Process

Why Are Retailers Quietly Shifting to Store-Level APIs and Scraped Data Instead of Traditional Market Research?
Retail decision-making has changed — not loudly, not overnight, but very clearly. Today’s most competitive retail teams are no longer waiting for quarterly reports or third-party summaries. They are tapping directly into store-level data, regional pricing feeds, and real-time product availability using APIs and smart data extraction.
By Retail Gators10 months ago in Writers
For Those Times When You Have Trouble Writing
We learn writing by doing it. ― Natalie Goldberg I’m a bunch writer. I write a bunch, then I don’t write a bunch. There’s no in-between. Feast or famine.
By Jeff Barton10 months ago in Writers
The Doorway I Can’t Enter
I have always believed words are tools before they are treasures. A hammer can be beautiful, sure, but only insofar as it drives the nail where it needs to go. This belief has served me well in prose. Give me a story, a memory, a grief, a love—I can build something solid from it. Beginning, middle, end. A door you can walk through. Poetry, on the other hand, has always felt like a hallway with no doors. Or worse: a doorway everyone else insists is open while I keep bruising my nose on the wall. In college, I learned early that poetry was not a phase you passed through so much as a place you either lived or did not. The poets among us spoke a different dialect. They discussed line breaks the way carpenters discuss grain, talked about white space like it was oxygen. Meanwhile, the prose writers sat together whispering, half in jest and half in fear, about what we called the Poetry Dimension—a mythical realm accessible only to those who could extract meaning from fragments and call it communion. The poets thrived there. They published chapbooks with covers the color of rainclouds. Professors spoke about their work with reverence. I flipped through those chapbooks in the quiet corners of the institute and felt nothing but a growing suspicion that I was missing a frequency everyone else could hear. It wasn’t ignorance. I had read poetry. I had studied it, critiqued it, even judged it. One summer, due to administrative coincidence and my unfortunate availability, I was asked to give feedback to hundreds of teenage poets for a university magazine. Hundreds of poems crossed my desk like messages in bottles. I tried—truly tried—to respond thoughtfully. But eventually every comment began to sound the same: These are certainly words, and you have arranged them intentionally. I knew how inadequate that was. I just didn’t know what else to say. What unsettled me most was not that poetry failed to move me, but that it made me feel guilty for not being moved. As if the failure was moral rather than aesthetic. As if I were standing before a painting everyone else found transcendent and admitting, quietly, that it looked like spilled paint. Maybe the problem is scale. Poetry asks you to feel everything all at once, compressed into a handful of lines. Prose allows room to breathe, to arrive gradually at meaning. I like being led by the hand, not dropped into the ocean and told to appreciate the temperature. My favorite song lyric of all time proves this, I think. From The Mountain Goats: “The most remarkable thing about you standing in the doorway is that it’s you, and that you’re standing in the doorway.” There is nothing fancy there. No acrobatics. Just a statement so plain it hurts. And yet it devastates me every time. That doorway is real. I can see it. I can stand in it with the speaker. That’s the kind of magic I understand. Free verse rarely offers me that door. Instead, it fractures thought, splinters it across the page. I’m told this is intentional, that the gaps matter as much as the words. But if I did that in a short story—broke a sentence in half for vibes—I would be escorted out of the workshop with pitchforks. When I write poetry myself, it is either out of obligation or vanity. A sonnet, carefully measured, to prove I can control language if I want to. Free verse, only when a competition requires it. Even then, I feel like I’m cosplaying insight, wearing the costume of a poet without ever believing I’ve crossed into their world. So maybe I never will. Maybe the Poetry Dimension is not a failing on my part but a boundary. Not every writer has to go everywhere. Maybe my work is to build rooms people can enter, not atmospheres they have to decipher. Or maybe poetry really is a closed loop, a conversation that mostly rewards those already fluent in its codes. I hesitate to say that out loud—it sounds bitter—but I notice how often the loudest praise comes from those already invested in the system. Workshops praising workshops. Journals praising journals. An ecosystem that sustains itself beautifully without ever needing me inside it. And yet, I don’t hate poetry. I admire it the way one admires deep-sea creatures: strange, luminous, entirely unsuited to my environment. I assume it does important work down there. I just don’t plan on holding my breath long enough to find out. So the poets will keep poeming, and I will keep writing sentences that walk in straight lines toward something I can point at and name. Every now and then, I’ll pause in the hallway, press my ear to the wall, and wonder what it sounds like on the other side. But then I’ll turn back to my desk. There’s a doorway here, and I know how to stand in it.
