Competitions to Enter in the New Year

If you really apply yourself, 2017 could be your lucky writing year.

The Exeter Novel Prize. The deadline for this is midnight on January 1st, so you’d need to get your skates on, but the first prize is £500, plus the opportunity to catch the attention of agent, Broo Doherty, of DHH Literary Agency. Five runners-up will receive £75.  Entry costs £18, with a critique included for £80. Check details from: http://www.creativewritingmatters.co.uk

The Mogford Prize for a 2,500-word themed short story on ‘Food and drink’. Entry is £10 and the prize is a handsome £10,000. Deadline is January 15th. Details: http://www.oxford-hotels-restaurants.co.uk/the-mogford-literary-prize/2017-mogford-literary-prize-information.

Fish Short Memoir Prize. Memoir of 4,000 words. Non-fiction. Fee, online 16 Euros; postal, 18 Euros. Prizes 1,000 Euros; a week at Casa Ana Writers’ Retreat in Andalusia and 300 Euros travel expenses. Deadline January 31st. Details: http://www.fishpublishing.com

Bath Flash Fiction Novella in Flash – 7,000-18,000-words. Prizes: £300, 2x£100. Entry fee: £16. Deadline January 31st. Details: novella@bathflashfictionaward.com

Dundee International Book Prize. Unpublished novels by debut novelists. Prize: £10,000, plus publication. FREE ENTRY. Deadline: January 31st. Details: http://www.dundeebookprize.com

Fiction Desk Ghost Story Competition. Stories between 1,000-7,000 words. Prizes: £500 and £100, plus publication. Deadline: January 31st. Entry fee: £8. Details: http://www.thefictiondesk.com

Plymouth Writers’ Group Open Competition for short stories of up to 1,500 words. Prizes: £250, £50; anthology publication. Entry fee: £5. Closing date: 31 January. Details: http://plymouthwritersgroup.co.uk

Arundel Festival – Theatre Trail Writers’ Competition. Short plays between 30 and 40 minutes. Prizes: £250, £150 for each shortlisted; performance. FREE ENTRY.  Deadline: January 31st. Details: http://www.dripaction.com

Please remember to check all details before entering: sometimes the goalposts get moved!

 

 

Looking Towards 2017

Just bought myself a Mslexia Writer’s Diary for 2017, to keep track of competitions I plan to enter, agents I’ve approached with my novel, and the responses I receive (if any). Far better than cluttering the family diary.

A designated diary like this provides a submissions record, information on manuscript formatting,  details of the major competitions, and advice on how to get published from Donna Tartt, Isabel Allende, Hilary Mantel and many others. However, it would be easy to customise one for your own needs – and they’ll be on special offer once we’re into January.

‘Lowering Awareness’

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David Bowie, Fragments of Love, Matt Chamberlain, Show and tell

I admire poets’ imagery, and their ability to convey such meaning or feeling in a few words (not my own forte, so I’ve not attempted to write any since school). That’s why I liked Jane Dobson’s Fragments of Love collection so much (see https://ninevoices.wordpress.com/2016/11/24/a-poem-that-was-published-in-the-times/ below).

And that’s why I like Lowering Awareness, new from Matt Chamberlain.   It’s an interesting mix: some moving, some comic, some so descriptive.   Comic ones include ‘Give Me A Bell’, ‘Show And Tell, What The Hell?’ (which should be read by every reception class teacher!) ‘Porridge’ and ‘Toblerone’.  Then there’s the atmospheric and sad – ‘Stained Beauty’ (about Saddleworth Moor) moved me a lot. Loss – ‘Absence’ and ‘Far Away’ are two examples. Lancashire and Kent – both are evoked. Tribute is paid to David Bowie.

Read and reread, it’s worth it.

ISBN 978-1511655118 RRP £5

 

Brexit Night and a Hidden Pig Bring Czech & Slovak Writing Prizes

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BCSA, Brexit, Czech, Pig, Reichsprotektor, Slovak

A Czech student’s evocative account of a party in London on the night of the EU referendum and what it might mean for her future has won the British Czech & Slovak Association’s most recent writing competition. The first prize of £300 was awarded for Ms Bernhardt’s Brexit, by Jennifer Moore.

