đ Our next novel writing master class starts in â! Claim your spot â
Advice, insights and news
Free 10-day publishing courses
Free publishing webinars
Free EPUB & PDF typesetting tool
Launch your book in style
Assemble a team of pros
A weekly short story contest
Author on Reedsy Prompts since Jan, 2024
TW NONCONSENSUAL INCEST AND MENTIONS OF SUICIDE They say you donât know what youâve got until itâs gone. But I knew, even as I was inching towards the deadline, staring down into the abyss I knew was reaching for me, I knew exactly what I had. I had even gone as far as to write over fifteen thousand words about it, an almost-novel, the setting ambiguous but very obviously a university. I knew what I had. I just half-hoped I wasnât really losing it. That the fall was the fictional part, not what would later be memories of paradise lost. The l...
Submitted to Contest #247
Can the concept of graduate school be considered a place? It certainly is unfamiliar, both like and unlike the actual locations the education takes place - or, rather, would be taking place, if I was actually doing real tasks beyond âexploring my optionsâ. It shouldn't, really, be unfamiliar - I'm by no means a first-generation student. I grew up on stories of my mom's masterâs degree from Columbia University. Only she was studying a completely different field from what I want to study. She was a speech language pathologist, and I aim ...
CW SUICIDE ATTEMPT, INCEST/SEXUAL VIOLENCE The problem with secrets is that keeping them requires a level of intellect, an ability to know when to speak and when speaking will result in trouble. The easiest way to avoid trouble would be to quit entirely - when in therapy, that meant quit talking, letting the quiet of the body breathing do the communicatory work; letting the therapists pathologize you as they always did. Selective mutism, sure, you selected mute like the button on the TV remote. Your parents picked you up in the waiting room,...
Submitted to Contest #239
Creating was carving out pieces of your soul, sending them out into the universe, begging for judgment based on something other than the physical body you were born into. Judgment comes when you show others your work, but you welcome it. Your artwork was there for you when nobody else was, and letting audiences in was a form of connection you allowed, eventually. Comfort the disturbed, disturb the comfortable - your work has always been good at that. Disturbing, disturbed, you've always been that. Your cr...
Submitted to Contest #238
âI -â I didnât know how to respond. âIâm sorry; please⊠donât - â I didnât know how that sentence would end as I said it, my mouth dry and still tasting wrong from the unwelcome intrusion. donât do that again - donât get any closer - donât love me all those were possible endings to that sentence. Language formulation was why I didnât finish my sentences, my mom told me. Certain natural disasters knock formations to the ground, and what they had just done was one of those.âI thought you liked me?â They questioned, and I couldnât suppress the ...
Submitted to Contest #236
TW: PHYSICAL AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE, PTSDYou canât feel nostalgia anymore. Youâre not sure if you ever could - can a child be nostalgic? You had difficulty understanding emotions as a child, especially ones involving other people, like embarrassment. Nostalgia doesnât fall into that category, but it is an emotion thatâs easier to feel when thereâs someone to share it with, someone who was there at the time. The feelings your parents feel when reminiscing about your childhood just donât exist in you. Maybe because youâre not...
New to writing original fiction.
Oops, you need an account for that!
Log in with your social account:
Or enter your email: