The Unsponsored Quill by Rajesh Seshadri

While influencers hawk their ghostwritten tales,

And blue checkmarks birth bestseller sales,

I rise at four to greet the sleeping page—

Not for the stage, but for the sacred rage

Of words that burn before the world awakes,

Of sentences that tremble till daybreaks.

No million followers to boost my name,

No viral moment, no synthetic fame.

Just me, the darkness, and this ancient art

Of pulling lightning from a beating heart,

Of weaving dreams from nothing but the air,

Of building castles from a whispered prayer.

They say publishing's a rigged casino floor

Where only those with clout can score—

The celebrity memoir, the trending face,

While real writers vanish without trace.

But here is the secret that they will never know:

I write because I have no choice but to grow,

To teach myself by teaching through the page,

To free the wild things locked inside their cage.

At 4 a.m., while algorithms sleep,

I dive into the literary deep,

Where imagination—that human gift divine—

Transforms the mundane into the sublime.

No beast can dream the way we dream in ink,

No creature builds the bridges that we link

Between one lonely soul and another's pain,

Between the sunshine and the cleansing rain.

I write to heal the wounds I cannot see,

To set both you and me completely free.

Therapy flows through every crafted line,

Each metaphor a sip of sacred wine.

For what is wealth compared to touching hearts?

What are sales charts to creating art?

If one lost teenager finds hope tonight,

If one grandmother reclaims her light,

If someone broken sees they are not alone,

If courage blooms where fear had grown—

Then all my sleepless mornings were well-spent,

Every unpaid hour heaven-sent.

I cannot buy the billboards or the ads,

Cannot compete with literary fads.

My manhours are my only currency,

My passion is my only guarantee.

But when a reader messages to say

My words helped them survive another day,

Or that a chapter made them finally feel

That their emotions were completely real—

That is when I know why I was born to write:

Not for the spotlight or the height,

But for the depth, the truth, the human call

To lift each other when we fall.

So let the racket run its crooked game,

Let others chase the glitter and the fame.

For minds that yearn to reach their highest peak—

I am your servant, and through me, you speak.

This is my revolution, quiet, true:

To write not for the masses, but for you.

One reader, one moment, one transformed life—

Worth more than all the publishing world's strife.