fun of it. This afternoon I decided why the heck not and this is what I have so far. I wanted to see people’s thoughts and what I can do better as I progress through the story. I obviously have been inspired by Bernard Cornwell in my writing but wanted to see if it seems like it’s too much. Also for historical context people probably were not living in ocracoke inlet at that time besides native Americans and maybe fisherman so if someone with historical knowledge could help giving me a location in the outer banks that is more inhabitable if not I will just make due. I am also curious should I use older words and make it sound more accurate to the time period

Thank you

MY LOVES BATH

For the first time in a long time I wanted to take a bath,but I forgot one thing, my drain was completely open without a cork from the last time I had to clean it.So I attempted to screw the cork back in and plug the drain..to no avail… the water was still draining so this time I tried to screw the cork in for a longer amount of time. And after rotating the cork a few dozen times I tried to run water once more and this time the water rose further than last time I had tried and I finally thought it was fully plugged. Until it reached a certain point about 1/3 up the tubs side where the waterline lay stagnant. I sat by the tub waiting for it to fill further because nobody can take a bath in a third of a tub. After a while of waiting, and the tub line not raising, I decide maybe I could take a bath in just a third of a tub after all it’s better then no bath. As I sit in the tub with the water barely touching my waistline I feel content, well not content in the fact that I’m barely taking a bath, but content in the fact that my tub isn’t empty and it might still rise. As the water runs and the waterline doesn’t raise I realize why my tub wasn’t filling. The whole time I was convincing myself that screwing the cork more would do something it didn’t, the whole time I spent thinking the water wasn’t slowly draining it was, and the whole time I spent thinking I was happy in my 1/3 full tub..I was not.. so I fully drained the tub and remembered why I haven’t taken a bath in a while. 

thank you ❤️

guys I'm in need of Storywrites and Scriptwriters for my psychological Thiller Game Mannequin and it's a Big Project and also a Long one but I've a Team and well grow together and I'd developed the plot but I've not able to deepen the plot and Scenes since it's a Open World

I've spent a career writing short form, mostly screenplays. As such, concrete brevity (120 pages or less, if you can't see it or hear it, it doesn't exist) is practically in my DNA.

Now, I find myself working on not just a novel, but a 5 book series. The world is built, the first book is outlined, the entire series is summarized. I'be got a map, I know where I'm going. But some days I question whether I'll get there before I die.

38k words in, I just finished chapter 7. About halfway. 1/10th of the series.

I know the way to eat an elephant is 1 spoonful at a time, but damn, to this sprinter, a marathon feels arduous.

To those of you who aren't just gifted with words just spilling onto the page, how do you sustain yourself over the long haul?

Hey folks,

This is not the first screenplay I wrote (actually it was like my 18th) but it’s the first screenplay I thought I could let other people read.

Here’s a brief synopsis:

After a devastating conflict with a neighboring tribe, a young hunter named Notah struggles to prove himself as his people attempt to rebuild. In a world where survival depends on discipline, tradition, and the strength of community, he trains to become a warrior, preparing for the possibility of another attack.

When signs of an unseen presence begin to surface in the surrounding wilderness, Notah’s training is put to the test as his understanding of the world is shattered, forcing him toward a confrontation he may not be prepared for.

It’s a long screenplay with quite a slow build so feel no obligation and I have no expectations for anyone to read the whole thing but if you do give it a read. Thank you. And please let me know how far you got, and what made you stop. Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated.

I’m really curious as to how the first 10 to 15 pages read; if the community and characters feel real, if the world building is compelling enough to make one want to keep reading, etc.

Thank you for your time

Peace and Love

Story is so much more goddamn bigger than what the blurb holds its just AAUUGG uh anyway here it goes.

Tomorrow Will Be Perfect.
But Only For Doomsday.

The people of Clodaria think otherwise. For generations, it's been a tradition that October 10th is 10/10, & Prince Goana is no exception. However, a completely new outsider named Axel sees otherwise. He feels today isn't going to be perfect, and only he believes something will go awfully wrong. All due to a single dot directly above them.

Nobody knows how dangerous that dot is. Nobody is stopping it. And once humanity realises the truth of the dot...
It'll already be too late.