September 2022 News, Updates and New Contest from The Ink Well

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Hello Beautiful Community!

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:

• The Ink Well Updates
• Winner from the August Contest!
• September 2022 Contest — 10-Hive Prize + 2nd and 3rd Place Prizes
• Find Us on Discord
• Delegate to The Ink Well / Follow Our Curation Trail
• Rules, Guidelines, Posting Frequency, etc.
• Creative Inspiration

The Ink Well Updates

We recently launched The Golden Quill awards. With this initiative, we reward a special badge to our community members who have demonstrated exceptional skill in their mastery of short story writing. Their stories include the key elements of great storytelling that we emphasize in our writing prompts and in our catalog of fiction writing tips, including strong character development, a rich setting, an excellent story arc, and the all-important "dynamic trio" — action, dialog and narrative.

We have awarded three badges so far, to @gabmr, @popurri and @lordtimoty. Congratulations to all of you! We look forward to awarding more badges. Watch for these posts.

Winner from the August Contest!

Thank you to everyone who participated in our August contest, with stories and comments. The stories we received for this prompt were absolutely amazing. It was so hard to pick a winner! In fact, we decided to pick a first, second and third place to reward more authors.

The contest rules involved writing one story in The Ink Well during the month of August inspired by the prompt wild.

Thank you to all participants!

Winners!

Here are our three winners for the August, 2022 contest:

• Wild GirlWe have selected @fantom22's story, as the prize winner! Congratulations to @fantom22! You will receive 10 Hive.

• Wild IntrudersIn second place, we have selected @janaveda's story, . Congratulations to @janaveda! You will receive 6 HBI.

• The Victory Was to the WildIn third place, we have selected @abigail04's story, . Congratulations to @abigail04! You will receive 4 HBI.

And the rest of the participants in the contest of the month are all honorable mentions (including @itsostylish, who as a community admin is not eligible to win, but produced a fantastic tale with a great spin on the prompt). You all delivered lovely stories that were a joy to read!

• The Amazon Untangled@gabmr:
• Wild Card@itsostylish:
• Wild Inspiration@cajiro:
• Their Yellow Eyes@popurri:
• The Mother Who Made it Through a Wild Night@dennnmarc
• Chaos in the Wild@cool08
• The Wildness of the Sea@ricardo993
• Risky Decision@katleya
• A New Journey Called Life@mjvdc

September Contest!

Get ready to put your creativity to work! For September we will again award a first place price of 10 Hive, second place of 6 HBI, and third place of 4 HBI for the monthly contest.

For the month of September, 2022, the prompt is ancient!

You can do anything with this prompt that you wish. Whether you want to write about ancient customs, ancient ruins or any other take on the prompt, you are welcome to do so! Note: You do not need to include the word "ancient" in your story. The story just needs to be inspired in some way by this word.

Ideas to inspire you (feel free to pick one, or come up with your own):

• Divers discover an ancient vessel filled with pirate treasure... but something frightening happens and they abandon it.
• A family explores some ruins on a Greek island and find themselves transported to ancient Greece.
• Two children decide to dig for treasure and actually find some!

Here's how to participate:

• Write one story this month in The Ink Well inspired by something ancient.

• Post a link to your story in a comment on this post.

At the end of the month, we will choose three winners.

Hint: We are looking for a high-quality story. Don't rush. Use the skills we have been emphasizing in our weekly 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

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 also follow our curation trail by going to our hive.vote curation trail page and clicking the follow button.

Rules, Guidelines, Posting Frequency, etc.

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Our Once-a-Week Posting Guideline

A few months ago we announced a new guideline of posting in The Ink Well no more than once-per-week.

We found this necessary as we work to eliminate spam, content farming and low-quality content from our community, and ensure that we have the resources to curate all the wonderful work that our community members publish.

What this means for you: Please use the once-a-week rule as a rough guideline. In other words, you do not need to wait a full 7 days to post again. If it's 5, 6, or 7 days, that's fine.

Refresher on The Ink Well Community Rules

We add this refresher to all of our monthly newsletters as a reminder.

If you're new, or you're not aware of our rules, please take the time to read them. If you are on a desktop or laptop computer, you can find them at the top of our community home page. You will also see them at the top of your post in The Ink Well if you hover over the blue "Rules" button. Can't see them? You can find the rules here.

The following are some of the rules that we commonly re-explain to unaware members:

• Do not post violent content. No stabbings, rapes, shootings, murders, brutality of women or children, etc. etc. And do not post anything NSFW (not safe for work). Why? Because we are a community that is open to anyone and everyone. And these topics and images are unpalatable or even traumatizing for some people. We also have no way of preventing children from viewing our community content. Please read our article on violence and brutality where we spell this out in very clear language.
• Please only post short stories in The Ink Well. That is the sole focus of our community. There are other communities for poetry, essays, freewriting, etc.
• Please do not post chapter stories or "multi-part" stories. The reason for this rule is so that readers do not need to have read a preceding or future piece in order to read and enjoy the current piece they are reading. Each piece must stand on its own, with a beginning, middle and end.
• We require images to be non-copyrighted (e.g. from sites like Pixabay, Pexels or Unsplash) and for your story to include a linked source for every image directly to the image itself, not to the image website. If the images are your own, please be sure to make a note of it.
• Plagiarism and re-posting are not allowed. We only accept 100% unique, original content in The Ink Well that has not appeared elsewhere in any form. (The only exception is the story appearing simultaneously in multiple Hive front ends, like ecency, peakd, etc., which is of course fine.) This is to ensure that The Ink Well community follows the highest standards for content, and that rewards go to those who have developed and shared their own creative work in the community.

Rules Support and Protect Our Community

The goals of The Ink Well are to foster creativity and growth, and to help writers develop their writing skills and earn an income for their work. We want The Ink Well to be a safe and welcoming place for writers and readers. As community admins, we are staunch defenders of truth, honesty, and creative integrity.

Be sure to check out The Ink Well Manifesto, if you have never done so. It provides the mission of The Ink Well, information about rewards and income, and more information on our policies.

Community Involvement

No community is a true community without involvement and engagement! We ask that you read and comment on at least two other writers' work each week, or two for each story you publish in The Ink Well.

And remember that the rewards for Hive posts are split between the writer and the curators! You are paid to read and support other writers, just as you are paid to publish. Your support of others also builds your following.

Creative Inspiration and Skill Building

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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:

1. Creative inspiration
   We encourage and support ideas and creativity by publishing a weekly fiction prompt. Watch for them in The Ink Well on Monday nights. 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
2. 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. 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.

We invite lovers of creative writing to visit The Ink Well
, a Hive community started by @raj808 and @stormlight24 and run by @jayna, @agmoore, @gracielaacevedo, @yaziris and @itsostylish.

How to Follow Our Curation Trail

You can follow our curation trail by going to our hive.vote curation trail page and clicking the follow button.

How to Delegate to The Ink Well

We welcome delegations! These support our community in many ways, including helping us to provide support to quality content creators through curation and contests.

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A big thank you to all of our delegators:
@zeurich, @jayna, @felt.buzz, @marcybetancourt, @marlyncabrera, @stormcharmer, @generikat, @agmoore, @iamraincrystal, @preparedwombat, @gracielaacevedo, @chocolatescorpi, @kirlos, @josemalavem, @morey-lezama, @sayury, @evagavilan2, @deraaa and @popurri.

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