GoodWrites discussion

Hiya Loves <3

Back from holidays and ready to write! Hope you enjoy a more interesting prompt this week. Have fun writing!
"Write about someone who self-publishes a story that was never meant to be read."

MIAcat <3

Hiya Loves <3
I really connected with this week's prompt and I also realise that it may be quite vague. I did this on purpose to give you freedom of creation. I really love the storyline I came up with and hope you enjoy reading xx.




I didn’t write it to be read. I didn’t even really mean to write it.

It began the way a bruise spreads beneath the skin—slowly, invisibly at first, until one day it’s impossible to ignore. I started typing late at night, hunched over a second-hand laptop in a too-small apartment that smelled like burnt coffee and rain-damp laundry. The screen cast a pale glow over the cluttered desk, and outside, the city kept breathing—soft and indifferent. I told myself I was just journaling. Just putting some thoughts down. But those thoughts twisted themselves into scenes, and the scenes turned into chapters, and suddenly I was writing a book.

Except it wasn’t really a book. It had no title, no structure. Just fragments—small moments I couldn’t say out loud, dressed up in fiction so I could pretend they weren’t mine. It lived on my desktop for four years. The file was called untitled1.docx, like the others—just one in a long line of things I’d started and never finished. But this one was different. This one never left me. It didn’t ask for permission. It poured out of me when I was too tired to think, too sad to fight it. The words came fast and raw, like a wound tearing open instead of healing.

I never edited it. Never shared it. It wasn’t a story I was proud of—it was a story I... survived.

The main character was nameless, like me. She walked through a world full of locked doors and unsent letters. She made bad choices and missed phone calls and talked to people who didn’t listen. It was fiction, sure—but the kind of fiction that tastes like blood when you bite down too hard on it. It wasn’t art. It was confession, thinly disguised as plot.

I never once imagined someone else reading it. It felt like the kind of thing that would die quietly with me—buried in an unremarkable folder, forgotten when the laptop finally gave out.

But one night, that changed.

It was a Tuesday in the middle of February, the kind of cold that sits in your bones and doesn't leave, no matter how many cups of tea you drink. I hadn’t slept in two days. I felt hollow, like someone had scooped me out and forgotten to put anything back. The lights in my apartment buzzed. The fridge made a weird clunk every fifteen minutes. My thoughts looped in anxious spirals—useless, repetitive, exhausting.

I opened the file just to reread it. Just to remind myself that something existed, even if it was ugly. I sat on the floor, legs crossed, laptop balanced on my knees. The words stared back at me like they were waiting. And then I did something I couldn’t explain, even to myself. I opened a browser. I typed in “how to self-publish a book.”

A few clicks later, I was on Kindle Direct Publishing, filling out the fields like I was possessed. Author name: E. Gray. Title: The Things I Never Said Out Loud. Genre: Literary Fiction. I didn’t even design a real cover—I picked one of their automated templates: a grayscale photo of trees disappearing into fog. Something vague. Forgettable. I kept thinking, No one will read it anyway. No one will find it. I told myself it was just a way to let it go. A digital funeral for the feelings I couldn’t carry anymore.

And then I pressed Publish.

I closed the laptop and sat in the dark, listening to my heartbeat crash against my ribs like it wanted out.



Weeks passed.

I didn’t think about it again, not really. Life moved in quiet, directionless circles. I applied for jobs I didn’t want. Ate cereal for dinner. Scrolled through other people’s lives. The book became just another strange decision I didn’t care enough to regret. Until I got the email.

“Congratulations, your book has made its first sale!”

I blinked at the screen like it had cursed at me. I clicked the link. Someone had bought it.
Then six people.
Then twenty.
And then came the reviews.

One of the first said: “I don’t know who E. Gray is, but this book hurt in the exact way I needed..”

I stared at the screen for a long time. My heart was racing like I’d been caught doing something illegal. I thought about deleting it right then—pulling the plug and pretending it never happened. But I didn’t. Because the truth is, I felt something else too. Not relief. Not pride. Just… recognition. Someone saw the thing I buried, and they didn’t look away.

