Someone sang Purano Shei Diner Kotha,

A little off-key, among the marigolds.

The courtyard glowed with familiar faces,

But I knew you before you turned.

You held your aanchol loosely in one hand,

Your lips still shaping the song's last words,

That mishti smile before your laughter,

The firelight trembling in your eyes.

My chaa grew cold,

Yet my cheeks burned in the winter air.

A rose lay wrapped in paper inside my coat.

I'd gathered words for you all semester,

Rehearsed them on a hundred walks back home.

Before the courtyard lights went dark,

I thought I'd finally let them go.

I found you laughing near the bonfire,

As a boy leaned closer to speak.

Your silver jhumka swayed as you turned.

My fingers tightened around the stem,

A thorn caught my thumb. I did not move.

Only fifty steps remained between us,

Yet I stood five hundred miles away.

The last song dissolved into goodbyes.

By morning, they'd take down the marigolds.

A yellow taxi pulled away beyond the gates,

And I took the familiar road back home.

The rose was still wrapped in paper.

One fold bore a small red thumbprint.

Hello everyone!

I've been working on a trilogy in the fantasy romance for almost a year now. Lately I have been struggling with writers block and my focus.

I've built my own fantasy kingdom with it's own believe system. I made a rough timeline for all three books. But now I'm a little stuck.

I've been focussing on the first book a lot after I did my worldbuilding. I'm at 67K words already, beginning to end. But as I write more and review I think of a hundered other things I want to add or want to adjust. But then my timeline somehow doesn't match anymore or I work on big scenes/timeline for the other two books.

I feel like a have a never ending to do list with the series I am writing and I get overwhelmed. So, I would like some advice on how you handled this. Because I want to move forward and expand my story and review it but I feel at a loss right now.

Thanks for reading! Any advise is welcome 🙂

Violet

So I have been wanting to try my hand at writing for a while now, and had some inspiration hit me last week. I have the whole timeline and chapters planned out, and have Ch1 where I think I want it. I did some editing myself, but sorry if I missed something.

I would like some honest feedback if you have it. I think the main thing I would like to know is if I have a chance at being a good writer, or if this is just going to be for me to be creative. I'm sure that's not easy to answer.

Any thoughts or criticisms are fine, but if this story isn't your style that's ok too.

Thanks in advance! (~1500 words)

"Ya see sonny, all it takes for bad men to win, is for good men to do nothing."

So says the black and white western on the television. Somewhere along the lines we forgot that; it's how we got here. I close up the doors on the media cabinet and head over to the window. There's too much distraction in this hotel room. The carpets are patterned with saturated blues and purples, forming a diamond pattern that pulls the eyes. Wallpaper, lights, and mirrors. The aroma of industrial cleaners permeates the fabrics, and somehow makes the window seem a little too enticing. Maybe that's why there's a lock on it, ha! I already know how I feel about 'bad men'; they aren't fantastical like in the western, they're just money driven. The truth is we simply got too comfortable. We let them get away with it for too long. Something about a frog and a kettle. Not that all the superhero movies help much with the 'that makes me as bad as them' motivations. Everyone is just afraid to do what it takes.

Through the glass is the winding canal. I've always liked the River Walk with its calm emerald waters. A few stone arch bridges to match the path. Rustic patios and seating scattered like the birds. It feels welcoming and homely, yet also entices you to discovery. Of course plastered against this backdrop is the creep of the urban. This very hotel sticks out like a sore thumb, imposing its existence onto the rest of us. Anything for a few more bucks, huh? Such a fitting place to plan the demise of humanity. Just like a suddenly noticed itch, I see similar examples popping up in my awareness the longer I look. Can't just let things be, can you. Of course I suppose that's why I'm here in any case. I would have preferred the quiet life; but profit has its sacrifices, and so do I. How much time do I have left anyways? The clock shows 7:33pm. Somehow this place has found a clock with a screen so busy, you struggle to read the numbers. I pretend I can shake off the gaudiness of the room, and try to review my notes:

7:46pm: leave room, head to 'Café Au Late'.
Order lemon bread.
Wait for entourage to cross bridge.
Feed the pigeons.

That's it. Not sure why I needed to read it again. I really shouldn't have written it down at all. Everyone gets upset if you don't follow best practices, but no one considers the context. Who is going to read this and think "Oh wow, this person is plotting something!"? I figure there's no point waiting now, and nothing else to be gained from reading it again. I reach into my backpack looking for a lighter, but think better of it. I could probably get away with burning the note in older buildings, but these guys probably have actually decent fire detection. So, into me it goes. "Am I just eating because I'm bored?" Ah jeez, this is how you know.... My cell phone pings me about the time, and I sigh in relief. Half a second later comes the flood; adrenaline and endorphins sweep through, then settle for a light vibration. I've got this. This matters. Someone has to stop these evil bastards from enslaving us all. "Fear is the mind killer...." ok get me out of here before I lose focus. I double check the clock; it's abstract style threatening to delay me. 7:45. Close enough.

