Writing Competitions to Enter in April

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Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize, Bath Short Story Award, Bristol Short Story Prize, Cranked Anvil Short Story Competition, Grey Hen Poetry Competition, Grindstone Literary Prizes, Hastings Writers Room 'Misrepresentation' Stories, Mairtin Crawford Awards, Manchester Metropolitan University QuietManDave Prize, Momya Press Short Story Competition, Red Planet Prize for new TV Series drama scripts, Retreat West Micro Fiction Competition, Royal Academy & Pin Drop Short Story Award

Annie, adored granddaughter of ninevoice’s Christine

 

In these difficult and troubling times we thought we would treat you to a small, but precious ray of sunshine. This very young lady was born on 18th March, and is therefore rather young to enter writing competitions – but she has absolutely the right genes, so give her time. 

Welcome to our world, lovely Annie! 

In the light of my most recent post, I expect you all to be encouraged to enter one of the following competitions.

Because I entered the HWA/ & Sharpe Books Unpublished Novel Competition last September my book – The Servant -will be published some time next year. And because I entered another competition, I got as far as the Exeter Novel Award longlist. On top of which, another member of ninevoices has TWO Exeter trophies in her possession – because she did the same. ‘Nuff said…

Red Planet Prize for new TV Series drama scripts. Prizes: Script commission and masterclasses with award-winning writers. Entry is free. Closing date April 3rd. Details: http://www.redplanetpicture.co.uk

Manchester Metropolitan University QuietManDave Prize for flash fiction. 500 words maximum. Prizes: £1,000; £200; £50 in each category. Entry fee: £5. Deadline 17 April. Details: http://www.2.mmu.ac/qmdprize

Bath Short Story Award for 2,200 words max. Prizes: £1,200; £300; £100; £50 local prize; £100 for unpublished writer. Entry fee: £8. Deadline 20 April. Details: http://www.bathshortstoryaward.org

Bristol Short Story Prize. 4,000 words max. Prizes: £1,000; £500; £250; 17 x £100. Entry fee: £9. Deadline 30 April. Details: http://www.bristol-prize.co.uk/rules 

Grey Hen Poetry Competition for a poem of up to 40 lines. Rules: for women poets aged 60-plus. Prizes: £100; £50; £25. Entry fee: £3, or four for £10. Deadline: 30 April. Details: www. greyhenpress.com/poetry-competition-entry-rules

Alpine Fellowship Writing Prize for prose up to 2,500 words on the theme of ‘Forgiveness and Retribution’. Entry is free. Prizes: £10,000; £3,999; £2,000. Closing date April 1st. Details: alpinefellowship.com

Retreat West Micro Fiction Competition for 100 words exactly, to a prompt posted on the website at the start of each month. Prizes: 50% of total entry fees received. Entry fee: £4. Closing date: 12 April, monthly. Details: http://www.retreatwest.co.uk

RA & Pin Drop Short Story Award, up to 4,000 words. Prize: A reading by a special guest at an evening at The Royal Academy of Arts. Entry is free. Deadline 15 April. Details: http://www.royalacademy.org

Momya Press Short Story Competition for stories up to 3,000 words on the theme of ‘Outsiders’. Prizes: £110; £55; £25. Entry fee £11. Closing date: 15 April. Details: momyapress.com

Grindstone Literary Prizes for short stories, up to 3,000 words, and poems, up to 40 lines. Prizes: £500, £200, 4 x £50 in each category. Entry fee: 8. Closing date 28 April for short stories, 28 May for poems. Details: http://www.grindstoneliterary.com

Mairtin Crawford Awards. 3-5 poems; short stories, up to 2,500 words. Prizes: £500 and invitation to read at the Belfast Book Festival. Entry fee: £6. Closing date: 29 April. Details: http://www.crescentarts.org/about/book-festival/mairtin-crawford-award

Cranked Anvil Short Story Competition for stories up to 1,500 words; quarterly. Prizes: £150; £75; £30. Entry fee: £5, £3 for second, £2 for third. Closing date: quarterly, 30 April, 31 July, 31 October. Details: https://crankedanvil.co.uk/shortstory/

Hastings Writers Room ‘Misrepresentation’. Short stories, up to 1,500 words, on the theme ‘misrepresentation. Prizes: Gold and Silver memberships of Retreat West. Entry fee: £6, £10 for two. Closing date: 30 April. Details: http://www.hastingswritersroom.org/competitions 

There is a fair amount of choice there, so why not enter more than one?

As ever, please take care to check details, especially deadline dates. And good luck…!

 

The Rejection Diaries – and Why Persistence Might be More Important than Talent

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Fish Publishing, Getting Published, HWA & Sharpe Books Unpublished Novel Award

A writing competition spurned my entry last week. Well, they didn’t spurn the thing – they were too nice for that – but they gave it a firm thumbs down. No place on their shortlist; no place on their longlist. Not even a commendation. 

But do I care? I do not, for reasons you will find below.

Rejections are normally the occasion for private breast-beating and lamentation, however much we put on a brave front to family and friends. I recently received a rejection from an agent who added that they offered professional advice to ‘beginner writers’. As someone who has slaved not only over computer keyboards but, once upon a time, actual typewriters, that made me want to heave a brick through someone’s window.