And then, it got worse.

Someone posted about it on TikTok. Not a huge account. Just a girl sitting on her bedroom floor saying, “I don’t know who E. Gray is, but this book felt like reading someone else’s heartbeat.” The video had less than a thousand views. But it was enough. I wanted to scream. Or disappear. I didn’t feel brave. I felt exposed. Strangers were underlining my pain. Highlighting passages like they were beautiful when they were, in truth, the most shameful pieces of me. I had written this story to survive. Not to inspire. Not to be dissected or quoted or shared.

And yet—there they were. Readers. Hundreds of them. Quietly devouring a version of me they didn’t know they were holding. One night, Jules—my oldest friend—texted me a screenshot. “Tell me this isn’t you.” Underneath it, a quote from the book: Some people leave without slamming the door, and somehow that still hurts louder. I stared at it, pulse thudding in my ears. I typed and deleted at least five replies before finally sending: “It’s me.” She didn’t answer right away. But when she did, it was just one sentence. “You wrote the truth. That’s rare.” I cried, quietly. Not because I was sad, but because I didn’t know what to do with kindness aimed directly at me



Now, the book exists. It’s out there, floating in the digital ether, quietly finding the people who need it.

I still haven’t put my real name on it. Maybe I never will. But sometimes I Google it, just to see the latest reviews. There’s something strange and beautiful about watching strangers recognize parts of you you didn’t even realize were showing. I haven’t written another book. Not yet. But there’s a new file on my desktop now. untitled2.docx. The cursor blinks patiently at the top of a blank page.

Maybe this one won’t be a burial. Maybe... just maybe... it'll be something bigger...

A beginning.

MIAcat <3

That was fantastic, I love it. I can feel the anxiety pouring out. So often, someone does something that they think of as garbage, and it just festers. Unbeknownst to them that it could mean so much to someone else and probably to them as well.
I'm not great at critical analysis, but this was awesome!

Joey's deathly tomes of death wrote: "That was fantastic, I love it. I can feel the anxiety pouring out. So often, someone does something that they think of as garbage, and it just festers. Unbeknownst to them that it could mean so muc..."

Thanks so much! Yeah, this piece definitely connected with me in its own way, a silent reminder that you're never own your own. Thanks for the encouragement, and dont worry about not being able to critique my work, its not everyone's strong point xx.
MIAcat <3

