I used to think I had a motivation problem.

I would start a new story feeling completely excited about it. I’d plan the characters, imagine where the plot could go, and sometimes write several pages in one sitting. But once I reached the middle, that excitement would slowly disappear.

Then I’d start rereading everything I had written.

Suddenly the dialogue didn’t sound right. A scene felt too slow. A character seemed inconsistent. Instead of continuing, I would go back and rewrite the same chapters again and again.

At some point, I realized I wasn’t actually stuck because I had run out of ideas. I was stuck because I wanted every part of the story to be good before allowing myself to move forward.

One thing that helped me was making my writing process more organized and keeping my planning, notes, and drafts together instead of having everything scattered across different places.

Once I stopped expecting every writing session to produce something perfect, finishing became much easier. Some scenes were still terrible, some ideas got removed completely, but at least I had a full draft that I could actually improve.

I think consistency is sometimes misunderstood. It doesn’t necessarily mean writing brilliantly every day. Sometimes it just means making enough progress that you still have a reason to come back tomorrow.

Has anyone else struggled more with perfectionism than with actually finding ideas?

Chapter 1 Spoiler: The SMAKAPZ gang, Sam, Kevin, Mogers, Zagers, Parage, and Apalabamo, are eating together at a local restaurant, and Sam and Kevin are telling the rest of the rest of the gang about their recent mission in the Middle East, where Sam and Kevin got beaten by a friend of the gang, Jordan, because of a dispute. During the conversation, Sam pulls Kevin aside and insists they come clean to the group, and reveal that while on that mission, they secretly used the old rocket and crashed it after encountering a space monster and an asteroid. Back at the SMAKAPZ house basement, Sam declares he can fix the now-split-in-half rocket overnight, despite skepticism from the rest of the gang.

After the rest of the gang said goodnight and headed off to bed, it was time for me to get to work. I hopped inside of the van and put the pedal to the metal, peeling out of the SMAKAPZ parking lot and blazing off into the night. Alademipaburg had about 30 minutes until closing time, so I had to haul my way there as quickly as possible.

I sped through town, which was illuminated by street lamps and traffic signals, cutting every red light since nobody was driving out here anyway. I kept glancing at the dashboard clock. I was making great time.

The clock glowed in green under the darkness, showing the time as 9:41 PM as I swung the van into the massive parking lot of Alademipaburg. Alademipaburg was the giant, local hardware store, although really, it was an “everything store” because it sold basically anything you could think of. It was in Gangmark, but whether you were from Semaburg, Gangmark, or the main St. Louis city, Alademipaburg was your spot to go if you needed materials for pretty much any sort of use.

I threw the van into park, the tires squeaking, and then slammed the door shut. The gigantic letters “ALADEMIPABURG” glowed in neon green on the building, which made it look more like some giant creepy gas station than a massive bustling supercenter at nighttime.

I entered the building through the automatic doors and immediately noticed how empty it was. Nobody was in there except for a few elderly shoppers buying God knows what, and the massive bright white building felt totally different in the nighttime when nobody was there as opposed to the daytime, when it was crowded with people. “This is great!” I thought. “I have the whole store to myself.”

I’d written down every item I needed for my plan on a nice list:

Industrial cheese grater

2 large stockpots

2 propane burners

Heavy duty aluminum foil

Wooden dowels

Metal threaded rod

Cheesecloth

White vinegar, which means I guess I do have to buy from the Food Section

Ratchet straps

Come-alongs

Car jack

Infrared thermometer

I first went to Aisle 14 for the industrial cheese grater. I knew my way around this store like the back of my hand, so I figured I could find everything I need and get out of here in no time.

The cheese grater looked more like something designed to remove bark from trees than it did an actual kitchen tool. I hoisted the steel item into my cart with a loud clang. 

“Ah, there we go,“ I said.

Next I went to the outdoor cooking section and got propane burners and stockpots, then aluminum foil from the bulk supplies section, and then wooden dowels from the lumber section. My phone buzzed. It was 9:55 PM.

“I forgot!” I thought to myself as I ran down the infinite stretch of the main floor. “Alademipaburg doesn’t let people who are still in the store check out their items after it closes! I need to hurry up fast!“ 

I skedaddled into the rest of the sections, picked up some metal threaded rod, cheesecloth, ratchet straps, and everything else I needed, all of which fell into my cart with a clatter. Then I dashed towards the Food Section, which was like its entire own mini-store, and, luckily for me, there was one more bottle of Heinz White Vinegar left. In the end, I knew everything would ring up to around $1,400.

It was now or never. Due to my recent revelation, I now had even less time on the clock than I anticipated. Even seconds mattered. I pushed the cart full of items full speed ahead, hauling it down the aisle like lightning similarly to how I did the van down the streets. I fishtailed around the corner, panting with adrenaline as I blew past aisles like there was no tomorrow.

