Competitions to enter in May – Something for Everyone!

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Woman's Weekly, Writing Competitions

The Bridport Competition closes on May 31st for Short Stories (up to 5,000 words), Poetry (up to 42 lines) and Flash Fiction (up to 250 words). Prizes are £5,000, £1,000 and £500, plus 10 x £50 highly commendeds for short stories and poetry; £!,000, £500, £250, plus 3 x £25 highly commendeds for flash fiction. Anthology publication for all. Entry fees: £7 per flash fiction, $8 per poem, £9 per short story. Website: http://www.bridportprize.org.uk

The Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award (organised by the Bridport Prize) for the first 5,000-8,000 words of an unpublished debut novel. Prizes £1,000 and mentoring; £500, 3x£100. Entry fee: £20. Deadline 31st May. Website as above.

Liverpool Hope Playwriting Prize. One comedy writer will win £10,000 and the opportunity to have their play considered for production by Liverpool’s Royal court, while up to two Highly Commended awards of £1,500 will be on offer.

Open to anyone over the age of 18 in any UK territory or the Republic of Ireland. There is a £20 entry fee. Deadline 31st May. Details from http://www.playwritingprize.com

Criminal Lines 2016. The first 15,000 words plus synopsis of a crime novel by an unagented, unpublished or self-published author. Prizes: £500 plus ticket to The Writers’ Workshop Festival of Writing. £500 runner-up. Possible representation from agent A M Heath. FREE ENTRY. Deadline 4th May. Website: http://amheath.com/blog/criminal-lines/

Page to Stage 2016. Playscripts of up to 20 pages or 20 minutes. Prizes: total of £300, professional reading, bursary. Entry fee: £10 Closing date 6 May. Website: http://tacchi-morris.com

Frome Festival Short Story.  Short stories 1,000-2,200 words, any theme. Prizes: £300, £150, £75. Winning entrants also published on the website and may be sent to Women’s Weekly for consideration. Closing date 31st May. Website: http://www.fromeshortstorycompetition.co.uk

Yeovil Literary Prize. For novels (opening chapters and synopsis, up to 15,000 words), short stories (max. 2,000 words), poems (up to 40 lines) and ‘writing without restrictions’. Prizes: for novels, £1,000, £250 and £100; for poems/short stories: £500, £200, £100; for ‘writing without restriction’ £200, £100, £50. Entry fee: £11 for novels, £6 for short stories, £6 for one poem, £100 for three ‘writing without restriction’. Deadline 31st May. Website: http://www.yeovilprize.co.uk

Cinnamon Press Short Story Prize. Stories 2,000-5,000 words. Prizes: £500, £100, £50, winners and runners-up published in anthology. Entry fee: £12. Deadline 31st May. Website: http://www.cinnamonpress.com

Writersreign Short Story Competition. 1,000-1,500 words, open theme. Prizes, £100, £50, 3x£10 Highly Commendeds. Entry fee: £3.50, £6 for two. Deadline 31st May. Website: http://www.writersreign.co.uk

Winchester Writers’ Festival. Poems, any subject, 40 lines max for each entry. Prizes £125, £75 and £50. Childrens’: a picture book, up to 600 words, prose or verse, aimed at ages 3-6, or funny fiction up to the first 1,000 words, for ages 8-12, and synopsis of the remainder. Editorial meeting with Little Tiger for first place. Flash Fiction: up to 500 words; consultation with Janklow & Nesbit agents for first placed. Crime: the first 500 words of a short story or novel with a murder thriller theme; prizes, £60, £40, £20. Memoir: up to 2,500 words, self-contained or the first chapter; attendance at a Writers & Artists’ conference for first. Novel: the first three pages, plus a synopsis of 600 words max. (any theme or period); consultation with Little, Brown for first place. Short story: 1,500-3,000 words; Writing Magazine Creative Writing Course for first, critiques for second and third. TV Drama: submit a one-page proposal for a TV drama or comedy series; prizes Final Draft software. Closing date 13 May. Website http://www.writersfestival.co.uk

2016 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest. International entries sought for Carve magazine’s pretigious competition, now in its 16th year. Literary fiction up to 6,000 words. First prize $1,500. Second and third prizes of $500 and $250 and two Editor’s Choice prizes of $125. The winners will be published in the October edition of Carve and winning entries will be read by three literary agencies. Deadline 15th May. Details http://www.writers-online.co.uk/Writing Magazine/

PLEASE check details are correct before entering! Some of the deadlines are SOON.

