September 2024 Updates and Monthly Contest from The Ink Well

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Hello Beautiful Community!

Thanks for checking out our monthly newsletter, where we share news and updates, provide all kinds of helpful tips, and announce the winner(s) of the previous month's contest for the best overall story of the month.

Here are the topics in this newsletter:

• Topic of the Month from The Ink Well: Photography of Public Works of Art
• Our Treasure Trove of Tips and Reminders to All Writers in The Ink Well
• Winner(s) from the August Contest!
• September Contest
• Find Us on Discord
• Creative Inspiration
• Delegate to The Ink Well / Follow Our Curation Trail

Topic of the Month from The Ink Well: Photography of Public Works of Art

An interesting topic came up this month in The Ink Well: Is it okay to use photos of public artwork (even graffiti) in your posts? And the answer is (almost unequivocally) "NO."

It's interesting because this is a new area in the realm of copyrights and ownership rights of creative works. Here's what you need to know:

• Graffiti, public artwork, statues, murals, and other creative works are protected under copyright laws, like other creative works.
• You may photograph these works and use them for personal purposes — for example a Facebook post that shows you were in Milan standing in front of the Medici Chapel.
• You may not include an image that you took of street art, murals, artworks or other creative works that you took with your cell phone or camera in a Hive post. The reason is because "unauthorized commercial use resulting in income to someone other than the artist" is prohibited. Do we earn income from our Hive posts? Yes we do. So must absolutely use only images that are available under a creative commons license, or otherwise are not copyright protected.
• You may use images of public works if they appear on a creative commons site such as Wikimedia Commons, or if they are available in the public domain.

We know it seems complicated, but it's really not. You simply cannot take pictures of artwork, murals, sculptures, and other creative works that others have produced and use them in your blog.

Our Treasure Trove of Tips and Reminders to All Writers in The Ink Well

The following are things that we'd like to provide as reminders, as these are common issues.

Do Not Portray Violence in Your Stories

It is important to know that stories featuring violence are not allowed in The Ink Well. We won't accept or curate stories involving rape, incest, beatings, stabbings, murders or abuse. This is clearly stated in our rules.

Why? First of all it is offensive and harmful to some people, especially those who have endured violence in their own lives and are suffering emotionally from those experiences. Second, we cannot screen who views our community content or prevent sensitive audiences from viewing it. We have no way of ensuring that stories in The Ink Well will only be seen by appropriate readers. And third, The Ink Well admins choose not to read stories about violence and abuse. This job is challenging enough without facing gruesome shootings, beatings, rapes, child molestation, etc.

So we have defined and enforced rules around this. They are simply this: Don't publish stories in this community about violence, rape, or abuse. You can see the full details in the article on our stance on violence.

Note: Our No Violence rule also applies to creative nonfiction stories (your real life stories) about family experiences and upbringing. This means that even if whippings or beatings were considered normal in your household as a child, you will need to choose another community if you want to describe those experiences. Stories involving harm to children are traumatizing to some people, so the retelling of them is not allowed in The Ink Well.

Why are we providing this reminder? Because even though we are very clear in this messaging in our rules and in the information in our prompt posts, we continue to see stories that we don't deem appropriate for our community.

Thank you to everyone who works hard at writing quality stories, following The Ink Well rules and guidelines and supporting other authors in the community!

Use of AI Tools

We have asked that you do not use AI tools to generate stories. What you do elsewhere is your business, but we do not allow it in The Ink Well.

Additionally, we ask that you do not use AI tools like Quillbot to rephrase and rewrite your stories. If you do that, you are still using AI to generate and manipulate content. It is not your natural writing and if it is detected by our tools, you will not be curated.

The one tool we sanction for assisting with the quality of your writing is Grammarly. It is simple and free to use for checking spelling and grammar. (Do not use the AI features to rewrite your stories! Our AI detectors will identify your work as AI and will not be curated.)

Note: AI for image generation is okay.

Recommended Minimum Length for All Stories

We highly recommend that you write stories of a minimum length of 750 words, whether you are writing fiction or creative nonfiction.

Why? Because we have found that stories less than that length are nearly always missing something, and do not have the quality and merit that we are looking for in the stories we reward with top curation.

