Welcome to The Ink Well!

Your submission is heartfelt. I think every parent goes through this rite of passage.

Before you submit your next piece in The Ink Well, please could you take some time to familiarise yourself with the guidelines of the community.

Specific to this submission:

You need to ensure that you are providing image sourcing even if the images are your own. You need to state that.

You need to be reading and commenting meaningfully on at least two other stories in The Ink Well each time you want to submit a story of your own.

You need to ensure that you edit your work for issues with spelling, punctuation, and grammar, without accepting AI edits that extend to rephrasing your work.

You need to ensure that your submission tells a story. In this piece you discuss the unexpected challenges and joys of motherhood but it is not a story. If you had shared a story or a few stories that illustrated what you learned through descriptions of experiences with your child, and used some dialogue to drive the story forward, that would have worked as a Creative Non-Fiction story.

Now that you're here, please have a look around and get to know our community. Here are a few tips for getting acquainted:

Here are a few tips for getting acquainted with The Ink Well:

Be sure to read The Ink Well community rules at the top of the community home page, and check out our FAQ about The Ink Well.

We accept two kinds of short stories in The Ink Well: fictional stories and creative nonfiction stories.

We are all about quality, and we expect writers to carefully review their work before posting. Not doing so will result in low curation rewards or posts being ignored.

Here are some important resources:

You can see our article on checking your posts for grammar here.

You can find some great articles on story writing in our catalog of storytelling tips.

You can find information about what we are looking for in creative nonfiction stories in this post.

Be sure to review The Ink Well's treasure trove of tips, reminders and guidelines.

And please be sure to engage in the community by reading and commenting on the work of other community members. We ask everyone who posts in The Ink Well to read and comment on at least two other stories for each one published.

Again, welcome!