Happy Ever After?

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happy endings, literary fiction, Michael Faber

Do happy endings only work in very lightweight fiction?

Yes, if happy means happy ever after with a firm full stop and an opaque curtain over the future.

But the ending to a novel can be ‘happy’ without being trite or artificial. The ending is merely where the story is sliced off – the reader, having lived with and become emotionally involved with the characters, knows that there will be troubles to come, because that is what life is like, but is satisfied by the novel ending  with some kind of resolution of past troubles. A novel with depth and meaning will have foreshadowed all this. We will go on living with our hero/heroine after the last page.

Modern literary fiction seems to have a problem with happy endings, perhaps as a way of distancing itself from some of the marshmallow feel-good paperbacks wearing bright colours in supermarkets. Endings are often bleak, creepy or so ambiguous that you’re left completely at sea. This has an advantage of course as it fuels discussion at the book group. (Michael Faber’s The Crimson Petal and the White provoked agonised questions about what actually happened to one character). Difficult endings can make you feel cheated. All that investment in the characters and you end up more confused than ever.

Conversely readers can also be irritated at having everything unconvincingly tidied up and everyone cosily paired off. You don’t like to feel you’re being manipulated or offered a sugary fantasy. You don’t want to spend any more time with these characters set in a jelly mould of static happiness. Time for reading is precious and you’ve been wasting it with this one…

A suggestion of change, the promise of something good to come, is perhaps enough at the end of a novel for those of us who like ‘happy endings’?

Some Shakespearean memories this anniversary day

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Czech, King Lear, Measure for Measure, Midsummer Night's Dream, President Kennedy, Prof Martin Hilský, Richard III, Shakespeare, Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night

Back in 1967, with all of an adolescent’s assurance and pomposity I wrote in my A Level English exam that King Lear was too great a play actually to be successfully staged. It makes me cringe somewhat to think of that now, but it must have impressed the examiners as they gave me a good grade. And it is true that I have in fact never seen Lear on stage. I fear that I would not see it done well enough. A couple of years back I tried to get to the Ian McKellen production – surely that would have been top class, I thought – but it was sold out.

Two nights ago I went to a talk by a Professor* who has translated ALL of Shakespeare into Czech, in which he told his spellbound audience how he went about it and what the difficulties and the joys are in that huge task. In it he said that he put Lear among the best plays ever written, by anybody, with its massive themes of folly and loyalty and disloyalty.

It was while my father was driving me home after seeing Richard III at Stratford in November 1963 that we learned of the death of President Kennedy. We turned on the car radio and heard the voice of Sir Alec Douglas-Home, then the Prime Minister, paying tribute to the President. An evening of dramatic deaths became all too real.

I had not thought much of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in my teens, thinking that it was all about fairies and with not much happening. But then at college I saw a student production and came out of the theatre feeling that it was so good to be alive. Not many plays have done that – fingers of one hand? – but that was one of them.

Some reservations? In that study of how power corrupts, Measure for Measure, the amazing coincidences that solve the plotlines do grate somewhat: did the Bard lose interest, or run out of time, and just bring in a deus ex machina or two (dei ex machina?) to finish it? And I admit to not actually enjoying The Taming of the Shrew, and to having seen so many Twelfth Nights that I won’t mind if I go to my grave not having seen any more.

But a great King Lear …………?  Yes please.

*Prof. Martin Hilský, of Charles University in Prague, awarded an honorary MBE for his services to literature

Six Excuses for Not Writing

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Excuses, rejection

 

1. There’s Not Enough Time.

Couldn’t you get up half an hour earlier? Go to bed half an hour later? Slip away to the laptop while your partner is watching yet another debate on Brexit? Keep a notebook handy while you’re ironing or cooking – and instead of listening to music or watching a download of Game of Thrones, jot down ideas, phrases, plot lines? Fragments you can develop later into something useful.

There IS time, if you really want to find it.