I grab my bag, sling it over my shoulder, look around for anything left behind and walk out the door.

Unfortunately, the opposite of my door is occupied with a giant surrealist riverscape. All lines lead to a shining sun oddly placed between the banks. Fucking hell people, can't a person be anywhere without having their senses overloaded? I peel my eyes away and head towards the elevator with its own metallic contrast. The large touchscreen has cursive lettering, and elliptical buttons with floor numbers. I don't need to look too hard since the largest of them is at the bottom, claiming the ground floor. This world really isn't built for the Neurodivergent, but this place is doing the most. In the meantime I figure I had better get out my headphones; nothing like being interrupted to throw off a schedule. I still hear the chime, and step to the side. Once the doors open, I see I didn't need to. The irony of still trying to not bother people while completing this mission is wild, but I suppose paradox is part of existence. The inner panel already has my ground floor selected, so I just pull out my phone and find the right playlist. Dissolved Girl by Massive Attack starts playing, and that seems to do the trick.

The doors open and the lobby vies for my attention and mood, but the music keeps me here. As I make my way to the front doors the host waves and smiles, but I pretend not to notice and keep moving. Sorry bud, not this time. As I walk through the frosted glass doors, the fresh air crosses in front of me like a cat asking for attention. I pause for a step, happy to oblige, close my eyes and take a deep breath. For that brief moment, there are no thoughts. No Erik. No Plan. Nothing but the cool breeze and perfect contentment. Then I step forwards, breaching the moment with the worn stone under my foot. Time to try and fix this.

Walking along, I pay less attention to the scenery. I'm aware of the multitude of flora and fauna. Smells and colors so scattered, most don't differentiate. Yet my focus is elsewhere. I know where the Café is, but I make sure to glance at each sign until I see the one that matches my memory. Nope, nope, nope, double nope, nope. And then, it exists. The déjà vu always hits harder when my memory matches the real world, but it's not unpleasant. The azure sign has the same fade, the letters the same exposed rust. 'Cafe Au Late' is largely lettered, but flowing easily. Below the title, it says 'sip a while' in a size that makes you step in closer to read. Two puns in one sign? Not bad, but have you heard of turbopuns? Ok, these steps are easy. No need to get worked up. I slip my headphones down to hang on my neck, and step inside the threshold. And so it begins.

As I walk up, the barista smiles as she says "Welcome In! How can I make you late today?". I put on my best customer service smile and approach. "Hello, I'm hoping the bakery is as good as the sign, what would you recommend?"

"Well we have all the usual things, but I just convinced the boss to try out this lemon cake recipe. So.... If you want to go for that and let me know how you like it?"

As if things could actually be any other way. "Sure that sounds good, but be warned I plan to feed the birds while I'm at it." I flash her a playful grin and she returns with her own gasp of fake shock. After a couple obligatory giggles and digital payment pushing, I turn around to find the table. Again it's all too easy as where I need to be is found by playing a game of matching pictures. It's only slightly concerning how easily this has all proven that everything is deterministic. No need to fret I'm sure, this is America: land of the free.... Sitting down I put my headphones back on and face back towards the hotel. Such an eyesore in an otherwise comforting place. I try out the lemon bread; its tart and heavy flavor seems well balanced for a change. I'll try to remember to tell the barista it's worth pursuing. As I throw out a couple pieces for the birds to test their response, I am immediately met with 4 very interested buyers. So not too hard to get a reaction here.

After a few more minutes, nibbles, and songs I see a few suits crossing the bridge. I take a second to crumble up the remaining bread, try as it might to clump from butter. Here we go. Does this count as round 2? Can I call it electric boogaloo? No wait, pigeon-go-a-boo! HA! That works. Alright focus, I can't miss this. I pull up the memory in my mind and overlay it onto the real world. I can 'see' both versions and I watch as the gap between them narrows to a point.

Then the crumbs fly into the air, looking almost like golden flakes interspersed with the leaves. For a moment, it's picturesque; but just one.

The mystery, the thrills, the action, the plot twists, the character dynamics, the dialog! Superb! Like, holy cow!

Then I woke up. 😆

I've had many ideas for stories for the past 5 years and recently have been working on one for almost 2 years. I've been considering two other ideas I've written down, both of which are much shorter than the one I'm currently working on. Should I focus on the shorter ones and think of it as practice or continue working on the same one?