Jennifer is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Guardian and Mslexia. She read English Literature at Cambridge University and is a previous winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Competition. She lives in Devon.

The second prize, worth £100, went to The Pig, the Cupboard and the Reichsprotektor, by Jack Mullin.  It’s a comic tale, based on a true incident that took place in Bohemia in 1942, in which an clever Czech householder goes to great lengths to prevent his pig being requisitioned by the occupying Germans.

Jack has lived most of his life in Ayrshire, working for the Butlin family and the Rank Organisation. In 1971-72 he moved to Prague, where he married a Czech, Libuse, and worked for a time in a local engineering factory and then at the British Embassy. He has now been retired for 18 years.

The BCSA aims to raise public awareness in Britain of Czech and Slovak life in all its aspects – including history, politics, science, economies, arts and literature. It puts on a series of cultural and social events throughout the year and publishes the quarterly British Czech & Slovak Review, a cultural and political magazine. The competition is for writing about the links between Britain and the lands now comprising the Slovak and Czech Republics, or about society in transition in the Republics since the Velvet Revolution in 1989.

The BCSA will be running the writing competition (its sixteenth) again in 2017. Entry is free. For more information e-mail prize@bcsa.co.uk.

Our picture shows Jennifer Moore and Jack Mullin (right) with the BCSA’s Competition Administrator, Edward Peacock, when they received their prizes at the Association’s Annual Dinner in London recently.

Good King Wenceslas

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Boleslav, Christmas carol, Czech, Drahomira, Good King Wenceslas, J M Neale, Prague, St Ludmila, Svatý Václav

If it’s great to see your work in print, and even to see other people reading it, think what it’s like to have people reciting or even singing what you’ve written 160 years later!  J M Neale would know ….

Good King Wenceslas has long been a part of the British Christmas – at least since J M Neale wrote the carol in 1853. An older man helping his page to carry the firewood and bring food to yonder peasant, leaving miraculously warm footprints in the snow. (Have you ever wondered why yonder peasant, who lives a good league hence, right against the forest fence, needs to come to Prague to look for fuel? Hmm …)

This story is not what comes first to the mind of the Czechs, whose patron saint he is. To them he is St Wenceslas, or Svatý Václav in their language. His statue stands proudly in Wenceslas Square in the centre of Prague.

A strong, handsome military leader, riding a great charger and dominating this huge square.

The reality was a little different. First, Wenceslas was not a king, but a Duke. More importantly, he was murdered at the age of 28 so was not the middle-aged uncle-like figure we might imagine.

Wenceslas was born in 907, or to put it in our terms 8 years after the death of Alfred the Great. He was the son of the Duke of Bohemia. Christianity had come to what is now the Czech Republic a generation or so before. His father was raised in a Christian setting, but his mother Drahomíra was the daughter of a pagan tribal chief and though she may have been baptized at the time of her marriage she was still pagan at heart.

In 921, when Wenceslas was thirteen, his father died and he was brought up by his grandmother, Ludmila, who raised him as a Christian. Wenceslas is usually described as very pious and humble, very educated and intelligent.  There was a struggle for control of young Wenceslas between his Christian grandmother Ludmila and his pagan mother Drahomíra. Drahomíra was furious about losing influence on her son and arranged to have her mother-in-law Ludmila strangled.

According to some legends, having regained control of her son, Drahomíra set out to convert him to the old pagan religion. She failed. In 925 Wenceslas assumed government for himself and had Drahomíra exiled.   He founded the first church on the site of the present-day St Vitus’ Cathedral that so beautifully dominates the skyline of Prague.

In England at this time, invasion by the Danes was the main problem. The rulers of Bohemia had to deal both with continuous raids by the Magyars or Hungarians and the forces of the Saxon king Henry the Fowler. To withstand the Saxons, Wenceslas’s father had forged an alliance with the Bavarian duke Arnulf the Bad. (They had glorious names in those days.) Unfortunately, in 929 the Bavarians and the Saxons joined forces, invaded Bohemia and forced Wenceslas to pay tribute. Tradition states that he saw this as preferable to the great bloodshed that would have followed resistance.