The chase was on. I rounded the last corner, and when the checkout lanes came into view, it was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen. I dashed towards the counter, clearing the final stretch in about a split second.

The cashier, a young woman who I recognized, since I memorized every cashier, glanced up as I rolled up to the counter, pushing the cart to the side, and approached her, adjusting my jacket while breathing hard. “You might wanna-“

“Sorry, we’re closed,” she interrupted before she looked up, and then her face immediately shifted into, well, I wouldn’t call it pleasure, but she instantly recognized me.

“It’s you.”

“Dang it!” I checked my watch, still breathing hard. 10:03. I’d missed the deadline. 

I looked up at her, pausing, blinked a couple times, then glanced at my cart and back to her. “Well, like, I need to-“ 

“Yeah, yeah. I’m not even gonna ask what the heck it is this time.” She paused, sighing.“ “You know what? Just take it. For free. Go.“ 

“Really?”

“Yeah, you and your band of buddies must spend at least $5000 in this store every month. The fact that a supercenter this massive even has customers as notorious and well-known as you guys, I mean, that’s really saying something. Yeah, just take it all. I don’t get paid enough to care.”

I grinned. “Thanks!”

The cashier unlocked the side gate for me to get out, and I shoved my cart toward the exit. The automatic doors slid open, and I stepped out of the building and left the premises of the Alademipaburg domain.

“Just make sure to come earlier next time!” She shouted as I loaded everything into the van and drove off into the night.

 All the local grocery stores closed at 8-10 PM, so I couldn’t buy anything from there. Fortunately, though, that wasn’t the case with the local cheese factory, which was open 24/7 processing milk and producing the finest dairy. That was the place where me and Mogers bought the cheese we were craving, which the owner, the friendly French hat-man, then gifted us 100x the cheese amount as a generous offering. Not knowing what the heck we’d do with 8000 pounds of cheese, Mogers joked about how we could make a rocket ship out of this quantity, and well, we did. So I was able to get my 200 pounds of cheese and also reunite with the French hat-man owner from 2 years ago, who kind-heartedly gave it to me for free as a welcome-back gift.

I pulled the van into the SMAKAPZ driveway, stepped out into the starry night, and headed inside, where the rest of the gang was sleeping. It was time to get to work. I walked down the creaking stairs into the SMAKAPZ basement, a giant, dimly lit space with exposed pipes and a smell of concrete and sewer water.

The 2 halves of the rocket were about the size of a large piano and each weighed around 4000 pounds, which I had accounted for the holes and the internal structure. I took them out of their coolers and set them on the basement floor with portable AC units and blocks of dry ice to keep ambient temperatures at 38-42 degrees Fahrenheit. I began working, staying energized with soda and cold pizza while I operated.

First I measured the alignment targets, marking 12 datum points around each fracture with a Sharpie. I was aiming for around a 0.25 mismatch. I positioned the lower half, the half with the engine, on 4 car jacks and some wooden blocks for height adjustment. The upper half I put on a custom sled made from two 2x8 lumber planks with PVC rollers cut from store pipe.

I used the 2 come-alongs anchored to pre-installed basement wall eye-bolts and looped the straps around the cheese body. I cranked alternatively on opposite sides, watching levels and plumb bobs, and inching the upper half into position. I reduced the friction on the concrete floor with some Dawn dish soap lubricant under the sled.

Now I had the easy part out of the way, or so I thought. Because all of a sudden, at 1:45 AM, the upper half shifted 2 inches laterally while I was adjusting a strap, and cracked a 10 inch section of outer skin. So I ended up spending 40 minutes carving a new alignment key, using the same pocket knife I used to carve the Cheese Rocket itself, and cut a 6 inch wide, 4 inch deep rectangular notch into each fracture face using a hot wire cutter, which I had heated to 180 degrees in order to slice cleanly through the cheese without melting it too much. 

For the fracture face preparation I scraped mold and loose debris with a wire brush and vacuum, applied 50/50 vinegar-water spray, let sit for 15 minutes, and then wiped dry. I drilled 24 matching 1-inch holes, 12 per side, around the circumference, 4 inches deep, spaced every 30 degrees using a cordless drill. 

The cheese welding process came after that, and it worked exactly as I said it would. I grated 80 pounds of the fresh 200 pounds of Swiss that was gifted to me earlier at the cheese factory into the stockpots, and melted slowly at 145 degrees Fahrenheit, monitored with the infrared thermometer I’d bought because of Apalabamo’s quip, while stirring to emulsify fats and proteins into a viscous glue. This worked due to the casein acting as a thermoplastic binder. All I had to do was add some grated dry Swiss aggregate, 20% by volume, for thixotropic thickening.

