So Your New Year Resolution Was to Enter More Competitions?

 

 

At ninevoices‘ pre-Christmas feast there were vehement protestations from everyone about entering LOTS of competitions in 2018. Here are some we might kick off with:

Bath Flash Fiction Award is inviting entries for its Novella-in-Flash Award. First Prize is £300, with two runner-up prizes of £100. The winners will also be published in a three-novella collection.   Entry fee is £16 and novellas in flash should be between 6,000 and 18,000 words, with the individual flashes (chapters) each being no longer than 1,000 words. Entries must be aimed at adult or young adult readers. Deadline is 29 January.

Grindstone Open Prose Competition. Flash fiction of maximum 100 words. Entry fee: £6. Prizes: £250; £100; £50; £10. Critique voucher to two runners-up. Deadline 28 January. Details: http://www.grindstoneliterary.co/competitions

Magma Poetry is inviting entries for its current poetry competition. There are two categories. The Judges’ Prize is for poems of 11-50 lines and will be judged by Mona Arshi. The Editors’ Prize, for poems up to 10 lines, will be judged by a panel of Magma editors. Prizes in both categories are £1,000 for first, £300 for second and £150 for third. The prizewinning poems will be published in Magma, and winning and commended poets will be invited to read their work at a special event in spring 2018. Enter original unpublished poems by 15 January. Entry fees are £5 for the first poem, £4 for the second and £3.50 for any subsequent entries. Check details at: https://magmapoetry.com/

The Keats-Shelley Prize 2018 is open for entries of poetry and essays. The theme for poems is Liberty; a celebration of Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound. Essays may be on any aspects of the Romantics, their lives and works. Poems may be up to 30 lines, and essays up to 3,000 words. All entries must be original and unpublished. There is a prize fund of £3,000. ENTRIES (up to two poems and up to two essays) ARE FREE, and must be by email. An entry form can be downloaded from: http://www.keats-shelley.co.uk

The Plough & Ronald Duncan Short Poetry Prize. For a poem of maximum 10 lines. Entry fee: £5. Prizes: £1,000; £500; £250.  Deadline 31 January. Details: http://www.theplough-prize.co.uk

The Plough Open Poetry Competition. For a poem up to 40 lines. Entry fee: £5. Prizes: £1,000; £500; £250. Details: http://www.theplough-prize.co.uk

The Lancashire Authors’ Association Open Flash Fiction Competition is inviting entries of stories of EXACTLY 100 words, excluding the title. Format entries as Word docs in double spacing on single sides of A4 and accompany each entry with a separate front page which includes name, address, email address, telephone number and story title. Entries can be sent by post or email. The entry fee is £2 per story, or three for £5, payable by Paypal or cheques made out to Lancashire Authors’ Association. The prize is £100. Closing date is 31 January. email: 100words@lancashireauthorsassociation.co.uk. Postal entries: The Competitions Secretary, 2 Pardoe Close, Hesketh Bank, Preston, Lancashire PR4 6PT.  As always, please check all details before entering anything suggested above.

And remember, even if you don’t win, being shortlisted offers welcome encouragement – and might even get you published in an anthology…!

The Rejection Diaries

No member of ninevoices is allowed to have a short story lurking in a drawer without eight strident voices demanding it be entered into something. In consequence, a tale of mine that began life (and was rejected) as Party Girl was revised and given a tighter ending and a more intriguing title: Twenty-Six Little Bones. The tweaking must have helped, since I’ve been thrilled to learn this week that it has not only been shortlisted in the 2017 Hysteria Writing Competition, but will go into their anthology at the year end.
This highlights the fine line there can be between a win (or placing) and a thumbs down. Your cherished but rejected story might be teetering on the brink of success, so never give up on it. Revise, polish, revise, then polish again. And maybe devise a more titillating title. All this confirms what we already know: writing is hard graft and there is no substitute for persistence. For re-visiting, rewriting and polishing our work.
The Hysteria competition was, incidentally, included in my monthly Competitions to Enter post, back in August. Perhaps my experience will encourage you to take a close look at our Competitions to Enter in November, due soon, to see what opportunities it might give you.