Creative Writing Competitions to Enter in February

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Christmas Love Story Competition, Crime Writers Association Margery Allingham Short Story Competition, Debut Dagger Award, Fish Flash Fiction Prize, Spread the Word 2021 Life Writing Prize, The Globe Soup Winter 2020 Flash Fiction Competition, The Scottish Arts Club Short Story Competition, Writers' & Artists' Short Story Competition 2021

Why not distract yourself by entering one of the following competitions:-

The Spread the Word 2021 Life Writing Prize is inviting entries for original, unpublished life writing up to 5,000 words from unagented UK writers. Entries may be a standalone piece or an extract from a longer piece – but must be based on the author’s personal experience and must not be fiction. The first prize is £1,500, plus an Arvon course, a writing mentor, two years’ membership of the Royal Society of Literature and an optional development meeting with an agent or editor. Two runners-up will each receive £500, a writing mentor and an optional agent or editor meeting. The top twelve will be published online and in a booklet. Entry is FREE, and the deadline is 1 February. Details: http://www.spreadtheword.org.uk

Writers’ & Artists’ Short Story Competition 2021 2,000 words on any theme. The prize is a place on an Arvon residential writing course, plus publication on the site. Entry is FREE, but you must register at their website to do so.Deadline 12 February. Details: http://www.writersandartists.co.uk/competitions

The Penguin Michael Joseph Christmas Love Story Competition. This competition is to give new writers from the UK and the Republic of Ireland the opportunity to have their novel published in the run-up to Christmas 2022, with the winner receiving a contract with Penguin Michael Joseph and the opportunity to ‘connect with an agent’. Send a Christmas Love Story pitch of no more than 200 words, plus 1,000 words of your manuscript. Check out full entry details at: https://www.penguin.co.uk/company/publishers/michael-joseph/penguin-michael-joseph-christmas-love-story. Deadline 14 February.

The Globe Soup Winter 2020 Flash Fiction Competition is looking for an 800-word short story featuring a secret location. Writers entering the competition will be sent details when they have paid their entry fee and all entries must be set in that location. Globe Soup is a travel website, but stories do not need to feature travel. The winning entry will receive £1,000 and the entry fee is £5. Closing date: 11 February Details: http://www.globesoup.net

Spotlight First Novel Competition. A one-page synopsis plus the first page of an unpublished novel. Prizes: mentoring package. Entry fee: £16. Closing date: 14 February. Details: http://www.adventuresinfiction.co.uk

Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger Award for crime novels: first 3,000 words plus a synopsis of up to 1,000 words. Prizes: £500. Entry fee: £36. Closing date: 26 February. Details: http://www.thecwa.co.uk

Crime Writers Association Margery Allingham Short Story Competition for stories up to 3,500 words fitting Allingham’s definition of a mystery. Prizes: £500, two passes to CrimeFest 2022. Entry fee: £12. Closing date 26 February. Details: http://www.thecwa.co.uk/ShortStory/rules.html

Fish Publishing Flash Fiction competition. Send up to 300 words on any theme. Prizes: 1,000 Euros; 300 Euros; an on-line writing course. 10 entrants to be published in the annual Fish Anthology. Entry fee: 14 Euros. Deadline 28 February. Details: http://www.fishpublishing.com

The Scottish Arts Club Short Story Competition wants entries of original, unpublished short fiction up to 2,000-words. Entries may be on any topic and do not have to be set in Scotland or have Scottish themes. The first prize in this international competition from the Scottish Arts Trust is £1,000, and there are second and third prizes of £500 and £250. The Isobel Lodge Award will be given to the best story by an unpublished writer born, living or studying in Scotland. Winning stories will be published in the next Scottish Arts Trust Story Awards anthology. The entry fee is £10 per story, and the closing date 28 February. Details: http://www.storyawards.org/shortstoryaward

Please note that because of our current situation, some competitions have been obliged to make changes to their arrangements/entry dates/prizes – so double-checking everything before entry is especially important.

We know reading is good for you, and believe that putting words down on paper can also be therapeutic, so why not either dust off an old manuscript or compose something completely new?

Good Luck!

Oxford delights: Jilly Cooper and Barbara Pym

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19 magazine, Barbara Pym, Barbara Pym Society, Georgette Heyer, Harriet, Jane and Prudence, Jane Austen, Jilly Cooper, Lisa & Co, Nancy Mitford, Oxford, Petticoat magazine, Virago

What’s the connection between Jilly Cooper and Barbara Pym apart from them being quintessentially English and writing splendidly funny novels?

Jilly Cooper’s introduction to the 2007 Virago edition of Barbara Pym’s Jane and Prudence, first published in 1953, tells the story of how she borrowed the novel quite by chance from a library and fell in love with it. ‘I shamefully lied to the librarians that I had lost it, paying a 3s 6d fine … over the years, as Barbara Pym replaced Nancy Mitford, Georgette Heyer, even Jane Austen, as my most loved author, I devoured all her books, but Jane and Prudence remains my favourite.’

