If You Write One Thing This Year…

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Bore School, Kenya, Magic Oxygen Literary Prize, Short stories and poems, the environment, the Tropical Word Forest

If you write one thing this year, make it an entry for the Magic Oxygen Literary Prize.

This unique international writing competition plants a tree for every single entry received in their Tropical Word Forest in Bore, Kenya, in association with the Community Carbon Link.

Stories – up to 4,000 words – and poems – up to 50 lines – can win £1,000, £300, £100 and two £50 highly commendeds in each category. The deadline is 31 December and their website is: http://www.magicoxygen.co.uk

Not only are the prizes handsome, but every entry will also be published in an anthology, with the organisation planting another tree for each anthology sold and also giving part of the royalties to help build an urgently needed schoolhouse at the Kundeni School in Bore.

Do take a look at the happy Kenyan youngsters on their video, saying thank you for the help already given. They now have wooden bars on the schoolroom to prevent wild monkeys climbing in and destroying their few books.

Writing is our thing. The environment is something we care about. Those children in Bore need a helping hand. Let’s do something about it before the 31st December- and get writing!

 

Some Competitions with December Deadlines

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Henshaw Press, The Times/Chicken House Children's Fiction Competition

Purbeck Literary Festival Short Story Competition. 1,000 words on the theme : Heroes. Fee: £3.50. Prize: £100 and publication in Writers’ Forum, a hand-bound notebook, plus an invitation to the festival to receive prize from author Jill Mansell, with one night’s hotel accommodation. Deadline: 14 December. Details: http://www.purbeckliteraryfestival.info

The Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition. Novel for children: full manuscript, synopsis and chapter breakdown. Fee: £15. Prize: publishing contract with Chicken House with royalty advance of £10,000. Suitable for children between 7 and 18. Deadline: 18 December. Details: doublecluck.com/submissions.

Henshaw Press Short Story Competition. Up to 2,000 words on any theme. Prizes: £100, £50, £25. Entry fee: £5. £10 to include critique of story. Deadline 31 December. Details: http://www.henshawpress.co.uk

Magic Oxygen Literary Prize. Up to 4,000 words, poetry up to 50 lines. Prizes: £1,000, £300, £100, two £50 highly commended in each category. Entry fee: £5. Closing date: 31 December. Details: http://www.magicoxygen.co.uk

 

A Book for Christmas?

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H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald, Poetry, purple prose

Last Christmas, I bought my husband a book about a woman who buys a bird and attempts to train it. Not my kind of thing. I’m drawn to Gone Girl. The Narrow Road to the North.  I Pilgrim. Even Bryony Gordon’s The Wrong Knickers. But he loved it so much, I had to give it a try.

But this bird, reader, is no African Grey in an elaborate cage, no bored budgie pecking at a brass bell.

This is a creature like a ‘griffin from the pages of an illuminated bestiary‘. When her beloved countryside-loving father dies, and she is floored by grief, Helen Macdonald buys a goshawk for £800 and attempts to train it in the way medieval lords and ladies did. As well as a suspense story – can she possibly succeed – it is a spiritual journey about love and loss.

As a bonus, it is also a tutorial on how to write beautifully. Many of us are so petrified of writing ‘purple prose’ that we risk becoming terse. (See our post on 24 November) This does a disservice to the tremendous potential of the English language.

Here is Mabel, looking out of her box on a Scottish quayside for the first time: ‘Her beak is open, her hackles raised, her wild eyes were the colour of sun on white paper, and they stared because the whole world had fallen into them at once.’

Macdonald sees Mabel as reptilian, ‘the lucency of her pale, round eyes…the waxy, yellow skin about her Bakelite-black beak…half the time she seems as alien as a snake, a thing hammered of metal and scales and brass.’

Some deer in the forest: ‘…ankle their way out of the brush to graze.’

Walking in the wood, she sees ‘a little sprig of mahonia growing out of the turf, its oxblood leaves like buffed pigskin.’

Cut back on your description? Not if you write like Helen Macdonald who is, one discovers, not only a writer but a poet.

Do put this book on your Christmas Wish List.

Goodbye to adverbs, she says reluctantly

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adverbs

Adverbs, we are told by the experts, ruin our writing. They are the mark of the amateur.

There are fashions in creative writing rather like there are in cooking. (Just now chilli is everywhere; it’s hard to find a recipe or a menu choice without it. Not good if you aren’t too keen on a burning mouth and throat, but never mind, in a few years it’ll be some other ingredient). But is the wholesale rejection of adverbs here to stay or just the current creative writing bandwagon?

I don’t like feeling bossed into following a writing style recipe, but after having a go at getting rid of all the adverbs from a story I have to admit that the anti-adverb brigade has a point. I hadn’t realised how these -ly words had crept in – and weren’t actually needed. Lazy writing? Well, yes. Cutting them out or creating original images to give the same effect – even if this meant using several words rather than the one adverb – gave the writing a fresher, cleaner and sharper impact. It was also a surprisingly enjoyable and imaginative exercise.

I wonder if competition judges and agents stop reading when they come upon an adverb?