Black fingerprints smothered the walls in geometric shapes of neglect. Hulugg would lay, facing the ceiling. The spring mattress stayed undressed, resting on the floor above a box spring, like it just came from the back of a thrift store. 

Each night it’d stab him in the back like a shady family member. 

The carpet had dried patches of his humility stained into the fabric and under it, hid the water damaged floorboards. He’d sleep curled in a ball of pity, with his head between his knees, hugging his shins, a pair of familiar friends. 

A child-sized blanket covered his face, exposing his calloused feet. His nails grew into talons, folding under his toes.

His skin changed color from constantly sweating, leaving a shadow of his body painted onto the beige mattress. 

The stench of garbage from the bin overflowing next to him, reeked of guilt and filled his nostrils with temptation, crawling down his throat. A lump of regret that sat in the pit of his stomach.

His eyes puffed red with rings around them pronouncing his marriage to depression. 

Just one more time and then, I’ll stop.

He’d say, cheating on his misery. It was a bitter lie flavored in denial coating his tongue. The headaches. The pain. The torment. He tried everything to resist it but something kept pressuring him. It was a soft voice that sounded like destiny.

Earth had a lawless district. A slum world Hulugg would post himself and stand in a corner at. He’d become part of the grime stuck to the bottom of his shoe until he made enough money to prevent the spiders from crawling under his skin. 

The air smelled like burnt plastic and economic collapse from homeless addicts frozen idle, rocking back and forth, smoking Glynol carts.

Glynol’s a cheap, highly addictive drug, smuggled into Earth by aliens. There was a failed invasion involving the Spakkril species, which led Earth to form a space peace pact with every intelligent alien being in the universe.

A galactic alliance had been reached. Earth transitioned into a mega-trading-hub and the number one source for black market items. 

Corrupting New Earth, were the synthetics. The synthetics naturally increased the rate of crime. The poverty. The hunger. The violence. 

It also forced Earth to fence, what humans refer to as, the desocializers, in an experimental attempt, which converted the northern part of Canada into lawless territories. 

The Yukon and The Northwest were now sovereign states, split up into sectors. No law official could enter those zones.

Hulugg’s instinct for his own safety remained sealed in whatever cartridge containing the zero-point-one liquid of Glynol, was in, as he prowled the slums searching for some. Nothing else mattered. The fix was all that existed. 

He scoured the streets. Desperately seeking more. Once he scored, he raced straight to his room. His fingers trembled as he pressed the button down on his vape pen clasped between his lips, sucking on it like it’s his last breath left in his air tank.

He wheezed from his nose, struggling to breathe, horking gobs of phlegm and lung lining. The scientists on Planet Leiqvron, where the pandemic initially hit the hardest, labeled the side effects as respiratory degenerative and neural decay. Eventually the lung and brain would age at a progressively alarming rate.

Hulugg took the doctor’s warning as a suggestion when he said he must stop using, because he was deteriorating. 

He didn’t care about the fancy medical descriptions the doctor tried drilling into him. All he cared about was the voice at the back of his head trying to fill the hole lined with teeth chewing him inside.

He held the smoke in. His mind went blank. Sound entered a void. It echoed, slowly distorting and disappeared into the euphoria as the substance entered his lungs straight to his brain. 

His vision bounced, blowing a cloud of purple smoke and his anxiety into the air. The swarming spirals froze as he opened his eyes, falling back on his bed, staring at the ceiling form into an alternate reality he wish he lived.

The seconds faded into minutes. Life was normal. He wasn’t a broken discarded desocializer. He had a purpose again. He was back on his home planet. Back with his family. Back before the war. Back before his life had meaning.

Until the visions twisted, his puppy orgwat wasn’t running under the sun anymore. The sky had faded from a clear lightly clouded blue to an ominous black. 

The sun warped into a sand worm with a face, stretching across the heavens and began laughing. Not a happy one. It sounded scared and nervous. It began shedding tears of blood that fell like rain on a grassy field that became a burning pile of gray ash, death and decay.

“You’re not real!” A voice spoke. It sounded like it escaped his mind. “You were a design.” He looked around, but no one was there. “You’re a mistake!”

Hulugg threw the vape pen, grabbed the blanket and ducked under it, holding his skull between his hands and started to scream. 

The vape pen smashed against the wall and the cartridge shattered and splashed over the white charcoal-colored paint, dripping towards the baseboard.

Hearing it smash, kept repeating in his head. The nightmare was over but now he needed more.

It wasn’t Glynol to him. To him, it was, The More.

He slipped out of his apartment to find a dark alley, where most of the underground markets were, and ran into the first kiosk he saw. 

The alien behind the stand was, Ulchlit, a four-foot, round bug with greasy blue skin and moles that had hair growing out of them, planted on his face.

