The Bridport Novel Competition published their longlist this past weekend – and I wasn’t on it! I must confess to being full of hope, not of winning, but of maybe scraping through as the bottom manuscript in the hopeful pile.
It was not to be. But congratulations to those talented people who succeeded. Their names will doubtless be on everyone’s lips in the next year or two. I don’t begrudge them their current happiness. (Well, not VERY much…)
What I’ve gained from the process is greatly increased productivity. With a deadline in view, I discovered I could (fairly easily) tap out something like fifteen hundred words on a good morning. Keep that up, and my book will be finished by the end of the summer. That’s a result in itself.
I guess you also need an intriguing title. Below are the longlisted novels (the author names haven’t yet been revealed) to whet your appetites:
44 Stones
Zazou and Rebecca
Lights out at the Electric
Mirror, Mirror
How to Save a Brain
I Wanna Be Your Dog
Still
Far Beyond Those Woods
The Commune by the Park
The Unbelonging of Taksheel Chaturveydi
Starfish
Half of You
The Letters of Junius
Out of the Forest
SUPERficial (sic)
The Sydney Harbour Suicides
Bellevue
Transgressions
Orphaned Leaves
If Hamlet was a Girl