Elephant Words is Back!

Jul 12, 2015 by Nicolas Papaconstantinou in News

I told you we wouldn’t be gone for long!

A couple of weeks ago, Elephant Words went on its first hiatus since starting up eight years ago.

Almost exactly eight years, actually – our eighth anniversary fell last Wednesday on the 8th July. The first photo we ever used was this one:

“Noble Elephant” by R Sanque

…And the first post was a beautiful, heart-wrenching untitled piece of prose by Andrew Cheverton, which you can find here: http://elephantwords.co.uk/?p=30

In those eight years, our methods hadn’t changed at all, and in recent months the cracks started to show.

So we took some time off to re-evaluate, and now we’re back, and we’ve changed up how we do things!

Most significantly, we no longer only have six writers on the site at any one time. Instead, we’ve got a growing roster of writers, all with the same amount of time each week to write something inspired by that week’s image. This means that some weeks we’ll only have a post a day, and others we might have many more, which means more writers enjoying the Elephant Words challenge, and more lovely writing for you to read.

This also means that we now have room for more writers, so if you or someone you know want to see if you’re up to the Elephant Words challenge, please email me at nickpapa (at) elephantwords.co.uk with a little bit about you and some samples (or links to samples) of your writing.

We’ve also changed the design of the site, and that will keep changing over the next few weeks or months, sometimes with added functions, as I try to get to grips with new themes and options.

And we’re going to be thinking about more ways to reach new readers, and remind our current readers that we’re here every now and then. You can already follow or watch us at Twitter – under @elephantwords – or on our Facebook page here, as well as subscribing to our RSS feed (links to all of which you can find at the top-right of this page.

You should also keep an eye on the site over the next couple of weeks for announcements of our reader mailing lists – one that puts out a message a day with details and links to that day’s posts, and another that sends out weekly posts with details for the whole week.

So… a new image posts later today, and tomorrow Andrew Cheverton returns in his role as “the writer who starts off Elephant Words”, with an incredibly inventive piece of writing called “Tangahl Unbowed, and the Water Boat Beneath His Notice”.

If you enjoy what we do, please consider sharing us with others, and leaving comments on the pieces of writing that move you. And keep reading!