Jilly Cooper was therefore the perfect and altogether delightful guest at a magnificent tea in Oxford, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Barbara Pym Society, as part of the Society’s weekend conference featuring Jane and Prudence.  Some of those attending might never have read a Jilly Cooper novel; others like myself have delicious youthful memories of revelling in her stories serialised in magazines like 19 and Petticoat, some of which were subsequently expanded into short romantic novels named after their heroines.

It’s in Harriet, partly set in Oxford and published in 1976, that we get a rather endearing echo of a scene in Barbara Pym’s Jane and Prudence; in both novels young girls remark to each other that thirty sounds so old but forty must be worse… whereupon they brood silently upon this horror!

Jilly Cooper might be more famous now for her ‘bonkbuster’ novels, starting with Riders in 1985, but perhaps the older among us will always have an affectionate soft spot for the irresistible heroes and scatty/naughty/dreamy/kind-hearted/unselfconfident/innocent heroines of the early romantic novels Bella, Emily, Octavia, Prudence, Harriet, Imogen and her collection of short stories Lisa & Co, first published as Love and Other Heartaches. They offered the escapist, romantic, comfort-with-comedy reading we sometimes needed when growing up.

As Jilly Cooper wrote of her short stories in 1981 ‘I cannot pretend that these stories are literature. They are written purely to entertain… Their mood is rooted firmly in the sixties, where we all lived it up… when the young were still optimistic about marriage, and believed that God was in his Heaven if all was Mr Right with the world.’

Jilly Cooper met Barbara Pym just once – at the Hatchards Authors of the Year Party in 1979 – a wonderful memory she will always treasure. I know I will do the same after meeting Jilly Cooper.

Diversity

At a recent meeting one of our members (bless) suggested that we should have homework that we would bring to the next session. The first theme set was on being awoken by a galloping horse at 3am. Ghost stories, a wife’s revenge and a rant on royal pageantry followed. Maybe these will be developed into fully-fledged stories (not the rant). Is it a good idea? Or does it distract us from other writing?

There’s a PS to this. We’ve had two other “homeworks” since and one of our members has become a poet.

Writing comp with a Slovak or Czech dimension

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Anniversary, BCSA, Communism, Czech, Defenestration of Prague, Munich, Prague Spring, Slovak, Thirty Years War

A writing competition with a Central European twist! Exercise your imagination in a Slavic dimension in the British Czech and Slovak Association’s 2018 International Writing Competition, now open. If you win, £400 could be yours, presented at the Association’s annual dinner (so you and a companion would get a free meal as well), and your entry would be published in the British Czech & Slovak Review.

Anniversary – this year is the centenary of the creation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, but there are many other anniversaries to choose from in the history of the Slovak and Czech peoples: 1618 (the Defenestration of Prague and the outbreak of the Thirty Years War), 1848 (the Year of Revolutions), 1938 (Munich), 1948 (the Communist takeover) and 1968 (the Prague Spring and the Warsaw Pact invasion). (1989 was a year out!) You may know of others. So ‘Anniversary’ is the suggested theme in the 2018 BCSA writing competition.

Fiction or fact – either is welcome. The first prize of £400 and the second prize of £150 will be awarded to the best 1,500 to 2,000-word pieces of original writing in English which must be on (1) the links between Britain and the lands now comprising the Slovak and Czech Republics, or (2) describing society in transition in the Republics since 1989. Topics can include, for example, history, politics, the sciences, economics, the arts or literature. ‘Anniversary’ is this year’s suggested theme, but is not compulsory.

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 must be received by 30 June 2018. 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.

For full Submission Guidelines and the Rules of the competition apply to the Prize Administrator at the addresses given above. Details are also shown at http://www.bcsa.co.uk/2018-bcsa-international-writing-competition/ .

Administrator’s tip:  If I could pass on one lesson from recent years, it is to read the instructions: in 2016 and 2017 several entries were disallowed (no matter how well written) because they did not deal with the prescribed subjects. Enjoy the writing!

Interview with author Sarah Salway

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Alice Duer Miller, Carol Shields, Denton Welch, Gardens, Margaret Atwood, Sarah Salway

In this guest post ninevoices talks to Tunbridge Wells author Sarah Salway

First of all, tell us about what you are writing now?

I’m writing what I hope will be my fourth novel. It’s provisionally called ‘There Was Nobody There’, and is a detective story – but with a difference. It’s told over a week, and from a series of first person voices. Everyone sees a little bit of what happens but a) doesn’t realise or b) has their own reasons for keeping quiet. I was inspired by how the police put out that rather plaintive request sometimes: ‘surely someone must have seen something’! We’re all so tied up with our own lives and stories that sometimes we miss the huge things going on around us.

This is traditionally published – were you still able to choose the title and cover and other aspects of the design? What about the blurb?

Actually, this is the only novel I’ve written that hasn’t been already signed up by a publisher. Even my first was under contract to Bloomsbury before it was finished. I deliberately haven’t tried to sell this one although my agent has seen it. There’s something liberating about writing it while thinking it may never be published. It has allowed me to really play with the format and the story, although I’ve realised that I do need a deadline!

