The Rainbow Room, view out the window, Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos, New Mexico, July 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
We started red Ravine with the vision that all writers break through to the writer within and create room in their lives to write: a place to sit in silence, a practice that feeds them, and a community that holds them. Over the five months since we publicly launched red Ravine, we’ve worked every day to make red Ravine that place, that practice, and that community.
Now in an effort to take our community and our blog to the next level, we are making a call to writers and artists to consider submitting your work to red Ravine. We realize that by making this call in such a public way, we are opening ourselves up to a lot more work, potential criticism (for accepting some pieces and not others), and possibly more headaches. Yet, this is the direction we want to go, and so we persist.
We’ve created a Submission Guidelines page where you can find all the information about how to submit your piece of writing or art to us for consideration. We want to make it clear that we will not be in a position to publish everything that comes our way. And we want to make it clear that we won’t always be able to say exactly why some pieces won’t fit. But, we’re willing to take the risk, and we hope you are willing to do so as well.
Take a look at our guidelines. If you have feedback on them, feel free to send us a note (an email address is included at the end of that page). And if you’re ready to get started, launch right in. We’re waiting.
You guys ARE brave! Good luck with this: I’ll submit something ultra-short. I didn’t check, is poetry included?
(Yb – thanks for your last comment; here’s a link to my latest art object, when you want a break for a little Mexican peasant input
I’ll get back to you soon
Peter
P.S. look at the post ‘out of the mouths of babes…’ on my blog. At about 40 words, it has to be value!
‘red ravine’
for me
is neither political
nor topographic;
I see a woman,
birthing
LikeLike
What an exciting turn. Your courage taking this on is matched only by the love of the online writing community you express in doing so.
LikeLike
Honestly? Well, take my current mood into consideration, but I’m feeling sad about this, like we are going to lose hearing as frequently the wonderful, spontaneous voices of ybonesy and quoinmonkey and that I for one will feel too intimidated to ever submit — I’m not into being judged these days, I don’t submit anywhere. You two have just been important centerpieces of my recently developing blogworld, so I just feel like I’m losing your blog and in its place will be a lovely, thoughtful e-zine or whatever they are called, but without the immediacy of a lowly blog so there will still be a hole in my blogosphere.
LikeLike
That won’t happen at all, tiv, and bless your heart for voicing it. Guest voices will still be interspersed with our own. No highly polished e-zine for us. It’s a blog, after all ; – ). Besides, I don’t shower and wash my hair enough to ever be mistaken for slick. (But, if we ever do get all corporate on you, let us know.)
Oh, and I just thought of something. QM and I set into place a lot of structure that could be interpreted as “corporate.” (Not that you brought this up, but I jogged something here when I talked about going corporate.) We gave ourselves a mission statement and a vision statement and guiding principles, all about a year ago when we first started talking about starting a blog together. Those things were devised so we could then go wild within our structure. And so we could work with one another with more than trust holding us together.
But what I also want to say is, for us the most important piece is creating community. Writing and makiing art are solitary endeavors. And the dynamics often colored by envy and a perspective of scarcity. Which is why including other voices is a piece of what we want to do.
LikeLike
94, thanks for the poem. Poetry is surely included in everything we do.
joefelso, thanks for the vote of confidence in us. It’s challenging work and we’ll see how it goes. The online writing community is rich and full. And I never would have known had I not started writing on red Ravine and reading other writing blogs.
The amazing thing about blogging is you never know where it’s going to take you. Or who is reading, unless they comment once in a while. It’s a strange medium in that way. But I am growing so much from the conversation and the practice.
LikeLike
TIV, ybonesy said it very well in her comment. We believe there is enough room for everyone out here – there is a place for all writers and artists. And giving a little space to others with a similar vision and mission in their work is rewarding for us.
I like what ybonesy said about why we developed the structure we have on the blog and how we’ve thoughtfully put it all together, and try to continue to do so as we evolve – it’s because of that structure that we can go wild in other ways. And learning writing practice from Natalie taught us so much about structure.
So, no worries! We aren’t going anywhere! We’re having too much fun together.
LikeLike
Great idea! Can I submit photos of my pieces when they are finished?? =:)
LikeLike
Absolutely, LB, we’d be honored!
LikeLike
This is exciting. I’m forwarding your news to my writing group asap. BRAVO
LikeLike
wow, I wanted to comment on “how to submit”, but I saw the “The Rainbow Room” on a top of this page… Wow! It was the picture of my heart.
I remind just one: I am writing now and I wish to say something good.
Happy New Year!
LikeLike