By Luna Vani10 months ago in Writers
Back On Track On Vocal
Introduction I am happy I am back publishing new work on my main Vocal account, so the backup one can go into the freezer, but if you want to see what you missed, check here.
By Mike Singleton 💜 Mikeydred 10 months ago in Writers
How to Build AI Scoring Logic That Works Offline?
The rain in Seattle has a way of stretching time. It doesn’t fall loudly the way storms do in other cities. It drifts, it lingers, and it wraps around the window until the outside world feels half-drawn. That night, long after most people had left the office, the only light in the room came from my laptop and the reflection of streetlamps leaking through the glass. I had stayed late to watch the logs of our scoring engine in real time, letting each line scroll past like a confession.
By John Doe10 months ago in Writers
Bitched from the Start. Top Story - December 2025.
That’s the hard part, becoming objective. That’s why Dr. Evans made me write in third person. He said I was self-indulgent when I wrote in first person, overly charmed by my own voice and words. I’m also guilty of wanting to tell a story because it’s mine.
By Harper Lewis 10 months ago in Writers
Between Roots and Branches
I learned early that my roots would hold without being held. The conditions shifted from storm to silence, and my roots gripped whatever soil would take them. I learned when to move and when to stay still. I learned that survival meant reading energy when you’re young and you have no voice. My roots remember everything. They remember kitchens where voices whispered, rooms I tiptoed through, names I cried out for at night, yearning. They grew twisted—not broken— bent around the trauma that birthed me. Above ground, people saw stillness and mistook it for peace. They didn’t see the growth beneath it, or the pain and suffering layered underneath. There was endurance. Resilience. A constant negotiation with fear. Silence and indecision kept me planted and starved, but my roots kept carrying me anyway. Roots let you grow, but they also keep you grounded. They never ask if where you’re planted is good enough. I didn’t start growing upward until I understood the soil I’d grown in was too small. Some soil feeds you. Mine only kept me buried. My branches came late— cautious, anxious at first, reaching but afraid of the light after all those years in the dark. They learned to move with the wind instead of fearing it. Bending became a choice, not just a reflex. Each branch carries what the roots never could: voice, breath, want, dreams, desire. They hold the weight of wanting more, of leaving rooms where love is conditional, of choosing growth over chaos just because it’s familiar. I don’t cut my roots. They earned their place. They kept me alive in the dark when visible growth wasn’t yet possible. But now that I’ve felt the breeze, now that I’ve danced in the wind, I won’t go back to living underground. I stand between what made me and what I’m becoming— feet steady, arms open, roots holding, branches reaching— finally taking up space between both.
By Tifani Power 10 months ago in Writers
Creatine Moves Beyond the Gym: Innovations in Women’s Health Supplements
Creatine, long regarded as a staple for male athletes and bodybuilders, is emerging as a breakthrough ingredient for women’s health. Recent research highlights cognitive, mood, and menopausal benefits at significantly lower doses than traditional sports protocols, prompting supplement manufacturers to innovate precision formulations for this growing market.
By Abbasi Publisher10 months ago in Writers
Narrating my first Audible (Of My Own Novel)
Below is basically a tutorial [WITH PICTURES] about my journey learning t0 use Wavepad Sound Editor to work on creating my very first audible book. If this sounds helpful… If you want to break into the field of audible books - and don’t want to (or can’t afford to) hire a professional narrator - Read on. Otherwise…, just skip over to one of my stories or poems. 😉
By Andrew C McDonald10 months ago in Writers
Writing Is Good For Me
Introduction I saw this Instagram post the other day, and a lot of it rings true with me: Both reading and writing definitely help my mental health and set me up for other things as well.
By Mike Singleton 💜 Mikeydred - EBA10 months ago in Writers
30 Days That Can Change Your Life
Most people wait for a “perfect day” to restart their life, but that day never comes. Real change begins the moment you decide to stop living on autopilot.
By Salman Writes10 months ago in Writers
Three Hidden Habits That Make Your Life Harder
Some habits don’t hurt you immediately. They slowly push your life in the wrong direction. They look small, but they create long-term damage that affects your health, confidence and success.
By Salman Writes10 months ago in Writers