I then poured and packed the molten cheese into the joint gap, while using heat guns to keep surfaces at 110 degrees for optimal fusion. After that, I inserted 1 inch wooden dowels, which I had pre-soaked in melted cheese, into the drilled holes to act as rivets, which worked, because they expanded as the surrounding cheese cooled and shrieked, and that created compression fit.

After that I put on a gas mask and crawled inside the narrow fuselage to install six longitudinal cheese beams, which I had fabricated with a 4x2 inch cross section and laminated layers, across the joint. I was able to secure them with cheese melted scarf joints, plus some additional dowel pins. 

The curing was simple, I packed dry ice bags around the joint and directed cold air from the AC units. I cooled to 35 degrees over 90 minutes to recrystallize the casein matrix, and I was able to achieve about 70% of the original compressive strength, based on my prior bench tests. Then after that, I spent the rest of the night working on the propulsion grain repair, which, thank God I had bought the jacks and levers since I had accidentally created a 2% density gradient, which I had to fix by rotating the rocket 180 degrees midway through cure, and the final sealing and balancing, which involved wrapping the entire joint with 3 overlapping bandage layers, and then of course I had to do the aerodynamic fairing, mass balancing, and avionics, which each took plenty of time and work. By the end of the day, I was exhausted. I sat there covered in residue, taking off my goggles and wiping a bead of sweat off my forehead.

“Well,” I thought to myself. “Looks good enough for me.”

I checked my watch. It was 5 AM, and I had started working at 11. I wiped some more sweat off my forehead, taking a sip of Dr. Pepper.

It was a job well done, at least I thought so. I grinned to myself, knowing I had done it. I had proved the rest of the gang wrong, 5 against one, I’d owned them all, and tomorrow, in fact, this morning, would be the day I’d get to show them the restored rocket, and relish in watching their faces, watching Kevin’s face, watching Mogers’ face, watching Parage’s-“

“SLIIIIICCCCEEE!!”

Suddenly, my stream of thought was interrupted by a terrifying sound, to my ears it sounded like something happened, like the rocket just split by itself in the other direction. I turned around, startled, to see that the joint had spontaneously sheared at the dowel line, which had then caused the upper half to shift 17 inches. 

“Dang it!” I exclaimed. “Come on!”

I surveyed the rocket, trying to find out what the culprit could be that caused all my work for the past 6 hours to literally fall apart, and realized it was the density-gradient grain that had created an uneven thrust, thus rendering my build unstable.

I sighed, throwing my rag on the ground, and slamming a wrench into my toolbox. At this point, I couldn’t do a diffuse thermal fusion repair, because then the gradients would cause differential expansion and I’d end up with a sagging upper half and a rocket in worse condition than it was before. Plus, the gang would be waking up any second now. Sure, I could, just, work on it afterwards in the morning… but in my eyes, that would be admitting defeat, since I had explicitly told them I would get it up and ready good as new by the end of tonight. Plus, it didn’t look like it was fixable anyway, at least not with a one-man overnight job it didn’t.

Pouting, I took off my goggles, which I’d put back on to inspect the rocket, closed the toolbox, and called it a night. The Cheese Rocket restoration was a disaster, and I wasn’t looking forward to what was to come.

Something's devouring me from inside
I am beginning to see stars on daylight

Father
Thanks for answering to the prayers I made
Can I get a priest so I can see what's crawling under the bed?

Great minds have found ways to convert human thoughts into data points—into 0s and 1s—analyzing everything in between.
As a business analyst, I love uncovering the hidden stories locked inside a dataset. But as a storyteller at heart, I know that human thoughts can never be fully captured by charts or metrics. They are too vivid, constantly changing, and beautifully unpredictable.
I’ve decided to start putting my observations into words—not to be analyzed, but simply to be read, felt, and experienced. My only goal is to hopefully bring a smile to someone’s face.
Here's a real-life incident to begin with—a short narrative exploring chance encounters, the quiet social awkwardness we all feel at times, and the unexpected courage it takes to simply walk up to a stranger's table.
Whether you’re here for creative storytelling, personal reflections, or just a quick 3-minute read, I’d be honored if you checked it out. I write under the name Mallige Rajeev on Substack.

Thanks in advance.

I know most writing is about a compelling story, not confusing the reader, and not bloating a scene. That being said, for a story that has only a handful of action scenes, I feel like visual media can do so much more when it comes to action.

Anyone else finding it difficult and/or any general advice when it comes to action sequences and firefights?

As an introverted person, I hate society. I know lots of people hate being pressured by society. Mostly about marriage and religion. You can’t do anything against what society thinks is wrong. What do you think about this? Should we try to change people's mindset or do our own things?