2. You’ve just had a rejection.

You need a day, a week, a month, maybe more, to lick your wounds before putting finger to keyboard again. But everybody’s been there. One day someone will surely discover a hidden cache of parchment missives to W. Shakespeare, Esq, telling him that there really isn’t a commercial market for his stuff.

3. You’ve just read your last chapter – and realise you’ve been telling, rather than showing. Worse still, the whole thing is boring crap that nobody in their right mind will ever want to read. You need red wine, chocolate and caffeine, in vast quantities. It’s tough, because you could be right. However, the stuff we buy, read and admire has all been drafted, agonised over, re-written, and then nit-picked by editors before reaching that printed page. Maybe the early efforts of those writers were even worse than yours? The difference is that they stuck with it. Do the same.

4. You’re nitpicking your way through the Artists’ & Writers’ Handbook, selecting agents to whom to send your latest novel. Problem with that is that you’ve only actually written five thousand words so far. Dreaming of success is good, but putting more words on the page is the only way to actually get there.

5. You’ve Got Writer’s Block. This is a valid one, and tough to deal with. Why not leaf through some of your old stuff? Read it through and highlight the good bits. There must be some. Then fix yourself a mug of coffee and grab a pen. Could something from the bottom of the desk drawer be revamped? Could the less good short stories be rewritten, made first-of-all less bad, then promising, then actually rather good? What about crossing through all the adverbs and replacing the verbs with more active ones? Exercise your writing muscles and you might surprise yourself. See Excuse No.3 above.

6. That Insect House must be fixed to the summerhouse NOW. Learn to delegate. Get those you live with to help you write by doing stuff for you around the house or garden, or occasionally preparing the evening meal. If they don’t cook, maybe they could bring in a takeaway once a week? They will expect to be mentioned inside your freshly published book – along the lines of ‘I couldn’t have done it without my dear husband, darling children, etc etc…’ Won’t they?   Make them earn it!

An excuse is an excuse is an excuse…

 

 

Grazia/Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction – First Chapter Writing Competition

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Baileys Woman's Prize for Fiction First Chapter, blogaboutwriting, Free writing competition, Grazia Magazine

We’ve been following blogaboutwriting, who penned a reminder on April 10 about this free-to-enter competition with a great prize – £1,000 plus a trip to the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction awards in London on June 9.  A brilliant networking opportunity. You also get your entry published in Grazia and receive a bottle of Bailey’s Bristol Cream.

Competition judge, Marian Keyes, has written the first part of a chapter which you must complete in 800-1000 words. Deadline: Friday 6 May.

That’s the good news. What might be less good, is that you must include an up-to-date photo, details of your date of birth, plus a 200-word autobiography. blogaboutwriting suspects (and we bet she’s proved right) that the winner is likely to be a typical Grazia reader. The magazine “has a highly targeted demographic of 25-45 year-old women and more AB profile readers than Vogue.” So, if you’re a thirty-year-old glamour puss, you’ve probably got a head start – though we must be fair and say there is no age limit.

Details are supposedly on: http://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk, but this concentrates solely on the Women’s Prize for Fiction and doesn’t appear to mention the First Chapter competition. You should have more success via the Grazia magazine website: winit.graziadaily.co.uk  Click the section “In the News” then find Competition terms in the bottom left hand corner.

Thank you, blogaboutwriting for the heads-up.

 

 

 

 

2,000 words a day

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Historical fiction, Melanie Dobson, Writing discipline

2,000 words a day.

2,000 words a day, then revise them the next day.  That for 5 days a week.   That’s how at least one professional writer works.

Last week I found myself in conversation with Melanie Dobson, author of 16 (repeat, 16) published novels and novellas.  They are historical romance, suspense and contemporary stories.  Her website gives details (www.melaniedobson.com).  The 2,000 words a day is her writing discipline: she also builds into her year a set time for research trips, and produces one or two novels a year.