But let me tell you a story. Back in 2015 I visited London’s Foundling Hospital for the first time. It is an incredibly emotive place and I couldn’t get the stories it told out of my head. So I did what writers do. I drafted a short story, The Gingham Square – about the tokens those tragic mothers left in the hope that they might one day be able to retrieve their precious child. The story was entered into a Fish Publishing competition and, while it failed to earn a prize, their senior editor said that she felt it had the potential for a book.

Reader, I wrote the thing. Not with either ease or expedition, because considerable research was needed and I had never tried to be a historical novelist before, but a year or so ago I started showing the result to agents and entering competitions. Many drafts had been taken apart at ninevoices‘ meetings. Many discussions had ensued about whether a ‘happy ending’ would dilute the story’s force. Many red pencils had crossed through purple prose and lamentable grammar. It went through four different titles.

I also sent it back to Fish for a professional critique by the editor whose vision had made it all happen. It was a sound investment, for her suggestions made it a better book.

This month I received the wonderful news that I had won the HWA/Sharpe Books Unpublished Novel Award and that my book, The Servant, will be published next year. I have actually signed a contract.

I am always nagging people to enter competitions and do not intend to stop since acting on such advice has, amazingly, worked for me. That, and being a member of a tremendously supportive writing group. So when you see my next Competitions to Enter post, I suggest you do not dither. Winning IS possible. And even if you don’t win, be inspired by Sylvia Plath’s famous quote: I love my rejections. They prove that I am trying.

What are you waiting for? It CAN happen. 

Oh, yes. A poem, for which I had high hopes, was also rejected in the middle of the week – and my longlisting for the Exeter Novel Award did not translate into a shortlisting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh, yes. A poem I had high hopes for was also rejected in the middle of the week.

Love One Another…

 

We live in difficult days. We should count our many blessings, enjoy the beautiful daffodils outside our windows and read and write to our heart’s content.

But, most of all, we must help one another get through this.

Congrats to The Servant

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18th century, London, squalor

The Servant – the book we hope to be reading soon!  Many congratulations to ninevoice Maggie Richell Davies, who has won the Sharpe Books/Historical Writers’ Association Unpublished Award 2020.

The other eight ninevoices have heard this book progress (and change form) for some time now and we know how good it is.  We’re in 1765: and, to quote the HWA website, “Fourteen-year-old Hannah must go where she’s sent, despite her instincts screaming danger. Why does disgraced aristocrat William Chalke have a locked room in his house? What’s sold at the auctions taking place behind closed doors?”   The story evokes 18^th century London and its squalor and brutality and also its redeeming features. 

It’s clear from the descriptions of the short- and longlisted novels how strong a field the judges had to choose from.  Our congratulations to all those authors in those lists!  See http://www.historiamag.com/hwa-sharpe-books-unpublished-novel-award-winner/

Don’t Get Hung Up on Your Beginning – Again

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Bring Up the Bodies, Joyce Carol Oates, the importance of a first page, Wolf Hall, Writing Historical Fiction

 

I have just started reading Hilary Mantel’s long-awaited third book and am not disappointed – though it highlights my own insecurities about trying to write quality historical fiction. 

After collecting The Mirror & the Light from Waterstones, I referred back to something I posted on this blog back in March 2015 about learning from the opening pages of a masterpiece like Wolf Hall. Thoughts triggered by a quote from Joyce Carol Oates: ‘The first sentence can’t be written until the final sentence is written‘. She was talking about not getting hung-up on your beginning.

I hope you will agree that the post quoted below still has relevance:

                                                        ******

Recently I read Wolf Hall for the second time. I didn’t mean to, not quite so soon after my initial head-long rush through its pages, but I casually opened the book and Hilary Mantel hooked me in once again. But at least the second time around I was able to look at it with more of a writer’s eye.

‘So now get up.’

Felled, dazed, silent, he has fallen; knocked full length on the cobbles of the yard… One blow, properly placed, could kill him now…his left eye is blinded, but if he squints sideways with his right eye he can see the stitching of his father’s boot is unravelling. The twine has sprung clear of the leather and a hard knot in it has caught his eyebrow and opened another cut.

What an opening. Our hero is in jeopardy. And from his own father. Hilary Mantel has drawn a vivid picture of that cobbled yard and the battered leather boot. The reader can imagine how easily that rough knot would lacerate tender flesh.

Three paragraphs later Hilary Mantel continues:

Inch by inch. Inch by inch forward. Never mind if he calls you an eel, or a worm, or a snake. Head down, don’t provoke him.

When digesting this the second time around it dawned on me that not only is the prose powerful, not only does it push the story urgently forward, but that here on the first two pages Hilary Mantel is foretelling Cromwell’s progress at the Court of Henry VIII. The tortuous, careful advance. The need to ignore hurtful insults. The danger inherent in provoking a man with total power.

Those first pages were surely the last that she penned – and the lesson to us must be to soldier on, to finish one’s book and then go back to craft that vital opening. So, no more delays trying to find that elusive opening sentence. It’s almost certainly too soon. Finish your book, then perfect the opening. Another Wolf Hall is too much to aim for – but one can dream.

Maggie