An Inktroduction to the Well
This community was born from a collaboration between myself (@raj808) and @stormlight24.
As long term curators, we both wanted to build a community that could be the catalyst for a renaissance of fiction and poetry on steem.
The Ink Well is a place where the current story tellers and poets of steem can find support for their work. We also want to provide a space for learning through the sharing of ideas and content, as well as encouraging new creative writers on steem.
With the support of @curie we will be actively trying to boost the profile of great fiction and poetry on steem. Showcasing the talent that we have on this amazing blockchian, and hopefully providing a reason for many who have left to return.
The great advantage of steem for creative writers is the open aspect of what you can do here. You are not limited by the same considerations as in other online publishing mediums. We have much wider choices in what we choose to write in regards to audience tastes and don't have to cater to advertisers to monetize our writing through the click for pay model. This level of freedom of expression while still being rewarded financially is unique!
But what is even more special about steem for a creative is that it is a perfect environment for experimentation. Over the years I have seen some amazing writing initiatives here that have created the most unique blockchain stories.
This is what we would love to inspire at The Ink Well. Stories and poems that run unfettered in the stream of creative consciousness.
To this end we will be be developing competitions and challenges over the coming months to inspire the muse in you, and fuel the competitive spirit with some prizes 😉
In the future we will explore the possibility of creating a discord community where members can interact, access educational writing guides and attend workshops to help with editing. But for now we would like to keep The Ink well exclusively on chain while the community feature is in such an early development phase.
I hope to see your stories and poems posted to our community page at: The Ink Well.
https://steemit.com/trending/hive-170798
The Seed of Inspiration
The name for this community grew from an idea that came to me in a dream. As so often happens with creative endeavors, the seed of inspiration grew in my subconscious only to sprout to full awakening through research.
Wells are a powerful archetypal construct of mystery and healing power. In ancient mythology, superstitions about the healing powers of blessed holy wells ran deep. In Irish mythology druids performed pagan ceremonies around wells and the importance of water in the lives of early mankind was paramount. The process of drawing the water of life from beneath the earth was considered an almost magical act, like a gift from the underworld. Similarly, wells have great significance in ancient Christian traditions and have been places of pilgrimage for millennia.
The idea of this joining of two worlds, drawing life giving water from the darkness, is the perfect analogy for the gift of creativity. It’s that moment of inspiration when a poem pours forth seemingly from nowhere, or the steady flow of words that build like a river into patterns of plot in a short story - these are the moments that fuel the fire burning in a creative writers’ belly.
After a little thought about how I could make the idea of the well of creativity relate to writers, I suddenly remembered the famous writers group The Inklings which included C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.
The Inklings were an informal literary discussion group associated with the University of Oxford for nearly two decades between the early 1930s and late 1949.[1] The Inklings were literary enthusiasts who praised the value of narrative in fiction and encouraged the writing of fantasy.
Source: Wikipedia
Then that eureka moment happened, when the concept of a wellspring of creativity merged with the word ink, and The Ink Well was born.
A friendly community that can hopefully gather all the fictioneers, poets, dramatists, novelists, scribblers and scribes together to share ideas and draw water from a well spring of inspiration.
"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."
Quote from Franz Kafka
Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay
Future Plans for The Ink Well
The Ink well has created a dedicated account @theinkwell which will be used in the near future for all competitions and official announcements. To keep up to date with all the happenings in the depths of the well, please follow the @theinkwell account for updates in your feed.
All rewards that the @theinkwell earns will be powered up for voting the community and funding competitions. If anyone wants to delegate to The Ink Well we would very much appreciate it, but there are no returns for delegations other than satisfaction in the knowledge that you're helping inspire people on steem.
The Ink Well will hopefully be issuing steempeak badges to contributing members dependent on approval from @steempeak. I shall be applying for the @steempeak badges ASAP and will announce them in an upcoming post on the @theinkwell account.
When SMT's are finally released from testnet it is my plan to build value for the community through a dedicated proof of brain token. Plans are in the early stages at the moment but I hope to use the network value of the token and community to leverage interest of traditional publishing entities. It is my hope that if the crypto bull starts raging again, I can harness mainstream interest to make The Ink well a kind of sandbox and incubator for talent. A place where literary agents and publishing houses can source new authors. Ambitious I know... but you've got to dream.
In conclusion, we invite all imaginative writers to join us in sharing the exciting future developments on the steem blockchain.
Thanks for reading.
Post by @raj808. This post is set to 75% beneficiary to the @theinkwell account to start building the communities steem power.
Edit: I was soooo tired yesterday after working on various jobs to complete the launch for The Ink Well, that after proofreading the text for this post, I forgot to set the beneficiary to @theinkwell.
To rectify this, I will be sending 75% of the value of this post's payout to the @theinkwell account in liquid steem when this post pays out.
