@Laura Cushing I hope you don't mind. I read the premise of your RPG in the July Accountability Post - and it took me to another place . It also reminded me of Summer Camp! Briarwood feels different now. Like the whole town is walking around with a bruise they can’t see but keep pressing anyway. Thirty‑one days gone — cleanly, surgically — and everyone pretending they’re fine because what else do you do when the calendar betrays you. The halls look normal, but the air has that charged heaviness, like a storm passed through the building and forgot to take its teeth with it. Friends I used to nod at in the hallway now carry themselves like they’ve fought something in the dark. Some have scars they joke about, but their eyes don’t match the punchline. Others keep glancing at their phones like they’re waiting for a message from someone they don’t remember meeting. And the dreams — God, the dreams. I’ve never been to a lake like that. Never stood on a dock that long. Never heard water whisper like it’s trying to confess something. But I wake up sweating, heart pounding, like I almost drowned in a place that doesn’t exist. People keep finding photos too — blurry, off‑angle shots of August that shouldn’t be real. A bonfire. A cabin. A shadow that doesn’t look human. Everyone laughs it off, but nobody deletes them. And every so often, someone remembers one moment. Just one. A flash of fear. A scream swallowed by trees. A hand reaching through water. Enough to know August wasn’t empty. Enough to know something happened, and it wasn’t kind. Briarwood woke up on September 1st. But I’m not convinced we all came back!

Hello everyone, The first live community editing event is only a few days away. In order to simplify the upload process, please share your projects in response to THIS POST. That way I will have all of them in one convenient place for Saturday. Please have them submitted by Friday, July 17, by or before midnight EST. I cannot guarantee that I will have enough time to look over any submissions prior to the event that are uploaded Saturday morning, so get them in Friday! I've also created resources to help with the upload process: #Text Tutorial #Video Tutorial I'll see you on Saturday!

@Kathryn Holmes Hi Shelley ! I saw that outline you left in general discussion - so I worked it. I hope you don't mind. This is a one-off . The Night The Darkness Recognized Her: The road to her grandmother’s ranch felt endless— a narrow ribbon of asphalt swallowed by trees that leaned too close, as if they wanted to listen to the quiet girl walking toward her fate. Willow Marie Sullivan moved through the dusk like someone half‑erased. Her footsteps were soft, her breath thin, her grief a second shadow trailing behind her with perfect devotion. By the time she reached the house, night had settled fully— not gentle, not star‑washed, but heavy and watchful, a presence that seemed to know her name before she spoke it. Her grandmother stood in the doorway, a silhouette carved from cold angles. No welcome. No flicker of recognition. Just a stare that felt like a verdict. Willow stepped inside anyway, because she had nowhere else to go. The house smelled of dust and old secrets. Floorboards groaned under her weight, as if protesting her arrival. Every room felt dim, not from lack of light but from lack of kindness. She could feel it— the way cruelty can settle into a place and make a home of it. Outside, the ranch exhaled differently. The horses shifted in their stalls, their bodies restless in the dark, their eyes catching faint glimmers of moonlight like small, flickering lanterns. And William Boyd stood among them, a tall, quiet figure with the kind of presence that made shadows hesitate. He noticed her immediately— the girl with the haunted posture, the girl who moved like she expected to be struck. He didn’t speak at first. He simply watched her, as if trying to understand what kind of darkness she carried and how long she had been carrying it. When he finally approached, his voice was low, steady enough to cut through the night without disturbing it. “You’re safe out here,” he said. Not a promise— promises were too fragile for a girl like Willow— but a truth spoken softly enough that she almost believed it.

Hello everyone, I had the idea the other day that it might be fun to have writing contests here in the community. I'm curious what you all think about that. I'm not quite sure how they would work yet, which is something else that I would need some help figuring out. It might be fun to have some kind of prize, but I'm not sure what it would be at the moment. The contests would need to have enough involvement and engagement to warrant prizes because if every contest only gets two submissions from the same people, the contests are going to get stale rather quickly. So what do you all think? Should we implement writing contests? And if we do, how should they be run? What guidelines do you want to see? I can definitely come up with some, but first I want to get the community's opinion on how they should work. Make sure to vote in the poll, and please share any ideas you may have in the comments.

This isn’t from a book but in an interview I saw with John Acuff who is an author and productivity expert: “I don’t believe in writers block. I believe in idea bankruptcy.” He went on to say how he collects ideas, which I think is a cool thing to do. For myself, this quote motivates me to challenge myself to keep thinking as creatively as I can. What can I create that is unexpected or opposite of what someone might expect. When Jonah gave his first writing prompt, rather than continue with the characters he introduced, I went in a different direction. Maybe in the end it wasn’t so very creative? Maybe others would have had similar ideas, but I enjoyed the creative process. I hope that others in this group will share some of your writing in the writing prompts or projects or workshopping soon!