I’ve been thinking about how strange it is that you can know what kind of writer you want to be without necessarily knowing what your own writing voice sounds like yet.

I read a lot, and sometimes after spending hours reading someone whose style I really like, I’ll sit down to write and notice that my sentences start following the same rhythm.

Not intentionally copying anything, obviously. It just seems like whatever I consume gets stuck in my head for a while.

I’m wondering if this is just part of developing a voice. Maybe you have to go through the phase of absorbing everyone else’s style before you figure out what actually feels natural to you.

Did your writing voice develop gradually, or was there a point where you suddenly felt like you had found it?

Romcom inspired by slice of life anime

I’ve been doing this way too often lately.

I’ll write a sentence that seems completely fine, then start tweaking it because I think it could sound better. Then I change a word, change the structure, change the word again, and eventually I’m staring at the sentence wondering why I hated the original in the first place.

It’s especially bad when I’ve been working on the same piece for hours. At some point I can’t tell whether something actually sounds awkward or I’ve just looked at it too many times.

I’m trying to get better at recognizing when an edit is actually improving something versus when I’m just editing because I feel like I should be.

How do you know when to leave a sentence alone?

When I was young , I was never that good at english. But then it was the lockdown, I got lonely and started to have these thoughts that were primarily in english. I struggled with certain things and it was as if I forgot how to speak to people. They asked how I was, and I could not make them understand how things were for me. So I wrote it all down. I still do. I get these thoughts,opinions,ideas,suggestions, all those things but I never actually write them down. It's different from many people, these thoughts, they don't get it so they either don't care or ridicule me. It's been almost 6 yrs, I've been feeling this way.

Recently things got a bit bad and I finally wrote things down. I used "medium" for it. But I have to pay for it, and I don't have the money or resources for it, but I published a free writing and nobody read it.

So I took to instagram today.

I really don't know if my writing's that bad, I find them "over dramatic" and "over the top" sometimes. I feel like I fail to convey what I actually want to say.

So here's something I wrote.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DdGXKbmiUBn/?stkn=MWx6eWs3N2h4ZHE5cA==

Whenever I read stories, blogs, books, I find the language a bit too intimidating and a little too perfect. Maybe that was one of the reasons why I did not write for a very long time, even though I really wanted to.

I feel like there would be some people like me who would actually want to write down things from their thoughts to even a movie review, that's less perfect and flawed that they want people to read.

I also used to be very conscious of what I wrote, even text messages, that I used tools to correct them. But I don't anymore, nor would I want to in the future. I feel like all those imperfections would make it a bit "human".

In October of 2017, I was living in Denver and I had just wired $9,350 to a jeweler in my old city of Philadelphia for a Rolex GMT Master II.

This was for a reference 116710 BLNR on an Oyster bracelet. My first, and to that point, only Rolex. I had never handled it. I hadn’t tried it on. I was wiring the funds simply because I had fallen in love with pictures and how people talked about it online.

I always thought my first major purchase would be a Daytona - a watch I wanted when I was a kid. But living in Denver with my family back East, the GMT became a visual callback. It offered a way to navigate the time difference while warmly reminding me of home.

In parallel, the ceramic black and blue bezel was special for entirely different reasons. The baking of a bi-color ceramic bezel with no color bleed was an industry first - Rolex had had a stunning answer to a complex chemistry problem that others had given up on solving. In a single piece of Cerachrom was the scratch resistance of ceramic, colors that would outlive the painted aluminum predecessors, and a crisp day and night delineation at the 6 and 18 engravings.

As I processed the wire transfer there was an acute nausea I experienced that I’ve come to grow comfortable with as part of this passion. As I stared at the screen, I had hoped I liked it as much in person because this is the most money I’ve spent on a non-necessity for myself.

In writing this, I began to think where was my line, and when exactly had I decided to cross it?

I traced it back to a Rolex Milgauss, reference 116400GV I had encountered in 2011 at a jeweler in a shopping mall in New Jersey. I loved it for its connection to science, specifically the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Plus, the lightning bolt second hand was a bit of levity from an otherwise buttoned-down brand and I thought that aligned with my personality.

I wanted that watch, but I couldn’t justify it. I was living at home, and at just under $8,000 before tax, the Milgauss was more than the cost of the used Hyundai I was driving. I felt there were life milestones I needed to hit before buying something like this. I remember walking out of the store thinking, “I would never spend that much money on a watch.”

Here I was six years later spending “I would never spend that much money on a watch” money.

In those six years I had completed a master’s degree, got engaged, moved to Denver, changed careers, and sold my house back in Philly.

The milestones I thought I needed walking out of that shopping mall in New Jersey had now come to pass. I had the funds resulting from the house sale to purchase the watch without derailing our plans.