A 12^th century source states that “rising every night from his noble bed, with bare feet and only one chamberlain, he went around to God’s churches and gave alms generously to widows, orphans, those in prison and afflicted by every difficulty, so much so that he was considered, not a prince, but the father of all the wretched.” This presumably is the origin of J M Neale’s carol.

We have seen from the antics of Drahomíra and Ludmilla that family life in the ducal household was, er, dysfunctional, as the saying now is. In 935 his younger brother Boleslav plotted to kill Wenceslas. After Boleslav invited Wenceslas to celebrate a religious feast, three of Boleslav’s companions murdered Wenceslas on his way to church. The tradition is that he knocked on the church door for sanctuary but a frightened priest inside denied him entry. I’ve been to the church myself to pay my respects.

Boleslav succeeded him as the Duke of Bohemia. If you look him up on Wikipedia you’ll see he was known as Boleslav the Cruel.

Boleslav expressed much remorse at his brother’s death – as did our Henry II after the murder of Thomas Becket – but that didn’t stop him staying on the throne for the next 37 years. Wenceslas was considered a martyr and a saint immediately after his death, when a cult of Wenceslas grew up in Bohemia (and in England). His chapel in St Vitus’ cathedral in Prague is magnificent. Since 2000, his feast day (September 28) is a public holiday in the Czech Republic. Another reason for the Czechs to like him.

Thanks and well done, JM!

(If there are historical errors in what I’ve written, do point them out!)

The Rejection Diaries

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Flash 500 Novel Opening Short List

This hasn’t been a particularly dazzling year for my writing. A short story that I dared to think promising hasn’t been placed, despite being entered in two separate competitions. The best it could do was to scrape onto a shortlist in Writer’s Forum.  Another competition entry – to the Flash 500 Novel Opening Competition, run by Crooked Cat Publications – made it onto their long list, but subsequently failed to reach the short list.

This is sadly familiar territory, but following the advice of the eminently sensible Christopher Fielden  (to grab whatever advice on your writing that you can) I took up the offer of a critique offered as an optional extra with Flash 500 – and was SO glad I did so. Lorraine Mace not only gave me valuable advice about my sadly inept synopsis, but said some incredibly positive things about the opening of my novel, remarking that if she’d browsed through my first pages in a bookshop, she’d have been at the till buying the book! I seriously think I’d rather have that comment of hers than the £500 earmarked for the winner.

Her words of encouragement will certainly keep me going. The short story will be dusted off and sent elsewhere, and the 80,000-words that I’ve completed of the novel should have edged up to my target of 95,000-words by Christmas. I will also work on improving those opening pages until a whole panel of judges are impressed by them, rather than a single reader.

Rejection? Just another step on the way to publication.

‘Henry Smith – His Life & Legacy’

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Henry Smith Charity, Kensington, Lucy Lethbridge, Pershore, Social history, Tim Wales

Looking for a good Christmas present for someone interested in social history?

How about Henry Smith – His Life & Legacy by Lucy Lethbridge and Tim Wales?

Henry Smith was a London salter who died in 1628. He made his fortune by lending money to the rich and famous, and at his death left a number of charitable bequests. The Charity that bears his name today distributes some £25 million a year, largely funding initiatives and projects that address social inequality and economic disadvantage. What became his principal legacy was one of £2,000, which he instructed his executors to spend on land. They bought a market garden, which today (through the Charity’s astute development) is a large chunk of South Kensington.

The income from that £2,000 (£60 a year at first) was to be used for the relief of his poor kindred and ‘for the use of the poor Captives being slaves under the Turkish pirates’. The latter was a real problem in the early 17^th century: British ships were being captured and the crews enslaved by pirates or corsairs operating from North Africa, and people were even being snatched off the beaches of Devon and Cornwall. Between 1600 and 1640 an estimated 800 British ships and 12,000 Britons were captured in this way. Henry’s bequest was for ransoms. In the 18^th century, fortunately, no more such grants were needed, and Henry’s Trustees won Parliament’s approval for the use of that part of the bequest for other good causes.