If your story is less than that length, then it is highly likely that it could use more development in one or more of these areas:

• Better scene setting. Does the story happen in a cold season or a warm season? Are the birds singing? If it takes place by the sea, is there the sound of crashing waves and seagulls crying? (See our article on settings.)
• More character development. Does the main person in the story (even if it's yourself) have certain characteristics that contribute to the events of the story, such as a sense of humor or a propensity to get angry? Who are the people involved? Not just their names, but their characteristics and behaviors. (See our article on developing memorable characters.)
• More dialogue. When people are talking, we get to know them. Dialogue brings your characters and your story to life. It makes them seem real and believable. Adding more dialogue can instantly enrich your story and better engage the reader. (See our article on How to write dialogue.)
• More development or description of the conflict. Conflict is crucial for all stories. It is the reason for the telling of the story. It can be as minor as a disappointment or as major as a critical illness or death of someone important. Whether you're writing a fictional story or a creative nonfiction story, make sure to include the feelings and reactions of everyone in the story who is affected by the conflict. (See our article on adding conflict.)
• A more developed resolution. The story's resolution is also critical, whether it is a fictional story or a creative nonfiction story. Sometimes stories just seem to end abruptly, and it's like hitting a wall. We want to know why things happened the way they did, and we want to see the full scenario play out. (See our article on story arcs which is another word for the development of the story, its conflict and its resolution.)

The articles linked above were written to help fiction writers, but the same principles apply to creative nonfiction. To help creative nonfiction writers to learn how to assimilate these storytelling qualities, we cover some of these principles in our article on creative nonfiction tips for success.

Remember to Provide the Original Story with Translations

Did you know we have a new requirement for translations? You must include your original story in the language in which it was written. This is because the tools we use to identify content written by AI (which is not allowed in The Ink Well) work more effectively in native languages, and it will help us avoid falsely identifying a story as AI-written.

So, if you use a translation tool to translate your story, you must provide the story in English as well as in your native language. Thank you.

We Reward Our Delegators!

We appreciate all the delegations we have received! Delegations enable us to support the writers in The Ink Well and run contests!

The Ink Well now pays out curation rewards for your delegations!

By delegating any amount of your Hive Power to the @theinkwell account, not only will you be supporting the writers and the community as a whole, but you'll also earn rewards.

These rewards are paid out on a daily basis, proportional to the amount of HP you delegate. This is similar to other big curation projects, but you'll be directly supporting fellow writers and The Ink Well community — one of the creative epicenters of Hive!

Want to delegate to The Ink Well? See the last section of this newsletter for some handy HiveSigner links! Or do it on your own by delegating any amount to @theinkwell account, from your favorite frontend or wallet.

Questions? Visit the ask-theinkwell channel in our Discord server.

Avoid morals, lessons and author intrusion

When we read stories, whether they are fictional or creative nonfiction stories, we do NOT read to be taught something. We do NOT read to find out what the author has to say about the story at the end. We do not read to learn lessons about kindness, thoughtfulness, God, politics, or anything else.

We read to be entertained, and to experience something outside of our own daily lives — just as we do when we watch a movie or a TV show. And, we want to draw our own conclusions at the end of the story.

When the author provides a summary of the lesson to be learned from the story at the end, this is called author intrusion. You can read our article on author intrusion in our catalog of fiction writing tips.

So — please do not add a lesson or moral, or write a story or creative nonfiction piece for the purpose of instructing, teaching or preaching. Thank you!

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 rules for images

We have three important rules around images:

1. 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 may not use images you have taken of other people's artwork. These are also copyright protected)
2. You must provide attribution for ALL images — even if they are your own.
3. 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.
4. Please always provide the image source, even if it is your own, or you generated it with AI tools. No matter what, we need to know where your image came from. Thank you!

The difference between fiction, nonfiction and creative nonfiction

In The Ink Well, we are all about storytelling. When you make up the story from your imagination, it is called "fiction." When you tell a story from your real life experiences — with characters, conflicts, action, and dialogue — that is creative nonfiction. Other types of nonfiction are not accepted in The Ink Well.

That's why all of our creative nonfiction prompt posts start out with a pointer to our article describing creative nonfiction.

Be sure to read that article before posting nonfiction in The Ink Well!

Here are a few important notes:

1. Creative nonfiction is real life storytelling.
2. Your story must include elements of fiction, such as characters, dialogue, scene setting, action, a conflict and its resolution, etc.
3. Do not post other types of nonfiction in The Ink Well, such as advice columns, self-help information, a report on your health, essays on life, etc.

