About this Writing Project

Before you start work on a story for this Writing Project, please take a few moments to read these few paragraphs as they describe exactly what is expected of participating authors and their submissions.

Ghazals are a poetic form originating in Turkey/Persia.  Traditionally, ghazals are erotic in nature, but modern interpretations of the poetic form have produced works on a range of subjects and themes.  However, the rules that govern what constitutes a ghazal are still relatively strict and open to limited interpretation.

First of all, ghazals consist of a series of five or more couplets (two line verses).  The first couplet typically rhymes, with the last word or series of words from the second line of the first couplet repeated at the end of the second line of each of the following couplets.  All the couplets, and each line of each couplet, should share the same meter, and each couplet should be a complete sentence or series of sentences.  As such, a sentence initiated in one couplet should not continue in the next one.

For more information about ghazals, including modern examples, please review the following:

What is a Ghazal? by Abhay Avachat

Basic Points About the Ghazal by Agha Shahid Ali

The Mood Radif Challenge from The Ghazal Page

As with all the Writing Projects here at The Authors Haunt, we won't hold authors to the strict rules governing ghazals, but we do ask that all participants make a genuine effort to comply with the core principles and produce either a ghazal or a recognisably ghazal-style piece.

Rules

Sign Up: Signing up to participate in this Writing Project is not required.  Members and authors may simply submit their work unsolicited.

Submission Deadline: This is an ongoing project so there is no deadline for submissions.

Submission procedure: Please submit your stories via the form linked to in the Submissions section of this page.

Poem titles: Authors are free to come up with their own titles.

Copyright and License: By submitting work to, and publishing work as part of, a Writing Project at The Authors Haunt, you grant to The Authors Haunt and its owners a royalty-free, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to use, reproduce, display, publish, and communicate to the public, worldwide, the submitted content, in whole or in part, at The Authors Haunt (or any part thereof, including subsidiary sites).  All rights to said work, including copyright and moral rights, remain the property of the original author.  This license agreement applies to work submitted as part of a Writing Project only.

Please note that by submitting you work to an anthology at The Authors Haunt you are granting us an irrevocable right to display that work.  That means that while you can request your Writing Project submissions be removed, and we will consider that request, we are under no obligation to remove any Writing Project submissions from the site.  As a general rule, we do not remove work published as part of an Writing Project here at The Authors Haunt.  You retain all copyright and moral rights, and are free to publish the work elsewhere from 24 hours after the work is published at The Authors Haunt.

Graphic Usage: The Authors Haunt will create an icon for your submission for use on the Writing Project main page.  This icon will be designed to be in keeping with the Writing Project theme.  Resident Authors are free to submit suitable graphics for use on their sites at The Authors Haunt.  Authors are free to use graphics designed by The Authors Haunt design team on their sites at The Authors Haunt, in their signature on The Authors Haunt Community Forums, or elsewhere provided the graphic is used to link back to their poetry here.  Authors may not use graphics designed by The Authors Haunt design team to link to, or as headers for, work published elsewhere.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the Writing Project coordinator.

Submissions

Before submitting your work to The Authors Haunt, please ensure that it has been properly edited.  If you have used the services of an editor, we strongly recommend that you provide an acknowledgement note, which can be included in the "Comments" section of the submission form.  Please pay attention to the genre, type, rating and warnings fields and ensure you apply suitable coding in each section.

To submit your work to this Writing Project, please click here.