Image source: Pixabay
First, a word of appreciation for all in the community who have been posting stories, providing feedback on one another's posts, and helping our community to grow and thrive! Thank you!
Okay, onto the news. Here are the topics in this newsletter:
- HUGE Changes in The Ink Well Admin Team!
- Housekeeping Notes and Reminders
- Winners from the January Contest!
- February 2023 Contest — 10-Hive Prize + 2nd and 3rd Place Prizes
- Find Us on Discord
- Creative Inspiration
- Delegate to The Ink Well / Follow Our Curation Trail
HUGE Changes in The Ink Well Admin Team!
Well friends, you know what they say:
There is nothing so constant as change.
Things are ch-ch-ch-changing around here!
Admin Announcement #1
Our first announcement is that our wonderful, beloved, fabulous curator, @agmoore, is ready for the next chapter of her life. She is moving on. "Retiring," as she puts it!
What? She doesn't want to stay with The Ink Well forever and ever??
Nope. She has other interests too, of course, and she will be pursuing those, and cheering us all on from the sidelines.
@agmoore has given this community her heart and soul. She has nurtured budding writers who want to learn and grow. She has provided caring and sensitive feedback to so many! And so it is with love in our hearts that we bid her adieu!
Thank you for everything you have done for The Ink Well over the years, @agmoore!!
Admin Announcement #2
But never fear! We have added two new admins to The Ink Well admin team.
We are absolutely thrilled to announce that @millycf1976 and @grindan have joined us in recent weeks, and are already actively curating. They both bring wonderful skills and knowledge to the admin role, and we are so pleased and excited that they have joined the team.
Please give them a warm welcome!
Housekeeping Notes and Reminders
There are a few things that we'd like to provide as reminders, as these are common issues.
Please be sure to use the appropriate tags:
- #fiction for fictional stories
- #creativenonfiction for non-fiction stories
- #inkwellprompt for all stories written for prompts in The Ink Well
This is important because a) it's not always easy to tell the difference between fiction and nonfiction (and readers consider its merit accordingly), and b) it makes it possible to search for those tags when we review stories for winning entries.
Remember to add your story link to a comment on the prompt post
If you are entering a story into one of our fiction or nonfiction contests, you must add a link to your story in the comments.
We try to catch all entries as we list the participants and winners, but it is extra work for us to find those who have not added their link to a comment on the prompt post and we do not always find them. If you miss this step, you may miss out on being considered for contest prizes.
Please follow these important image rules
We have three important rules around images:
- All images must come from license-free or creative commons sites, such as Pixabay, Unsplash, Pexels, or Wikimedia Commons. Or they can be your own images. (You may not use images you find on Google, Pinterest or a website. Those are copyright protected.)
- You must provide attribution for ALL images — even if they are your own.
- For any image that is not your own, you must link to the image. For example, if you find an image on Pixabay, the source link you provide must be the URL of the page on which that image appears.
Winners from the January Contest!
Thank you to everyone who participated in our January fiction contest, with stories and comments. As always, we received some great stories!
The contest rules involved writing one story in The Ink Well during the month of January inspired by the prompt Fortress.
Winners!
Here are our three winners for the January, 2023 contest.
We have selected @samsmith1971's story, Save the Last Dance as the prize winner! Congratulations! You will receive 10 Hive.
In second place, we have selected @popurri's story, Mission to the Land of Memory. Congratulations! You will receive 5 Hive.
In third place, we have selected @kemmyb's story: The Fortress Hold. Congratulations! You will receive 4 HBI.
All three of these are absolutely exceptional stories! We are so proud of your writing achievement, @samsmith1971, @popurri and @kemmyb!
Honorable mentions:
Thank you, all!
February Contest!
Get ready to put your creativity to work! For January we will award a first place price of 10 Hive, second place of 5 Hive, and third place of 4 HBI for the monthly contest.
For the month of February, 2023, the fiction prompt is storm!
What can you do with this prompt? Here are a few ideas:
- Tell the story of a winter snowstorm that caused a family to be housebound for a week. How do they survive?
- Write about a character who has super powers whenever there is a lightning storm.
