Hour of Writes launches. Will you inherit the dharma throne?

21st November 2014

Don’t let your tree fall in silence. Hour of Writes was conceived a few years ago as a pure place on the web to facilitate and make possible a new type of communication and connection. We all have thoughts and ideas which are original, interesting, beautiful or gripping several times a day. Yet we live in a society which rarely enjoys the communication of such thoughts – even in the pockets where one might imagine such communication may exist (universities, writing groups, intellectual clubs and so on), it often slips into pedantry or the need to play a common denominator card. Sometimes out in the street one may see another searching with their eyes for an outlet for their soul’s musings, but such outlets are difficult to come by and often adorned with other lifestyle paraphernalia.

The idea behind Hour of Writes is the recognition that this part of your mind continues to function all the time you are doing other things (going to a meeting, catching a plane, having an argument, filing, listening to a lecture, cleaning the house, having a shower, running etc), but is not celebrated – instead our more animal skills are the ones we get to exercise – moving things around, being told what to do or telling other people what to do. 

On Hour of Writes you can record these deeper thoughts and reflections (in Notes), and save them to use in your competition entry each week, or share them with other users. Every entry is read and responded to by three other site-users, and is public (anonymously) on the site in Ephemera and/or on your Profile if you wish. As the site moves forward, you will be able to connect with other writers here, send literary letters, and will thus have a personal audience for your aesthetic thoughts. Entries which finish high up in the competition will be published in monthly newsletters and quarterly books. Winners will be chosen by guest judges from the literary world, and all entries will be read by the Hour of Writes team and associates to make sure that brilliant writing doesn’t slip through the net of the marking system. 

In ancient China at Huang-mei monastery, Hui-neng inherited the prize of the dharma throne by writing the following stanza:

Bodhi originally has no tree.

The bright mirror also has no stand.

Fundamentally there is not a single thing.

Where could dust arise?

The closest competition was:-

The body is a Bodhi tree,

the mind a standing mirror bright.

At all times polish it diligently,

and let no dust alight

Hui-neng advanced on the latter by seeing and communicating profoundly that there is nothing real, but that we create the reality. Let’s make a new kind of reality with our writing and allow our minds and perception breadth and space to be and to speak.  Your tree will not fall in silence with Hour of Writes.   

Watch out for this week’s title on Sunday night – bear in mind this week is the final test week, and the competition begins for real on Monday 1st December. We are looking for 100 entries that week to celebrate our launch. We look forward to reading your writing!

AI 21^st Nov 2014

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