 

Take a Break – Short Story Market

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Short Story Market, Take a Break

Take a Break are looking for short stories up to 3,000 words with a strong plot and/or a compelling twist in the tail.

A wide variety of subjects are welcome, including crime, spooky tales and almost anything else which will appeal to lively women in their mid-twenties and upwards – though ‘straightforward’ romances, stories with a historical background and science fiction are not wanted. They are also not interested in stories narrated by small children or animals.

Payment is good: £200 for a one-page story; £250 for a two-page story; between £325 and £400 for stories up to 2,000 words.

Writers’ guidelines from: http://www.takeabreak.co.uk

 

Win a Matador Self-Publishing Package

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Short stories, Take a Break

Get your novel published by Troubador’s Matador imprint with this exclusive Writer’s Magazine competition.
Troubador managing director, Jeremy Thompson, and Writing Magazine editor, Jonathan Telfer will select one winner, whose novel will be published and marketed by Matador with an initial print run of 300 copies.
To enter – WHICH IS FREE – you must have a novel of up to 100,000 words finished and ready for publication by the closing date of 31 December 2015.

Enter:

• Online at http://writ.rs.wmmatador
• send your extract (the first chapter (or up to 10,000 words) plus a synopsis of up to 300 words in a single document (doc, txt, pdf,odt) to: writingcourses@warnersgroup.co.uk
• by post: Matador Competition (Ref Code WMTROUB15) Writing Magazine, Warners Group Publications, 31-32 Park Row, Leeds LS1 5JD

The Rejection Diaries

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Competitions, rejection, Woman's Weekly

Wouldn’t want you to think I’ve stopped submitting.

I’ve had TWO rejections in the last weeks: a ‘boomerang’ from Woman’s Weekly (back so fast the girl opening the mail probably dealt with it) and a letter from The People’s Friend which took about five weeks to arrive. The latter was actually a proper three-paragraph letter explaining that the story ‘hadn’t met with success because the theme of the plot would be too familiar to our readers‘.

At least it was properly considered, and at least they gave a reason.

I was one of the expeditionary force who attended the Woman’s Weekly Workshop. One of the useful things about the day – apart from meeting a roomful of people serious about their writing – was being given tip sheets. One in particular detailed why stories were rejected. Top of Della Galton’s list  was predictability, with overused theme second. Point duly taken.

Entering competitions not only helps your writing, it cushions you against editorial rejection. I’ve had a win, two shortlistings and a commendation this year, and that saves me from thinking I’m a totally crap writer because a magazine rejects a story.

Today we are all from Paris…

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Paris

Our hearts are all with the people of Paris…

*Picture from Elizabeth, courtesy of Facebook

Woman’s Weekly Workshop

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adverbs, Della Galton, Gaynor Davies, short story workshops, Woman's Weekly

Going to a Woman’s Weekly short story workshop held at their headquarters in Southwark Street, London, might not be the first choice of outing for some of the members of ninevoices, but the four of us who went reckoned that it was a fun day out, even if we didn’t learn anything startlingly new.

Woman’s Weekly fiction editor Gaynor Davies and writer/Writers Forum magazine agony auntie Della Galton talked us through what WW are looking for, what pitfalls to avoid and how to maximise our chances of success when submitting.

Short writing exercises followed, and the roomful of ladies – yes, no men dared to join us – read aloud our scrambled-together sentences. The criticism and praise given by Gaynor and Della was useful if brief – and occasional outbursts of hilarity and the overall atmosphere of non-competitive goodwill made the day a non-threatening experience.

A lot of credit must be given to our two warm-hearted, quick thinking and professional mentors for this; it can’t be easy balancing the varying demands and personalities of so many would-be WW contributors all coming to the workshop with different expectations.

One criticism we might make is that there were too many of us crammed around a very long table, and some attendees probably felt too far away from Gaynor and Della to engage and contribute as much as they might have done.

Would we go again? WW also offer workshops on twist in the tale and crime, so it’s a possibility. But it’s likely that even with these variations it would be basically going over the same ground. We ought to know the rules by now.

I’m glad I went. We all need to try something different sometimes, even if our heart sinks at being told for the nth time to avoid those apparently ruinous adverbs. It’s good to be reminded of what a story should be. And it’s rather inspiring to meet lots of enthusiastic and friendly women all prepared to have a go at something that isn’t as easy as you’d think…

 

 

 

Never, he growled…

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Helen Yendall, heroes, Mills & Boon

I so agree with Helen Yendall’s amusing recent post (9 November) in blogaboutwriting.wordpress.com about how she DOES NOT LIKE heroes who growl and snarl.
A friend and I once considered collaborating to write a Mills & Boon book. Then we bought one, for research, and fell about laughing. The hero not only growled and snarled, but the phrase ‘he gritted’ appeared on nearly every page.
Maybe this fabulously wealthy city financier spent his spare nights moonlighting on a municipal gritting lorry?
Sorry, Mills & Boon fans, but Fitzwilliam Darcy and Rhett Butler never needed to sound like wild beasts to make this woman’s pulse race.