Project Canvas and a Call for Submissions

Caroline Meek is the author of The Drawing in of Breath and founder of Project Canvas. She has a passion for bringing writers together and is currently studying English & Creative Writing and Theatre at the University of Iowa. Look for her on her blog, website, Twitter, Pinterest, or in your local coffee shop, wearing flannel and drinking coffee with too much sugar.

We all have something we're passionate about. It's possible that nothing brings you joy like making blanket forts and hiding in them until someone finds you and makes you come out. Maybe it's writing. And whether you've been writing for ten weeks or ten days, you know something about what you're doing. You've got knowledge to share with others. 

Project Canvas started out pretty small. Olivia Rogers and I hung out in a coffee shop one day, and here’s what went down:

Olivia: *sips coffee and doodles on paper* Concept: writing a book about writing.
Caroline: *dumps sugar into coffee* True. But let’s get someone else to write the chapter about world building, ‘cause yikes.
Olivia: *doodles have turned into the actual Mona Lisa, how is she so good* Concept: everyone writes a chapter.
Caroline: *coffee is now mostly cream-colored* A book of writing advice and motivation from our writing friends all over the world!

So Project Canvas was created. Now, it’s a book scheduled to be released in 2018, with over 70 contributors from 9 different countries - including mini-chapters from people in the Go Teen Writers Community like Sierra Abrams (The Color Project), Bethany Baldwin, and Brian McBride! I’m blown away by this lovely, inspiring, teen writing community.  

(It was here that I paused in my writing of this post and freaked out because I was drafting a post for this blog oh my goodness and I just want to let everyone know how much GTW has changed my life. I don’t have words).

Anyway! The call for submissions.  We didn’t want the project to end after the publication, so we decided to launch a blog connected to Project Canvas.  This blog will follow the theme of the book, with admin posts on Mondays and guest posts every Friday by teen and young adult WRITERS LIKE YOU.

Some guidelines - like, three of them

• Posts should be related to writing advice/inspiration/motivation
• Length: not excessively long. We don’t have a word count limit at this time, but just...a good, sensible length would be very nice
• No deadline!

Simple enough.  Go to our submissions page for a few more guidelines, and email projectcanvasblog@gmail.com with submissions and any questions.

There’s a lot of ‘news’ in this post, but I wanted to stop for a moment and look back to the core of it….

You have a message.  And it’s important.  I don’t care if you’re sitting there thinking ‘shoot, my message probably isn’t good enough’.  Or maybe that it’s gonna take four more years to perfect before you can show anyone.  Perhaps you’ve never shown anyone.  Or you don’t know what your message is yet.

And that’s okay.  But I want to make sure that you know -
your words aren’t leaves that fall in deep red colors, 
staining the earth and the sidewalk 
until they disappear for the winter. 
Your worth doesn’t have a time span, 
you’re not an explosive,
you aren’t taking up too much 
space.


You are worth the breath it takes to say what’s been brewing in your heart, and I want you to know that I’m listening.