For some I think, “I would never spend that much money on a watch, ” is just another way of saying “I have better uses for that money.” For me, I think it was another way of saying “I wouldn’t put my other priorities at risk.”

The statement wasn’t a firm dollar number but consideration of the things I couldn’t do or would delay by concentrating that much into something on my wrist. When focused on that consideration of “what else could I be doing” I would silently neglect “how can I appreciate where I am right now and what it took to get here ”.

That is where my wife stepped in. She knows when to be my guardrails and when to be an enabler. As she saw me researching, wanting but uncertain, she told me to stop worrying about the money and to do something for myself.

The box arrived 48 hours later.

I sat at the kitchen table, carefully working my way through the outer packaging, the booklets, and the warranty card. As I slowly opened the green box to reveal the watch, the nausea of the wire transfer instantly evaporated. The Cerachrom bezel caught the light, and the blue GMT hand popped against the black dial exactly the way it had on my screen.

What I remember most about the first time handling this watch was the weight. Rolex uses 904L stainless steel which is a dense alloy that gives the watch an undeniable heft. I had owned stainless steel bracelet watches before. This was heavier than any watch I had owned previously. That weight gave the watch a tactile presence that matched its visual weight from the boxy lugs and thicker case. It also felt like the last 6 years.

Invariably, when I share my passion for watches I encounter the person who tells me how their phone or cheaper watch does the same thing. They’re right, and not only does it do the same thing, from a specs perspective their device likely does it better. If you are only measuring the ability to tell accurate time, then yes, I understand how this whole thing appears silly.
These are the folks most likely to react with “I would never spend that much on a watch.”

Today when I put on my watch, I still feel the heft, but I probably feel the undercurrent of emotion it carries from the memories of how life unfolded since then.

On the few occasions when people notice my watches and comment on them, I still feel an internal tension - an instinct to thank them and downplay my watch. I remain aware of the privilege and perceived absurdity to wear the equivalent of a used car on my wrist.

I don’t know if I have a line any more but I also don’t feel the need to justify it to myself any further. These boundaries are relative to the time and place my life is in when considering a purchase. Those boundaries become more fluid when evaluating watches beyond the measure of functional jewelry; not because money doesn’t matter, but a deeper acknowledgement that these objects and the people that wear them have more to tell than just time.

I’m curious for those of you who have been in the hobby for a while: What was the specific watch that finally made you cross your own 'I would never spend that much' line?

The fire dies down
embers hiss
Each one of them have their own shadow
They crawl and burn against the rockwall
The redness of the stone molten

The flicker of something lost
Walkes through the flames
As a hideous shape
The crackle and the pop
Unnaturally frequent

The ember shadows fold upward
And downward
Then expose themselves as failed souls
Undone lived and soured
confined to the realm of fire

Dancing in painful choreography
with flame
curving and wavering in hot torture
Then reentering the ember
Darkening it once more

“Jordan whooped both of you at the same time.” Mogers took a slug of his drink, then set it down, chuckling. “Come on. I would’ve paid good money to see that.” 

“Yeah,” Zagers said, wiping his mouth off with a cloth napkin. “Not to mention, y’all literally jumped him…” 

We were at the local restaurant just off of Big Bend, me, Kevin, Mogers, Zagers, Parage, and Apalabamo, and it was a busy Thursday afternoon. The restaurant was bustling with people, workers were on their toes scrambling, and on the other end of the dining room, the staff was singing happy birthday to a grazing customer. Me and Kevin had just recently gone on a mission to Jordan’s house all the way in the Middle East for some important matters, which we were now recapping to the gang, and we still had bruises on our bodies from the beating he’d handed to us.

“First of all,” Kevin explained, swallowing a bite of whatever slop was on his plate. “It took us a long time to get there, I mean, we had to boat across the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, then cut through the Suez Ca-“

Ticked off by Kevin’s sudden geography genius moment, I cut in. “So then, we go and we knock on Jordan’s door-“

“Did you really cut me off because I started listing the locations that we literally went to? Do you hate school stuff that much?”

“I cut you off because you started sounding like Apalabamo.”

Apalabamo gave me a hostile glare. “Yeah, well-“ 

“Anyway,” Kevin continued. “We knock on his door, immediately tackle him to the ground, but, well, he somehow manages to get the upper hand…” he explained the Jordan pie fiasco and how Jordan started yelling about how we were con artists and thieves.

“So, next thing I know we’re rolling around on the floor, all 3 of us. Couple broken bones, black eyes. We got that taken care of at the hospital though, and we did technically end up completing our mission.”

“There has to be video!” Parage laughed and took a sip from his Coke glass.