Here are some examples of nonfiction vs. creative nonfiction:

• Nonfiction: How I spent my day.

• Creative nonfiction: The day I spent with my father when I finally realized how much he loved me.

• Nonfiction: Three ways to improve your mood.

• Creative nonfiction: How I spent two years recovering from depression with the help of a friend.

• Nonfiction: The political strife in my country.

• Creative nonfiction: The night my husband and I pretended our country is not at war and had the time of our lives.

We hope that helps!

Note: We do not curate nonfiction posts that do not follow our guidelines.

Winner(s) from the August Contest!

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Thank you to everyone who participated in our August fiction contest by writing stories for our fiction prompts throughout the month. If you submitted a story for any of our weekly fiction prompts, you were automatically entered into the monthly contest.

As always, we received some great stories! And as you can imagine, choosing one winner from all those great stories was a challenge. So in addition to our winner of the month, we have selected several honorable mentions.

Our Winner!

Our top story of the month for August, 2024, winning a prize of 20 Hive is....

@iskawrites, with her story, My Gypsy Friend.

With this story, @iskawrites soars. She does not miss a beat. The story is written in response to the prompt gypsy. She takes that prompt and creates a fiction that defies stereotypical representations of this word. Her 'gypsy' is a man who sits by the side of the road and plays music. A young girl has no money, so she drops toast in his kaftan. She strikes up a conversation as he plays for her. She brings back two friends. One drops chicken and one drops an apple. The man kindly accepts these offerings and plays for the children. The relationship is not about what the children give, but the spirit of giving. This he rewards with his calm manner and music. A parent learns of the 'gypsy's' presence and chases him off. Years later a man, just like the gypsy, plays outside the university gates of our now-grown protagonist. Is it the same gypsy? This one is blind, so there will be no chance of recognition in his eyes. The story ends with an almost philosophical suggestion...is it the very same man, or is the old gypsy an embodiment of the spirit that filled the gypsy of her youth? This story shines. It speaks to the heart in all of us.

Congratulations, @iskawrites!

Honorable Mentions

The following stories followed closely on the heels of our selected winner, with excellent storytelling!

• @seki1: A Gypsy
• @ridgette: To You Who Spun Lies
• @riverflows: Brushstrokes
• @ricardo993: The Commissioning of the Milky way with Andromeda
• @popurri: A Lapse in My Memory

Well done, writers!

September Contest!

As a reminder, you are automatically entered into the contest of the month by writing a story for any of our fiction prompts throughout the month. There is no prompt for the monthly contest. So keep writing for our weekly fiction prompts and keep giving your stories your best effort!

Contest Rules

• Participate in one or more of our weekly prompts before the end of the calendar month.

• Post a link to your story in a comment on the prompt that inspired your story.

• Use the #inkwellprompt and #fiction tags on your post.

Please remember that we have rules around violence, rape, blood, and physical abuse. See The Ink Well rules, and our article describing The Ink Well Stance on Violence.

If you have questions, please stop into the "ask-theinkwell" channel on Discord.

At the end of the month, we will announce our winner of the month and our honorable mentions, and the winner will receive 20 Hive.

Hint: We are looking for a high-quality story. Don't rush. Remember the important skills we always talk about — great settings, good character building, strong dialog, 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

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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 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
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. (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!

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.

A big thank you to all of our delegators:</center
@jayna, @felt.buzz, @itsostylish, @carn, @agmoore, @marcybetancourt, @marlyncabrera, @stormcharmer, @juniorgomez, @marriot5464, @iamraincrystal, @preparedwombat, @gracielaacevedo, @timix648, @samsmith1971, @jackdeathblack, @josemalavem, @riverflows, @generikat, @mineopoly, @hazmat, @treasuree, @kingsleyy, @popurri, @nancybriti1, @marynn, @rinconpoetico7, @nathy33, @iyimoga, @samiwrites, @captainman, @morey-lezama, @evagavilan2, @moneykeep, @mrenglish, @funshee, @amiegeoffrey, @balikis95, @cool08, @rukkie, @raymondpeter, @emreal, @tomiajax, @kushyzee, @osomar357, @stuartcturnbull, @evernoticethat, @jjmusa2004, @rare-gem, @ricurohemi28, @benwesterham, and @shakavon.

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, @samsmith1971 and @agmoore.

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