Another bequest provided for the relief of poor clergy of the Church of England (originally ‘for the relief and maintenance of godly preachers’), and grants from that are still available. Another provided for annual grants to go to hundreds of named parishes, and that scheme continues today.   The original recipients were to be the aged and infirm poor, ‘married persons having more children born in lawful wedlock than their labours can maintain’, orphans, and ‘such poor people as keep themselves and families to labour and put forth their children apprentices at the age of fifteen.’ Excluded were any given to ‘excessive drinking, whoremongers, common swearers, pilferers, or otherwise notoriously scandalous’, as well as disobedient servants and vagrants who had not lived in the parish for five years. A splendid benefaction board setting out all these conditions can be seen in Pershore Abbey in Worcestershire.

In 2015 the Charity published their history, which describes in detail Henry Smith’s life and his will, and gives much interesting information about his first trustees, some of whom found themselves on opposite sides in the Civil War. The book then takes the history up to the present day, including how the Charity developed Kensington.

‘Henry Smith His Life and Legacy’ by Lucy Lethbridge (author of Servants, ‘a downstairs view of 20th-centiry Britain) & Tim Wales is available from the Church House Bookshop (online at https://chbookshop.hymnsam.co.uk/books/9780993094507/henry-smith) or ordered from booksellers and other online retailers. RRP £20. ISBN: 978-0-9930945-0-7  A declaration of interest: one of the ninevoices did some of the research for the book.

Competitions to Enter in December

December is a month when writing probably goes on the back-burner, but maybe you have an old story somewhere that can be dusted off and re-submitted? Tanya did just that, back in the summer, and won a competition with it.

The Magic Oxygen Prize is inviting entries of short stories and poems for MOLP3. The theme is open and there are prizes in each category of £1,000, £300, £100, plus two highly-commendeds at £50. Winning and shortlisted entries will be included in an anthology. Stories should be up to 4,000-words, and poems up to fifty lines. Entry is £5 and for each entry a tree will be planted in Bore, Kenya. Details:www.magicoxygen.co.uk

Presence haiku magazine is inviting entries for the Martin Lucas Haiku Award 2016. The competition is for an original, unpublished haiku, with a first prize of £100, a second prize of £50 and two third prizes of £25. The winning and commended haiku will be published in the magazine. The entry fee is £5 for five haiku and the closing date is 31 December. Details: http://haikupresence.org/

Soundwork, which is a not-for-profit online resource for free-to-listen-to short stories, monologues, poems, audio plays and monologues is inviting entries for its Short Story Competition. Sadly, there is no monetary prize, but the winner WILL have their story recorded and posted on the Soundwork site. Entries (which may have been published/broadcast elsewhere) should be up to 2,000-words and entry is FREE. The closing date is 31 December. Details: infor@soundwork.co.uk.

Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Contest is for a novel for children between 7 and 18. They need the full manuscript, synopsis and covering letter. The Fee is £15, but the prize is a contract with Chicken House and a royalty advance of £10,000. Deadline is 18 December (so SOON) and details can be viewed: http://www.chicken-housebooks.com

Mearns Writers’ ‘New Beginnings’ Short Story Competition. 1,000-3,000 words. Deadline 31 December. Fee £7. Prizes: £250; 3x£50. Details: mearnswriters.simdif.com

AND – for the New Year – two further competitions:

The Exeter Novel Prize. 10,000-word opening of a novel, plus a synopsis. Fee: £18. Prizes: £500 and a trophy. Five runners-up will receive £75 and a trophy. Details: http://www.creativewritingmatters.co.uk Deadline 1 January 2017.

The Mogford Prize for a story of 2,500-words on the theme of ‘Food and Drink’. Fee is £10. Prize £10,000. Details: http://www.oxford-hotels-restaurants.co.uk/the-mogford-literary-prize/2017-mogford-literary-prize-information Deadline is 15 January.

Please double-check details before submitting.My apologies for this being posted later than usual – blame it on seasonal confusion, plus our central heating not working for the past three days!