- Tell a story of a ship captain who is certain he was guided to safety by mer-people in a terrible storm at sea.
- Or write about a character's emotional storm — perhaps after hearing bad news, getting fired from a job, or discovering his spouse is cheating on him.
Remember to include the important elements of good fiction, including character building, conflict, a story arc, and the important storytelling skill of integrating action, dialogue and narrative.
Contest Rules
Write one story this month in The Ink Well inspired by the word "storm."
Post a link to your story in a comment on this post.
Use the #inkwellprompt and #fiction tags on your post.
At the end of the month, we will choose three winners.
Hint: We are looking for a high-quality story. Don't rush. Be sure to use the skills we highlight in our weekly fiction prompts — great settings, good character building, strong dialog (which is often missing from stories we receive), and a good story arc that resolves well in the end.
And finally, we recommend using our tips in the article Help for the Grammatically Challenged to identify errors in your story before posting.
Good luck!
Find Us on Discord
Our Discord server is a great place to chat with other community members about the craft of writing.
Please pop into our Welcome channel, read our guidelines for conduct, and then feel free to interact with other community members or ask The Ink Well Team a question in the #ask-theinkwell channel.
Discord invitation link: https://discord.gg/Bng7mMsaQj
Creative Inspiration and Skill Building
Source: Myriams_fotos on Pixabay
In The Ink Well, we're not just about posting content and getting rewards. We are about building skills that help you earn the best possible rewards because your readers love to read your stuff!
We are here to nudge you to strive for greatness. You know how it feels when someone says, "Wow, just wow! I loved your story!" That's what it's all about. And the good news is that the rewards follow. If people love your work, they give you great upvotes. They seek you out. They want more of your creative content. And curation accounts like Curie, which we utilize and support, will give you the best possible upvotes too.
So what are you waiting for? Use our resources to build your skills and improve your writing. Here are some of the resources we provide:
- Creative inspiration
We encourage and support ideas and creativity by publishing a weekly fiction contest prompt on Monday nights, and a weekly creative nonfiction contest prompt on Saturdays. Additionally, we have a nearly inexhaustible list of ideas to spur your writing. And these resources are included in every weekly prompt for reference: 50 Loglines, 50 Story Ideas, and 50 Imagination Ticklers - Skill building opportunities
We have a great catalog of fiction writing tips that can help any writer learn and grow. You can learn about characters, conflict, scene building, dialog and more. We hope you take advantage of it. And here are some important tips that can help you improve your writing craft:
-- Draft your content in Google docs, or use Google docs for spell checking and syntax checking. It is very easy to do and it is explained in the post Help for the Grammatically Challenged.
-- Make sure your story has the key elements of a story, including character development, scene setting, dialog, action, a conflict, and a resolution. (A story arc is especially important for fiction, of course.) We provide resources to help you with all of these important fiction elements in our catalog of fiction writing tips.
-- Review your work before posting. You will most likely find a missing word, a grammatical error, a misspelling or a sentence that does not start with a capital letter, etc.
Thank you for reading our newsletter! We are here to encourage you and help you on your writing journey.
Delegate to The Ink Well / Follow Our Curation Trail
Want to support our community, our contests, and our rewards for great quality content? See the table below. We have made it super easy. Thank you, thank you, thank you! We have a goal to continue increasing the support we give to our wonderful, hardworking and dedicated authors!
You can follow our curation trail by going to our hive.vote curation trail page and clicking the follow button.
We welcome delegations! These support our community in many ways, including helping us to provide support to quality content creators through curation and contests.
@jayna, @felt.buzz, @zeurich, @marcybetancourt, @agmoore, @marlyncabrera, @stormcharmer, @generikat, @iamraincrystal, @preparedwombat, @gracielaacevedo, @chocolatescorpi, @samsmith1971, @grindan, @stuartcturnbull, @itsostylish, @josemalavem, @morey-lezama, @evagavilan2, @popurri, and @mrenglish.
We invite lovers of creative writing to visit The Ink Well, a Hive community started by @raj808 and @stormlight24 and run by @jayna, @gracielaacevedo, @yaziris, @itsostylish, @millycf1976 and @grindan.
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