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.
Looking for our community guidelines and tips? You can find our Treasure Trove of Tips, Reminders and Guidelines here. Or if you're looking for writing tips and help with improving your writing craft, you can find our catalog of fiction writing tips here.
Here are the topics in this newsletter:
- Topic of the Month from The Ink Well: Don't Miss This Step
- Winner(s) from the February Contest!
- March Contest
- Find Us on Discord
- Delegate to The Ink Well / Follow Our Curation Trail
Topic of the Month from The Ink Well: Don't Miss This Step
As we mentioned in our topic of the month in the February newsletter, it is important to review your story before submitting it, and check for grammar and spelling issues.
There are some great tools for doing this, like the free version of Grammarly.
However, as we also mentioned in that article, you should only use the tool to fix grammar and spelling, not to edit and revise your story. Editing and revising your work using these tools often results in your story being detected as AI. And AI generated stories are not what we are looking for in The Ink Well.
We are mentioning it again this month because we see a lot of stories where the grammar check is not done at all. When there are typos and grammatical errors in the story, this tells our admin team that you did not take the time to do that last step before posting. This will affect your curation.
If you use Grammarly to check for errors, most of them will show up the tool with recommendations for correcting them.
Don't want to use Grammarly? Content tools on Hive like Peakd will point out errors in your content too, and we have an article on how to check for errors using Google Docs. With all these resources, there are several great choices. Just don't skip this step!
And remember:
We recommend that you keep your original content before any editing using these tools. If your content comes up as AI-generated or AI-assisted and we decline to curate for that reason, you can supply your original content.
As always, if you have questions, please visit the "ask-theinkwell" channel in our Discord server. But note that we do not tolerate pleading or arguing with our admins.
Winner(s) from the February 2025 Contest!
Thank you to everyone who participated in our February 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.
In addition to our winner of the month, we have selected several honorable mentions.
Our Winner!
Our top story of the month for February, 2025, winning a prize of 20 Hive is....
Trad the Path of Musical Notes.@popurri, with her story,
Curator's notes:
@popurri crafts this fiction into a delicate symphony in which each note resonates and builds to a crescendo. There is drama, tension, pain and euphoria and with each emotion the tones of Rachmaninov echo in the reader's head until the finale, which literally takes one’s breath.
Congratulations, @popurri!
Honorable Mentions
The following stories followed closely on the heels of our selected winner, with excellent storytelling!
- A Home Away from Home in the East@kei2:
- A Flicker of Happiness@terjix:
- Fur Frenemies@marriot5464:
- Love Lost to Time@jjmusa2004:
Well done, writers!
March Contest!
As a reminder, you are automatically entered into the contest of the month by writing and posting a fictional story in The Ink Well anytime 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 fiction prompts (or write any fictional short story in The Ink Well) before the end of the calendar month.
Post a link to your story in a comment on the prompt that inspired your story, if applicable.
Use the #fiction tag as well as the #inkwellprompt tag (if applicable) 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 visit the "ask-theinkwell" channel in our Discord server.
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
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, @carn, @itsostylish, @agmoore, @ricardo993, @marcybetancourt, @marriot5464, @marlyncabrera, @stormcharmer, @juniorgomez, @iamraincrystal, @preparedwombat, @gracielaacevedo, @timix648, @samsmith1971, @jackdeathblack, @josemalavem, @generikat, @mineopoly, @hazmat, @treasuree, @kingsleyy, @popurri, @nancybriti1, @marynn, @rinconpoetico7, @nathy33, @iyimoga, @captainman, @kachy2022, @morey-lezama, @evagavilan2, @mrenglish, @funshee, @amiegeoffrey, @balikis95, @rukkie, @raymondpeter, @tomiajax, @stuartcturnbull, @monster-hunter, @aiuna, @sayee, @omachi213, @rare-gem, @jjmusa2004, @ricurohemi28, @benwesterham, @estilodereba and @shakavon.
We invite lovers of creative writing to visit The Ink Well
, a Hive community run by @jayna, @gracielaacevedo, @yaziris, @itsostylish, @samsmith1971 and @agmoore.
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Congratulations @popurri. Thanks @theinkwell for the mention.
Thank you @marriot5464
Congratulations to the winner. Thank you for the honorable mention.✨
Congratulations to @popurri and the others selected!
Thank you @nancybriti1 😘
Thank you @theinkwell I am touched by this award ☺️ Congratulations @kei2, @terjix, @marriot5464 and @jjmusa2004
Thank you.