This is, in the most heartfelt words I can muster, the story behind why I decided to risk it all and start TalenTourney…
In response to your question about what inspired me to start TalenTourney, I felt it would be more fitting to share something heartfelt rather than something self-aggrandizing and pretentious.
The seed that would become TalenTourney was sown long ago while watching talent shows with my family (American Idol, The X Factor, America’s Got Talent, etc.). I loved them. Through them, I discovered some budding artists before they became famous and learned how fun it was to watch people’s journeys from obscurity to stardom. I began to wonder if the same experience could be translated to the online world.
Of course, I had many, many ideas and spent years working on countless versions of them. It was during a time when I was reconsidering continuing with my fourth year of medicine (and had to go live in a dorm because of all the terrible noise I was constantly experiencing at home from some of our oppressive neighbors (including a usurping uncle straight out of classical literature)) that I truly started working on it.
As I said, I’d been developing several ideas throughout the years and had recently spent an entire year working on a site with someone from the US. He was an older gentleman from a Mid-Atlantic town who was meant to be in charge of the programming, but he never did much, so I ended up taking courses to learn how to do it myself. However, he was paying for the site’s hosting (it didn’t cost much, but it was more than I had at the time), so we maintained our partnership.
After a year of trying to get him to contribute (he said he didn’t want to be the main programmer and that I should find an additional one (which I thought I had in a childhood friend, who ultimately decided not to fulfill his promise to help me after his university final exams, and instead chose to work on a game with his other friends)), he told me the site was taking too long to come to fruition. So, he left the project, changed the server password, and a year’s worth of programming work was lost. I tried getting him to at least give me a copy of the code so I could continue without him, but he ignored my messages.
It was then, facing a lack of direction for my future (finding medicine intensely boring to the point that it was almost impossible to concentrate on or study), and experiencing a revitalized interest in writing (through a phenomenal writing course by a teacher who promised financial support and exposure but eventually scammed me out of $900, as well as many others out of much more), that I decided to start from scratch with a new idea.
This idea needed to be something that didn’t require much, if any, programming, because I knew I would have no time to do that while studying medicine. Around that same time, I’d started taking part in the New Yorker Caption Contest, which reminded me of my previous online competition idea. I was also submitting my poetry and short stories to several literary magazines, and, a bit frustrated with the cryptic, arbitrary selection process, I began to fantasize about a literary platform with a more democratic way of choosing what was published (public voting).
So, the week before I left home for my new dorm for about five months (using a hefty portion of my life savings), I created a free WordPress account and decided to start working on TalenTourney (Talent + Tournament), a name I chose because it was alliterative.
I hoped it would gain traction because, at the time, I could see no other path. But when I started the first competition and invited members of several writing groups of which I’m a part to submit, to my surprise, people supported it. Not hundreds, but enough to let me know there was something there.
It’s been about a year and a half since I founded TalenTourney, and I love it. Reading the entries is one of my favorite things to do—the passion, the inventiveness, the diverse voices and writing styles.
You asked whether there was any talent I wanted to acknowledge. Honestly, it’s all the participants in every competition who take time out of their obviously busy lives to submit. I have many writing inspirations (from Neil Gaiman and Douglas Adams to C. S. Lewis and Dr. Seuss), but I also take inspiration from anyone who does the hard work of being creative.
People who craft worlds as their benevolent gods, stitching together characters from pieces of their own hearts and minds, in a world where it is often far easier (and more memorable) to destroy something. People who hold onto their inner child despite all the voices telling them their time would be better spent on more “grown-up” endeavors, like taxes or workplace gossip.
So, in conclusion, I’d like to say how very blessed I feel to have started TalenTourney and to see the community being built through it. I have many plans to expand in the future, and it’s a journey I’m glad to be on.
—Aleks G. Hannibal, Founder of TalenTourney