 WITHIN

 Atl woke in that queer hour, which was still considered night by most but morning to some. Drenched in sweat and panting, she grabbed a glass of water from her night table and drank deeply. 
 Nightmarish remains haunted the back of her mind, like the embers of a campfire freshly extinguished. A back room, never-ending and full of torment. Silently, she climbed out of bed and shook the tension from her limbs. 
 Something foreign slipped inside and she was unaware.
 As she staggered groggily to the restroom over discarded clothes, she heard a strange nagging sound. It was coming from outside. From the lonesome night, it hung pregnant, filling the room, and it frightened Atl for a reason wholly unknown. 
Cautiously, she approached her window. 
 Deep in the shadows like a creeping phantasm stood an entity. It looked up at her, as if aware that she was watching.
 Those wretched lips curved into a smile that seemed to carve through the night, and the being winked an eye. The sight caused her pulse to accelerate rapidly, hammering away in her chest. 
 Through the cover of the night, it slid down the street and appeared before the abandoned ramshackle house. The house of no return as it was reverently referred throughout the neighborhood. 
 A strange energy emanated through the air. It compelled her. It pulled at her chest, and her breathing tightened. 
Atl could not look away.
 And, it knew that she was watching. It pulled apart the boards of a window and disappeared into the derelict edifice.
 Back in bed, she laid unable to return to the realm of sleep. It was nowhere near morning, and now she desperately wanted this night to be vanquished by the morning light.
 Another day. 
 It happened again.
 “Nothing is out there,” she whispered, hiding under her covers.
 Another day.
 Yet again. Always at the same time.
 Three in the morning like some cosmic force pulling at the threads of her sanity.
 There it was, always there and always she woke.
 ”Nothing’s there. Nothing is there,” she told herself, ”you are dreaming.”
 Repeating mantras of hope like a minuscule protection against an unknown entity.
 A month had gone by, and she had stopped showing up to work. Virtually stopped eating. Dropped from the outside world. Days slipped into night and fear replaced everything. It manifested a body of its own just under her skin and—outside her window.
 Atl was waiting.
 Atl was looking only—only what? This night at three she woke like every other night before. But.
But.
 There was nothing there, it didn’t come. Her muscles twitched, some pressure was building inside. Something possessing her. Something tugging at the back of her psyche. 
 Everything was becoming unraveled. Like a woman being invaded by an unholy spirit, she felt her body move on its own.
 Standing outside on the cool asphalt. Her bare feet were tingling with a slight pain. The blackness creeping into her lungs made it hard to breathe. A soft drizzle came down from the blackened skies above.
 Step. Step. Step.
 Now, the rain was coming down. The wind tore through the block, howling its siren song.
 Atl was facing the house, she was trembling. The windows were bursting with a preternatural light, beckoning. She was staring up at the window of her house over her shoulder, and she saw herself still in her room. But then—
 She was Inside the house of no return.
 The building was alight with flames burning the brightest blue. An invisible rope was around her neck, and it was pulling her forward. Lactic acid tightened her muscles as her anxiety reached a crescendo of terror. Deep down in the pit of her stomach, something was crawling, wanting.
 The inferno slashed at her skin the exposed organ that covered every inch of her. Melting away like rendered fat off the flesh of boiling meat. Searing deep into the layers of her body. 
A table in the corner untouched. A stack of paper. No not paper, pages. And on the table was a typewriter oozing blood from its keys.
And, on the front page of the stack was her—her name.
 It whispered into her soul something so intimate, Atl Xicoténcatl.
 That was impossible.
 The unbearable pain receded back into her mind. Back into the house. Back into the street. Back into her window. Back into her bed and from her chest rose a shuddering breath.
 The digital alarm clock burned bright the next night.

 -03:00-

 Standing over her on top of her chest, that smiling thing. And she couldn’t breathe. One more time it winked.
 “Nothing is there,” she pleaded to the dark, “let this not be real.”
 The pages fluttered from her corner desk, calling her.
 The skin on her body bubbled loosely from her forearm. The room filled with cold air. Her feet padded across the hardwood floor over to the desk.
 A lonely word was carving itself into her arm under the pustulant skin. It bubbled and burst into a foul ichor. A rotting stench pervaded through the chilling air.
 The word left on her arm was ‘mine’. Atl was a possession, she belonged to this thing inside her.
 A shudder filled her body. Gaze fixed upon the manuscript, tears filled her eyes. The pages must be released into the world. Inside was a virus, a virus that would enter through spiritual surrender. 
This book was an extension of the thing that now lived inside her.
Atl could feel her skin rotting away outward from that antagonistic reminder. That word.
 The next day a knock came at her door. 
 A calling through the fog. Another knock at her door, a literary agent standing there, though she contacted no one.
 The pages with her name imprinted onto them were there in her hand. The intensity of passing off the book was like her soul evacuating, something that was attached to her. The person who was in her home that no one called, who shouldn't be there was taking it away.
 Something that was not meant to be seen.
 Her home was cold and filled with the of the stench of death.
From somewhere far away she watched herself handing over the thing that seemingly came from her. A grin that did not belong on her face. Waving goodbye to the person.
 The tome was sold.
 Now receding through the house like a camera panned from one room to another, like the ending scene of a movie. 
Now Atl was lying in bed. Her covers pulled up. Now she was burning. Now she was smoldering. The rotten skin fell away from her muscles. The sinews unraveled. 
 Nothing’s there.
 Blood-soaked sheets.
 Nothing’s there. 
 Bones of the first night.
 A swarm of buzzing flies.
 Asleep in safety. The book was in the wild, and oh, how it hungered. 
 A howling siren crept through the dark, spreading far. The twisted call of something unnatural. It could be heard by anyone who dared to read.
 The House of No Return.