Melanie lives in Oregon and was on a research tour in Britain when we spoke.  She had done Churchill’s home at Chartwell in the morning and was at the National Trust’s Scotney Castle in Kent in the afternoon when she met our party.  From Kent she was to go all the way to the Lake District the following day.  I must look out for the next novel to see the results of the research …

A previous research trip to England – where she explored “ancient passageways in Oxford, quaint villages in the Cotswolds, the peaceful estuary near Bristol, and the busy streets of London” – preceded Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor.  (You can see photos from that trip on the website – and I can say that I’ve drunk in the pub that features there.)   Shadows of Ladenbrooke Manor is a romantic historical mystery that “brings light to the secrets and heartaches that have divided two families for generations”.

There’s a page on the website headed ‘Write What You Don’t Know’ (http://melaniedobson.com/research/writing-resources/write-what-you-dont-know/) which gives her hints on how to ignore the usual advice to write what about you do know, by finding out about what you don’t.

Melanie’s website also gives details of places where information can be found on autism, adoption, panic attacks, cultic abuse and gambling addiction – subjects she knows about through her own experience or through her research for her books.

Darcy and Elizabeth – Again

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Alexander McCall Smith, American Wife, Curtis Sittenfeld, Eligible, Harper Collins, Jane Austen, Joanna Trollope, Northanger Abbey, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Val McDermid

Can there ever be too much exposure to Darcy and Elizabeth?

Best-selling American author Curtis Sittenfeld thinks not. Talking of her new novel, Eligible, she says “I wanted (my book) to be an homage to Pride and Prejudice.  But I didn’t want it to be so similar that it didn’t contain surprises.”

Eligible is part of the Austen Project announced in 2011 by Harper Collins. First came Joanna Trollope’s contemporary version of Sense and Sensibility; then Val McDermid’s Northanger Abbey; followed by Alexander McCall Smith’s Emma.

None of these have been particularly well received, but Sittenfeld has written about the vexed question of class before, in American Wife, based on former first lady, Laura Bush. She thinks placing the story in contemporary America is valid. “The pressure to get married, or have children, still exists, it just exists much later,” she says. “I didn’t want to make the characters identical, but I did want to be able to use the same adjectives to describe them. So you could still say of my Darcy that he is smart, aloof, a little bit rude, but very ethical. Or of my Liz that she is bright, funny and inquisitive, but maybe a little antagonistic in some situations.”

Here is her opening:

“Well before his arrival in Cincinnati, everyone knew that Chip Bingley was looking for a wife.”

I guess this book will be like Marmite: you will either loathe or love it (with Austen purists almost certainly in the former category), but my appetite has been whetted.

The book will be out on April 21.

 

 

Czech & Slovak writing competition

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Competitions, Czech, Migration, Pluto, Slovak, space exploration, Vietnamese

The British Czech & Slovak Association’s 2016 writing competition is now open. The European Union is a controversial topic currently much in the news in all three countries: in the Czech and Slovak Republics because of migration, and in Britain because of the forthcoming referendum on membership. Entries featuring or referring to this would be welcome.

Fact or fiction – both are welcome. A first prize of £300 and a second prize of £100 will be awarded to the best 1,500 to 2,000-word pieces of original writing in English on the links between Britain and the Czech/Slovak Republics (at any stage in their history), or describing society in transition in the Republics since 1989. Topics can include history, politics, the sciences, economics, the arts or literature.

The writer of this year’s winning entry will be presented with the prize at the BCSA’s annual dinner in London in November 2016. The winning entry will be published in the December 2016 issue of the British Czech and Slovak Review and the runner-up in a subsequent issue. Submissions are invited from individuals of any age, nationality or educational background. Entrants do not need to be members of the BCSA. Entry is free. Entries should be received by 31 July 2016 (new date). An author may submit any number of entries. The competition will be judged by a panel of experts.

Entries should be submitted by post to the BCSA Prize Administrator, 24 Ferndale, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, TN2 3NS, England, or by e-mail to prize@bcsa.co.uk.

All entries must be in English, prose, typed with double-spacing and no more than 2,000 words in length. (The recommended minimum is 1,500 words.) For full Submission Guidelines and the Rules of the competition apply to the Prize Administrator at the addresses given above.

2015 writing competition 

In the publicity for last year’s competition a strong hint was given that entries dealing with the topic of migration would be welcome. The 2015 winning entry, winning £300, was called It Has Nothing To Do With Me. It’s a disturbing glimpse of the situation of the Vietnamese community in Czechoslovakia shortly after the Velvet Revolution. The author is Janet Savin. Janet is a writer and translator who lives in the South of France.

