How to get into the Inkhaven Spotlight

1 - Pretend you know what you are talking about

You don’t even have to try that hard! One of the easiest ways to do this is to pick a topic that the spotlight decision makers don’t know much about.

For example, let’s look at Hauke Hillebrandt’s essay giving writing advice.

Sentences: Shorten long sentences to ~20 words to increase readability[2]- err on the side of breaking them up; use fewer clauses; no redundancy; unnecessary adjectives; reduce need to recall references to other parts of the sentence (e.g. constructions like ‘the former and the latter’).

Someone familiar with good writing might realise that there are 46 words and 156 clauses in this sentence. They might also be curious about what exactly Hauke means when he later says ‘Use the Mumford methods’, given no additional context is given, and click on the link Hauke provides. They might, after all this, think that perhaps this isn’t a good candidate for featuring in the Inkhaven spotlight. Fortunately that is not the world we live in!

2 - Work at Inkhaven

You can find the Inkhaven spotlight by clicking on the ‘Meet the 40 Residents publishing every day at Inkhaven’ link.

Fortunately, being an Inkhaven resident isn’t actually required. If like Kave Rennedy you are tired from your days work at Inkhaven, and are struggling to find a coherent way for the little girl to cut the rope with blunt scissors, you can simply ‘And the little girl took her scissors, struck them twice on the well curb to give them sharp edges, and cut through the bucket rope.’ And this will be worthy of the spotlight.

You don’t even need to publish every day! Ben Pace has missed 8 days of publishing, but his lessons on epistemology, derived from his experience of being tricked by a character in a computer game, is in the spotlight.

1 - Write things worth reading

Surprisingly, this will actually hinder your chances of being in the spotlight. No matter if you’re pouring out your soul in the form of poetry or pouring out your soul in the form of psychoanalytic poetry analysis, if it’s too good it will not be included.

2 - Offend Vaniver

You might have beaten him playing Anno 1503 many years ago. You might have not been sufficiently gushing when you mentioned a valuable conversation you had with him in the Inkhaven feedback form.

You might even be confused about what you could have possibly done to offend him so. You might lay awake at night racking your brain for any possible hint of why you’re being mistreated so, whispering ‘What more do you want from me Vaniver? Why? Why would you do this to me? Do you think I don’t notice, that I don’t check? Endlessly scouring the updates for my name, finding only drivel about people who think they are ships and spectres and AI. Is this about the beard? You fear I am growing a beard to rival your own? Why? Why? Why?’