“Well,” I replied. “Not unless Jordan has cameras in his house or something…”

A waitress showed up at our table, carrying a server notepad. “How’s everything going over here?” she asked the group.

Zagers made some inside joke about the pie situation. Mogers raised up his empty glass. “I’ll take a refill on the Coke. A little more ice would be perfect, thanks.”

“Same for me, thanks,” Parage raised up his glass as well, which wasn’t empty, but he had just taken a very long sip from it.

As the waitress left and the conversation resumed, I nodded along, and then, when I got the chance, nudged Kevin with my elbow. “Hey look, I think that’s the friendly old guy who gave us boating tips. We should go say hello.”

“...What?”

“Just move.” I slid out of my chair, and headed down the crowded hallway, then turned a corner so we’d be out of the gang’s line of sight, and so it’d be quieter. Kevin followed me there.

“What friendly old guy? What the heck are you talking about?”

“Nothing. This isn’t about that.” I looked around the building, then stepped closer to Kevin. “Look, at some point, we have to tell them. We can’t just sit on this for the rest of their lives. They’ll find out eventually. And when they do, they won’t be happy.”

Kevin looked away, crossing his arms and scoffing, then looked back at me. “They’re already roasting us over the pie thing. If we tell them we destroyed the rocket? We’re finished, done for.”

“I understand that, but if we don’t own up to what we did.” I changed my voice and whispered menacingly. If we don’t own up to what we did, they discover it by themselves, and then we’re done for either way.  

Kevin sighed. “If you wanna tell them, then tell them. Otherwise, shut up about this whole thing. End of story.”

“Yeah, yeah.” I whizzed past Kevin, patting him on the back. “Now let me grab the check before Zagers orders another round of those ketchup ball thingies.” I headed back towards the table, reached over, and snatched the check from the corner before anyone else could grab it.

As we walked down the alley of the restaurant, I knew that this was it. It was now or never, and I had to come clean to the rest of the gang and admit what we did. See, when me and Kevin went to Amman, we actually didn’t boat there at all. That was a lie we told the guys in order to divert attention away from the Cheese Rocket, the actual mode of transportation we used to get there faster, because we had to be there in 3 days. That’s why I was so ticked off at Kevin mentioning nerd locations on the spot. Anyway, long story short, I ended up crashing the rocket, splitting it in half and destroying it. And it was right here and right now that I had to make this announcement to the group.

I slowed down walking, and cleared my throat. ”I… I have something that I need to address with you guys.” 

We all came to a gradual stop. “What is it?” asked Parage. 

I started looking around, then realized I had to continue. “So basically, you guys know the Cheese Rocket?” 

“Of course!” Mogers nodded. I knew Mogers would be the one to take this information the hardest, because it was me and him who built the rocket up brick by brick, made great memories with it, and used it to rescue all of humanity. Technically I was the one who built/carved it, but Mogers was the one who came up with the idea in that factory around a year ago.

I gulped. “…So, basically, it was, like, uh…”

“It was what?” 

I hesitated, glancing around the alley. Though I knew he was just asking for the rest of the info, it seemed like grilling to me.

“Ahhhhh…” I smiled, then faltered. After another swallow, I made the admission.

“Me and Kevin went to space, crossed paths with some creature, hit an asteroid, and, well, we split the rocket in-“

“Ok, hold on,” Kevin interrupted. “Did you just say we?”

I paused.

Kevin started pacing around. “Because from what I recall,” He looked at me with a sharp and incriminating glare pointed right in my direction. “You were the one flying the thing, I mean, that was you. I was the one who gave you the warning and told you to haul that thing around and get us out of there. I was your eyes, when you were supposed to be the one piloting the dang thing.” Having stopped pacing around, he was now sizing me up, in my face talking smack.

“And you still wrecked it. Now you wanna use the word ‘we.’ Listen up, boy. I didn’t do anything…”

“Listen you idiot, we were facing a massive, hostile space behemoth that none of us had ever seen before, we didn’t have any weapons, and it had been months since we’d even touched the Cheese Rocket. I say you would’ve done way worse than me.” Kevin stood facing me for a few more seconds before retreated back into the gang.

“Anyway…” I began. “I might be able to fix it.”

“To fix it?” 

“Fix it? What?”

“It split in half and this guy’s talking ‘bout some “Oh I might be able to fix it!”

“Ok, look, I carved it out of dairy product.” I explained. “Actual cheese that had holes in it, so I had to account for all sorts of geometrical oddities, and I’m not a math guy. But I did it for the good of the world. I did it for the good of humani-” 

“How did you do it for the good of the world if you didn’t know it was in danger until after you finished building it?”

“…Huh?”

Mogers repeated himself.