The runner-up was James Fairfoot. James is a University lecturer and writer who lives in Leeds. His entry was called The Slovak Discovery of Pluto. An interplanetary probe lands on Pluto and discovers that the Slovaks have got there first. Being runner-up brought James £100.

The text of these two stories will shortly be available on the BCSA website (currently being revamped).

 

We All Need a Little Bit of Help. Right?

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Anthony Riches, How to Write Historical Fiction & Get Published, Louisa Young, SD Sykes, Suzannah Dunn. Antony Topping

I have just signed up for a one-day session in London that I discovered in the Events section of the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook website:  How to Write Historical Fiction & Get Published.

Workshops will be led by three successful writers of historical fiction: Anthony Riches, who writes about the Romans; S D Sykes, who writes murder mystery novels set in 14th century plague-ravaged England; and Louisa Young, who wrote the emotive My Dear I Wanted to Tell You, about WWI soldiers with life-changing facial injuries.

Although there is no focus on my current interest (the eighteenth century) there should be much to learn from a two-hour writing workshop with the author of my choice about the specific challenges of writing about the past. There will also be interactive panel discussions with commissioning editors and literary agents who are (allegedly!) currently seeking debut authors, plus a networking drinks reception. There will also be a keynote speech by Suzannah Dunn, who has sold a quarter of a million historical novels in the UK alone and has a great website (susannahdunn.net/news/) on which she talks (along with much else, all fascinating) about how the expression ‘short shrift’ probably came from ‘shriven’.

Everybody seems to be offering writing courses and workshops these days. Do they help? Not always easy to know, but I am attracted to the timing of this one (early July) which should coincide with the completion of my current novel and provide an incentive to meet my self-imposed deadline.  It will also introduce me to other writers (always a bonus) and even (deep breaths) to an agent or two.

I never planned to be a historical novelist and am bemused at finding myself writing about the past. Maybe this day in London will light a lamp in my darkness.

 

 

 

The Rejection Diaries

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Allison Pearson, I Don't Know How She Does It, J.K. Rowling, Robert Galbraith

In case you missed it, you may enjoy reading extracts from the rejection letter received by J K Rowling when she sent out her first crime novel, under the pseudonym of Robert Galbraith. By the end of last year, the first two Robert Galbraith books had sold 1.5 million copies.

Not only does the letter contain a pretty tired phrase about grandmothers and eggs, but it advises her to double-check the publishers of her fiction genre before sending anything out. Since she was submitting it to a noted crime imprint, she was already doing that. Clear evidence they weren’t doing her the courtesy of staying awake while looking at her submission.

(The bold print below is ours!)

      ‘Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to consider your novel, which we have looked at with interest. However, I regret that we have reluctantly come to the conclusion that we could not publish it with commercial success.
     At the risk of “teaching my grandmother to suck eggs”, may I respectfully suggest the following:
     ‘Double check in a helpful bookshop … precisely who are the publishers now of your fiction category/genre. 
     ‘Call the publisher to obtain the name of the relevant editor, it is rarely productive to speak to her/him in person. Nowadays it is perfectly acceptable to approach numerous publishers at once and even several imprints within the same group.
     ‘Then send to each editor an alluring 200-word blurb (as on book jackets, don’t give away the ending), the first chapter, plus perhaps two others, and an SAE. The covering letter should state as precisely as you can the category/genre of fiction you are submitting – cite successful authors in your genre, especially those published by the particular imprint you are contacting…
     …Owing to pressure of submissions, I regret we cannot reply individually or provide constructive criticism (A writers’ group/writing course may help with the latter.) May I wish you every success in placing your work elsewhere.’

Allison Pearson, commenting on this rejection letter in The Daily Telegraph, told of a similarly crushing rejection she had fourteen years ago when she was trying to get interest in her book about a stressed-out working mother, I Don’t Know How She Does It. She was advised to go away and study techniques in a novel published by one of the agent’s existing writers.  I Don’t Know How She Does It subsequently reached No.1 on Amazon in the U.S.

There is hope for us all.