May 2025 Updates and Monthly Contest from The Ink Well

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Hello Beautiful Community!

In this monthly newsletter, we share tips for our writers, as well as any important news or updates, and announce the winner(s) of the previous month's contest for the best overall story of the month.

Helpful resources:

We collect all of important tips for success in the community in our Treasure Trove of Tips, Reminders and Guidelines here. If you're looking for writing tips and help with improving your writing craft, you can find our catalog of fiction writing tips here.

Topics in this newsletter:

• Topic of the Month: How Often Should You Post in The Ink Well?
• Winner(s) from the April Contest!
• May Contest
• Find Us on Discord
• Delegate to The Ink Well / Follow Our Curation Trail

Topic of the Month: How Often Should You Post in The Ink Well?

There are no rules about how often you can post in The Ink Well. But we do have a suggestion. We recommend limiting your posts to no more than two in any given week — for example, up to one story each for the fiction prompt and the creative nonfiction prompt.

Why? Well there are several reasons, including the time limitations of The Ink Well admin team.

Another reason is quality. As we have shared in our tips and prompts over time, we highly value quality writing that has been written with care and edited for errors. Writers who take the time to improve the quality of their stories before posting them are rewarded with higher curation. (Hint: If you write more than two stories in a week, you might ask yourself if you are more focused on quantity than quality. 😉)

So we urge our community members to take plenty of time to write and edit stories, and make sure their work is readable, interesting, well written and as free of errors as possible.

Back to time limitations — we don't curate every story, as everyone in the community is aware of. One factor is the number of stories that have been published by a given writer. If we are short on time, we sometimes make the decision not to curate new work by writers who have already had their work curated that week.

We hope this is helpful!

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 April 2025 Contest!

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Thank you to everyone who participated in our April 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 April, 2025, winning a prize of 20 Hive is....

@universoperdido, with his story, My Only Wish.

Curator's notes:

@universoperdido writes the most spellbinding tale of magical realism, about a friendship gone awry and a mystical antique store that has intriguing old items that grant wishes.

It's a must-read, so I won't give anything more away. But behold the creative hook in this opening paragraph:

I never believed in magic or fantasy stories, for me they were fragments of people's imagination. As a representation of the extraordinary, the impossible echoed in our perception of the imaginary, becoming a door to escape from the real. The day I learned that the fantastic could also be something unexpected, I was intrigued by the possibility of the impossible.

Congratulations, @universoperdido!

Honorable Mentions

The following stories were also in the running for best stories last month, with excellent storytelling!

• @litguru: The Summer Home
• @rinconpoetico7: The Winning Ticket
• @gertu: Orianka's Story
• @trexane: Decimation
• @marriot5464: The Whispering Ceiling
• @terjix: Jola's Fear
• @wrestlingdesires: The Problem with Creek Valley
• @popurri: He Inherited His Gift
• @daeze-winnie: Nostalgia in the Moonlight
• @rammargarita: To Dream Is To Live

Well done, writers!

May 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!

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.

50 HP	100 HP	500 HP	1000 HP	5000 HP
click here	click here	click here	click here	click here

A big thank you to all of our delegators:
@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, @sayee, @gertu, @mosin-nagant, @beauty197, @beckyroyal, @perfect20, @estilodereba, @rare-gem, @jjmusa2004, @ricurohemi28, @benwesterham, 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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