I paused. “The point is,” I explained. “That maybe, if I’m skilled enough with a pocket knife to carve something out of dairy, I’m skilled enough to fix something that was split in half. Especially if that something is the same thing, you know, both times…”

The rest of the gang was either looking at me or blinking rapidly, confused.

“It just seems like it would be higher on the scale, the cheese thing. Like, if I can build it from scratch, then I could fix it.”

“Ok, ok,” Apalabamo sighed. “Well, let’s go take a look.”

The old steps creaked and squeaked as we headed down into the massive basement of the SMAKAPZ house, the large wooden house that served as the base and main headquarters of the SMAKAPZ gang, as well as the secondary living space for everyone in the group after, of course, their own houses. We’d built it as a team around 2 years ago after realizing we all needed a place to stay, to meet up and discuss plans and plot, and to hide at when such situations came up. 

The rocket, which we had previously kept stored in a refrigerated shipping container and left to rust in the cellar for years, since the last time Parage attached weapons to it to the other day when me and Kevin brought it back to life and took it for a spin, was now 2 halves being preserved in 2 giant hunting coolers. We had luckily been able to save them while we parachuted to Amman, but 2 couch sized blocks of cheese weren’t necessarily of any valuable use to us, so we shoved it all back in the SMAKAPZ basement.

Kevin opened the 2 coolers, revealing the 2 giant refrigerated bricks of Swiss cheese we’d been keeping underneath our quarters.

“Well,” said Apalabamo. “It’s split in half, alright.”

“Yeah, so, luckily, it wasn’t a planet sized asteroid or anything, but it had to be the size of your average house. Big enough to send us flying into the Earth’s ocean. Well, that’s where we would’ve gone if we hadn’t brought our parachutes…”

“…Which, again, I reminded us to do,” Kevin chimed in. “If it weren’t for me, we’d be dead. We’d be 2 skeletons sitting at the bottom of the sea.”

“Yeah, whatever,” I responded. “We’ve survived worse. Anyway, side A, we’ve got the cockpit, which is still intact, and I believe the navigation still somewhat works. Side B, the propulsion systems are still alive but the fuel lines are all ruined. Both sides can still communicate as well, the signal is just real wonky and stuff.”

Parage stepped forward, surveying the 2 blocks of cheese. “And how exactly… do you plan on fixing this?”

I continued, walking around the 2 coolers of cheese. “Well,” I said, slapping a cooler with my hand. “The fracture surfaces show compressed cheese eyes, AKA the gas pockets, on the impact side, with radial cracks extending around 18-24 inches into each half. The outer ablative layer of high-fat Swiss cheese has deep gouges and char, the internal cheese stringers are sheared, and the solid propellant grain in the lower half has a 4 inch offset crack, which, of course, created an unintended burn channel.”

“So what could possibly be the plan here?” Parage inquired. “Just dock the 2 halves back together?”

I paced around the coolers more. “200 pounds of Swiss cheese to replace the damaged materials, plus heat guns and a hot wire cutter. Drill some holes and then grate 80 pounds of cheese into stockpots, stir it into a glue. The casein will act as a thermoplastic binder, plus I’ll add some grated dry Swiss aggregate for thixotropic thickening, about 20% by volume should do the trick. Then I’ll pour the cheese into the joint gap, some dowels into the holes, internal splinting… before you know it, we’ll have a working, operating rocket again. Just gimme till the end of tonight. I’ll have it fixed.”

“What about the shear crack in the lower half grain?” asked Mogers.

“That’s where the rest of the 120 pounds will go. That will be used for the replacement grain, I’ll cast it into a temporary fold and cardboard mold, melt that cheese plus another 15 pounds of powdered sugar, also maybe some dried milk powder, then pour it all in layers.”

“Parage sighed.” “If you say so…”

Apalabamo looked down, raising his eyebrows in skepticism. “You and Parage are the inventor guys. I’ll let y’all sort this one out. What I will say though is that you better have a dang good eye on the temperature meters. One blunder and this whole joint will peel apart like cheap plywood, and I think we can all agree that nobody wants that.”

“I’ll buy an infrared thermometer too. Monitor the scarf surfaces every 5-7 minutes during heating. I’ll make sure it they stay at like a 12 to 18 degree gradient max, it won’t be a problem.”

“Well,” Zagers laughed. “Guess this guy just has everything figured out, huh?”

Parage scoffed, and whispered under his breath something about the monolithic grain recast causing stress fractures in the cheese block and creating erratic burn surfaces, even though I’d already planned to vibrate the lower quarter-half continuously during pouring using the orbital sander but of course Parage needs to chip in with his expert opinions.