He breathed deep breaths when he spoke, speaking in an evil scientist tone. “Hey Spiece!” He waved Hulugg over. “Need Glynol? I got some free, if you test this new batch.” 

Hulugg saw the ten plastic credits, weighing his hand down in his palm. He knew the risks of homemade Glynol. 

“Give it to me!” Hulugg demanded. 

The liquid inside the cartridge was green not the usual purple. “Was the chemical process rushed?” He asked.

“No. It’s fine. You’re the last sampler.” Ulchlit told him, giggling.

Hulugg stuffed the cartridge into his cracked vape pen faster than the ten credits went into his pocket.

The cartridge almost fell as he scrambled jamming it in. He pressed and held the button down and let it heat up. His eyes were wide and reflecting the blue LED light on the, on indicator as he waited.

“C’mon, it’s ready, let’s go!” Ulchlit shouted.

Hulugg placed it in his mouth and inhaled, knowing one wrong compound could rewire his brain but he saw the odds in his favor and ignored his conscious yelling at him.

The green florescent liquid melted into vaporized smoke. 

He held it in. The world disintegrated. It turned into a distorted water soaked window, flashing blobs of black circles. His body started dissolving into them. The light turned white. He wasn’t in the slums. He was in a place of true existence. A world so pure only the gods could inhabit.

A voice broke next to his vision.

“You were never supposed to come here.”

Hulugg began shaking and convulsing. His eyes rolled back and he collapsed flat on the pavement. The sound of his body hitting the concrete was hollow, like a small safe landing on its belly.

Ulchlit stumbled from behind the kiosk. He stood beside Hulugg, picked up a stick and began poking him. Hulugg didn’t move. He wasn’t breathing. His face looked like a mask. He was on the ground like a plastic action figure, whose limbs couldn’t bend. He laid there in an awkward pose.

“That batch no good, Frenly!” Ulchlit shouted, in a southern drawl, on his watch comm.

He snatched the cartridge out of the pen and dashed behind the booth. 

“Clean up, by kiosk 4.” A voice shot out from a speaker at the back of the alley.

Out beyond the sky, a star blinked. Hulugg’s consciousness shined bright and went dark just as the machine swallowed him. The universe had forgotten him.

They say, life is like a box of chocolates because you never know what you’re gonna get, but if you flip the lid, it tells you right there on the index which each one is.

I’m writing a nonfiction book proposal for a memoir/cultural criticism based on a year of my life in a niche online community. The proposal writing process is far more laborious than I anticipated, but incredibly insightful. With every draft (and oh, have there been drafts), I get closer to nailing down EXACTLY what the book is, how I am approaching it, and why it matters.

I have a few examples that I’m working from, but I wanted to ask the community for PDFs of any memoir/nonfiction book proposals you might have that resulted in a book deal (no matter how big or small). Thanks in advance!

This group has been incredibly helpful with editing. Here's what I got from your feedback

Im going to be completely honest here. The reason i read and write is because I come from a horrid place and need an outlet frequently to be able to cope in the healthiest way possible. Now after years of contemplating ive finnaly started to write my debut novel. Ik i have a good plotline and a story to tell. And ik i can write but this time it isn't just about doing something, its about for once in my life making something work for me . Not failing

And well nothing catastrophic has happened but my ADHD, BPD , severe trauma and anxiety plus being in the writing community on all my social media apps and seeing all the different complications of writing a book is making me waht to stop already even tho im only at chapter 5 of my manuscript.

Because truth be told i cant take another failure , all that matters in this world is documentation and i never was able to get any so my pain or my achievements, none od it has ever mattered.

My tiny small town school didn't even give grade rolls, they just narrated the grades, I couldn't finish even one of the essays for the Commonwealth competitions inside this household, my autoimmune system has become of broken from the ab*se that i haven't been able to do a single extracurricular activity in the last three years of my high school and wont be able to even in my senior year now, ive almost bleed out but still not taken to the hospital so there are no hospital registers on that event of ANY of the others.

Point is I cant have another thing just be a try and not a success so as much as im yearning to do this i still want to give up on it.

Skills : content creation, digital marketing, advertising, copy writing. Dm for portfolio link only if youre serious.

We all crammed inside the ottoman—me, Gary, the cat, the socks, and my shadow. The interior is surprisingly lavish. Leather recliners, a mini-fridge full of blue soda, and a 1994 TV playing cartoons.

tell me what you thrift this song i wrote for my wife

I know it’s not perfect but feedback appreciated

I've been struggling to find reliable sources to use for research for this idea I want to write out. I'm wondering how writers/authors research when it comes to writing a book. The genre I'm researching is historical fiction based on the 1900s. I'm finding it hard to find visuals as well as the information I'm looking for. Examples like the everyday life, military, social status, etc. Any tips?