“At night, when I’m back home” by David Shakes @theshakes72.bsky.social is today’s 75-word #story on Paragraph Planet www.paragraphplanet.com #writingcommunity #amwriting

I'm tomorrow's @paragraphplanet.bsky.social and I have a horror story coming out in an upcoming anthology from Warped Perspective so I guess I am writing again! X

👋 hello. Are the good people still using this platform regularly? Send me a sign!

I'm pleased to be today's @paragraphplanet.bsky.social writer.

Falling Down #newmusic #musicdiscovery #rocknroll #alternativerock

Making it my mission to watch a lot of foreign language films and television shows. Any recommendations?

Finally got to see #TheLifeofChuck - Flanagan gets King. If you show it like he wrote it, but put what YOU see in your head, it just works. A good @stephenking.bsky.social adaptation.

Been to Budapest. Will come back again!

1/5 Shadows Some shadows stretch longer than the day, touching corners you thought were empty, lingering where you least expect them. #LossLit

I was going to the #mumfordandsons album launch show with the wife, but now I'm going to #deftones next week instead with the lad. It's a tough life. 😁

At midnight, the mind convenes its court. Questions, unkind facts, a younger self on trial. No jury but memory, no gavel but time. Verdict unspoken: proceed, do better, carry the record forward - and rest.

I've written every day this year. Unfortunately, it's mostly work stuff, but it's writing and it feels ace. I do have a short story I need to dust off and polish up. #anwriting #flashdogs

"Two of life's greatest pleasures, by my reckoning, are camping and reading - most gloriously, both at once." Love this.

"David is a reflective, principled, slightly wary leader who writes to stay honest, who knows power is real, who does not want to be owned by it, and who is quietly preparing for a life beyond the role even while still taking the role seriously."

Prince of Darkness. One of the all time great fever dream movies. There's a tangible nightmare texture running through that whole thing.

It's John Carpenter's birthday. A genre stalwart it's no easy pick choosing a favourite film. His remake of The Thing, Escape from New York (and LA), They Live, Prince of Darkness, Halloween, The Fog... All classics

We played board games for a while last night, and we're having a traditional roast lunch at 2pm today. 2026 is about slowing the pace and remembering what matters.

The snow brings things with it. Not tracks. Other arrivals. They wait where sight thins, behave if you look straight on. By morning the snow is clean again. You call it winter tricks. They wait for the next fall.

London held still for a moment. Sunshine, coffee, the river doing its work. This will stay. Later, a quiet pub. A board game, an excellent sour beer, time chose not to hurry.

"Things Move" by David Shakes @TheShakes72.bsky.social is today's 75-word #story on Paragraph Planet paragraphplanet.com #writingcommunity #amwriting

West London.

The latch won’t bite. I pass through the door like mist. Inside, the rug is a desert. I see your shadow, grief-heavy. I bark. I scratch. Nothing answers. The door is open. I cannot find my way in. #poetry

Time wore a hole in the pocket where I kept my keys. Everything drifted out, settled in the grass. I stand with empty hands. The wind touches my skin. It’s cold, and it feels like air for the first time in years. #poetry

It’s easier to be a statue to keep the jaw set the grievances polished and the history carved in stone where it can’t move and can’t hurt me. 1/5

Well, I've gone from a two year creative drought to posting leadership lessons for work, poetry on here, and mapping out a novella in a folk horror vein.

Expanded poem: The traffic murmurs outside, a current of motion running through still air. Somewhere a bus sighs as it slows, a voice drifts apart into distance, weather, the click of doors closing. 1/3

Traffic murmurs, a bus sighs, voices drift. The dog leans into me. Morning asks for nothing more. I do not move, I do not speak. I just listen, until listening feels like living. #poetry

I am the thing the monsters in the dark are afraid of; the quiet turning of the key, the breath that never shakes, the light that does not ask permission to burn. #poetry

We are specks of dust in our own solar system. In the universe, barely a rounding error. Yet the dust looks back, names the dark, boils kettles, waits with dogs. The miracle isn’t scale. It’s awareness. #poetry

It’s Christmas again. Dad’s in your armchair, dog at his leg, telly loud. The room’s warm but something’s missing. Four years, they say. Dad’s here. The dog’s here. You aren’t. And the night carries on like that’s normal.

The dog knows. She watches the moments you step past yourself, the small turns you don’t notice, the habits you defend without noticing. She sees where you soften too late, where you harden too early. She smells the fear before the words, the apology forming after the damage. 1/2

Voices from the past do not rest politely. They tap the glass of now, clear their throats, say we are still here. Some truths never learn how to whisper. #poetry

I cross the borders into @hookland.bsky.social. There is a shade of grey that only exists in the eyes of the sheep here. It’s the colour of a TV tuned to a dead channel. They often stand in a perfect circle. I think they’re waiting for the hum, or perhaps for me to stop watching.

The floorboards don't just creak; they remember the weight of him. I scrub the salt from the threshold until my knuckles bleed white, but some stains aren't on the wood. They are stitched into the quiet between my own heartbeats.

Night comes fast and lingers. Things within shift and breathe, a hush of wings, a pulse beneath the garden’s skin. The air forgets its warmth, its name, and what was still wakes again. #poetry

Rain crawls across the mill roofs like it knows our names. The hills lean in, listening. Every light in this village flickers at once, and I swear something out there just breathed. 1/3

Today I read, lose myself in the words of others. Words I choose to let in, not ones that demand me. A small freedom, but mine. #amreading

I want to be a writer. I know it won’t pay the bills. But it might make me happier. Not famous. Not impressive. Just something honest to do each day.

The morning hush, strong coffee, the gentle creak of a house awakening. Light finds the edges. Nothing asked of me yet. Just breath, and the day holding back.

There’s the shape in the corner you always said was nothing. The thought that waits for the house to go quiet. Old fears with good memories. Habits that learned to breathe in the dark. They don’t shout. They never had to. #poetry

Decay isn’t sudden, it’s a forgotten name, a missed appointment, milk turning quietly at the back of the fridge. It’s birthdays held in your mouth for a second too long. Keys left in doors. The room you walked into and can’t quite justify. No collapse. Just a thinning. #poetry