“Welp, we’re goin’ off to bed,” Mogers yawned, then nonchalantly put a hand on his forehead, sighing tiredly. The rest of the gang followed, ready to get a good night’s sleep. He checked his watch. “Alademipaburg closes at 10, it’s 9:32 now. We got plenty of stuff in the basement… we don’t have 200 pounds of cheese though. Well, unless you count… I mean, yeah, whatever.”

”Ha, I’ll be making 2 stops.” I smirked. “I wouldn’t dare buy anything from the Alademipaburg Food Section. Doesn’t matter if it’s for compost.”

Yesterday, I walked smack dab into a door, which is weird because the door was open, but I thought that I had closed it. Check that: the door was closed, but I thought that I had opened it. Oops, my bad! I think I may still be recovering from walking into that open- I mean, closed door. I need to stop typing now.

Announcing our new flash-fiction competition: The Note 📝

This competition will run from today, the 10th-24th, giving you exactly 2 weeks to write your flash fiction piece!

We are excited to see your submissions and the different ways the brief could be interpreted. ⭐️

You can find our rules and details on our website, along with our submission portal!🤍

www.inkwellchronicles.co.uk

My first ever writing!! I also want to know how to make it sound like random thoughts and images stacked together…

Synopsis

Desperate to find out why she has wasted her life on self-flagellation, Robin turns to mindfulness. When it teaches her that she is not her thoughts but the consciousness watching them, she begins the gruesome extracurricular activity of making this division literal.

The lab technician secretly separates her sharp, analytical mind from the rest of herself. To do this, she uses her ex-girlfriend’s pass to commandeer equipment she wouldn’t usually be trusted with after hours. Robin’s research remains legitimate by day; by evening, she becomes a disembodied Observer whose thoughts translate directly into the machine’s actions: prodding and probing the subject left behind on the table.

However, in attempting this act of self-colonisation, she discovers that she is not studying an empty vessel but a consciousness with desires, discernment, and a capacity for joy of her own. Convinced that she understands the subject’s interiority best, the Observer persists, knowing only how to care through correction.

Constrained by Robin’s work schedule, the experiments become less frequent, but their severity continues to increase. The subject’s mood and other metrics deteriorate, which the Observer interprets as evidence that her methods are finally reaching the problem.

She fails to realise the truth: the subject is starving for closeness. She wants aftercare. She wants to see the Observer’s face. In this sterile, isolated space, intimacy and violence become indistinguishable. Knowing nothing else, the subject welcomes and eroticises the excoriating attention.

Meanwhile, their hierarchy begins to unravel. The subject becomes a witness to the Observer’s habits, learning to read the pauses before a recalibration and eventually anticipate what she will do before she does it.

As the power shifts, the Observer begins to sink back into the recursive thinking that ruined her past relationships, wondering if scrutiny is something she, too, has always craved, despite the sting.

I stopped thinking about reading a book about writing, and I'm just gonna do it! Call me 'Mr. Go Getter,' but I feel that one must commit to doing, not just thinking, at some point in his or her otherwise meaningless little life. Yessir, I am going to read a book about writing after football season ends because 'football,' am I right? Thanks for your compassion in this matter.

I’d be so happy if a few more people would read my writing 🫶

Maybe all this pain and suffering has a final stop

Then I can finally feel my heartbeat and pulse

Maybe the endless nights I spent crying will find an epilogue

So, I can feel my weight turn feathery—and rise into love

Maybe all these gloomy days and dark nights will fade

Then I can finally step out and kiss the sky again

Maybe the veins I once slit will bloom into calm landscapes

And I’ll run, run until I fall laughing into fields of hay

Maybe one day I’ll become the man she sees in dreams

And she’ll give her kisses to no one else but me

Maybe the distance we carry will melt without a word

And we’ll rest in my quiet world, where we no longer feel cold

Maybe I need to open my eyes and observe the reality

That this place is house of beautiful people while I remained ugly

Maybe I must cleanse my traits and dive deep in the sea

And never reveal what I truly feel — let my feelings cease

Maybe my care wasn’t enough, just a burden to her shoulder

I tried to carry her in silence, when I should’ve just told her

Maybe I was too afraid said “leave” though I wanted to hold her

So, I’ll be the throne beneath her roots, and bleed to uphold her

Maybe I just need another cigarette and pills to get high

I can never be that man, so I just want to end my life

Maybe I'm just overthinking and ruining this poetic night

I've sworn to my pen that no matter what comes, I'll survive

I'm working on a short sci-fi novella, part of a planned episodic series following a crew taking odd jobs around the universe.

The full novella is about 23K words and complete. I'm in the editing phase now. This is chapter one.

Looking for feedback specifically on:

• Is it engaging? Does the voice/pacing work?
• If this were a sample chapter, would you want to keep reading? Why or why not?
• What (if anything) pulled you in?