With the others it was a mixture, really. I’ve been published in both the US and the UK, and Something Beginning With was called The ABCs of Love in the States – this led to confusion with people complaining because they’d bought both thinking it was a different book. I haven’t been involved with choosing the covers of my novels – the big publishers have experts on hand so it seemed better to leave it to them. I have been involved with choosing the covers of my poetry and short story collections though, and have really enjoyed that. There’s something satisfying about getting stuck into all aspects of the book.

I love the physicality of books anyway – I’m often to be found stroking beautiful covers in bookshops!

Tell us how you first became a published writer?

I was a journalist, and studied fashion journalism at the London College of Fashion. I have worked in fashion PR, for Cosmopolitan, the Scotsman and Time Out magazine. We were living in Edinburgh when I had children, and I found a morning drop in class in creative writing. I’d always loved to read, but at school we mostly studied dead male writers so I didn’t think it was something someone like me could do. After the first class, I was hooked. I started writing short stories, and one of those stories was on the internet where it was found by my first agent who asked me if I would turn it into a novel. This became Something Beginning With, my first novel.

What have you published since?

I’ve published two more novels, Tell Me Everything and Getting the Picture, a collection of short stories, Leading the Dance, two poetry collections, You Do Not Need Another Self-Help Book and Digging Up Paradise, and a collaboration of short pieces with Lynne Rees, called Messages.

How difficult is it to get your books into bookshops? Do you have to do a lot of marketing yourself?

It depends on the genre, I think. And also the publisher. I was lucky with my novels in that Bloomsbury had very strong links already, although there was one instance when my book was placed on a table right at the front of the Waterstone’s near where my father lived. He very carefully moved all the copies to the shelf under ‘S’. He was very proud of himself, so I didn’t tell him that it had actually been a coup to have been so prominently displayed! Luckily, my publishers saw the funny side.

Contemporary poetry doesn’t tend to have a big space in bookshops – I think I’ve sold more copies online and at readings.

More and more though writers are expected to do their own marketing. It’s difficult because it feels a completely different set of skills is needed from the actual writing. Many of us write because we are happy pottering around on our own, making up stories and sometimes spending days searching for the perfect sentence. The real world can be a shock – not just because you have to get dressed! I’ve often talked with other writers about forming a co-operative where we promote each other’s books – somehow that’s an easier thought than selling our own. I don’t know if this is different in other cultures, but I was always told not to talk about myself because nobody would be interested.

But then here I am… right now… talking about myself!

How do you use social media to promote yourself?

I’m a big fan of social media, but more to find out about other people, other books, other worlds than promoting myself. It works best for me when it is a conversation – I love how generous other people are. I tend to stay away from the trolls and the haters – although recently there seem to be more and more of them.

Where do you find inspiration?

What a question! All over, really. There are times when I have to consciously turn myself off because there are too many stories coming at me. I love history, strange facts, old books, snippets of conversation, people’s faces. I often have to stop myself staring but I’m sure most people don’t realise how beautiful they are. The trick, I’ve found, is to put two things together. Often I’ll get inspired by one thing but it isn’t enough to sustain a story. Add something else into the mix – especially if doesn’t immediately seem to connect – and I have a more interesting story.

Do you belong to writing organisations?

I’ve taught creative writing for many years now so I suppose I’m making my own organisation! I’m very proud of my students who have been published widely over the years, and I’m gradually curating a bookshelf of their work. As well as classes in my own home, I teach at the University of Kent’s Tonbridge centre, and with the Freestyle Yoga Project in Tunbridge Wells. I keep a list of classes and events on my website, http://www.sarahsalway.co.uk.

I have a special interest in working with groups and individuals for writing for wellbeing, and was co-founder, along with Victoria Field, of the Kent Writing and Wellbeing Network. It is now being ably run by Nicky Thompson. I’m also a member of Lapidus and National Association of Writers in Education. Part of my day job is to be the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Kent, and although it’s not an official organisation, we have a busy Fellows forum which I find very useful.

Which authors have influenced your writing?

There are so many, but three I’d particularly like to mention. Denton Welch was a writer from Kent who wrote so beautifully and with so much attention that he can make three pages of description about one plate completely thrilling. From him, I learnt to slow down and allow the reader to breathe. Then, one rainy holiday in a rented cottage in the Lake District, I discovered an American writer called Alice Duer Miller. She wrote in many different genres – poetry, novels, even silent movies – and I absolutely loved her sly wit and playfulness. Lastly, Carol Shields is such an elegant writer and what she does with structure blows me away. Reading her gave me a real feeling of permission. I’ve just realised I’ve nominated no living writers, so I’m going to add Margaret Atwood here too – not just because of her words but because she is always pushing the limits of what people expect her to be doing. I take courage from that.

What would you like to do next?

Last year I worked on so many projects that – although busy and stimulating – meant that I didn’t feel I was finishing anything. SO… this year I have made a resolution to work on one thing at a time. I’d like to finish my novel before doing anything else, although I have a list of things I want to do. It seems to be the way of it that when we’re working on anything for a long time, there are always ideas that seem so much better waving at us from across the desk!

I’d like to get the final draft of the novel finished by the summer though, so I can carry on with my writing blog, writerinthegarden.com. I studied garden history relatively recently and am now obsessed – there are so many stories, so many eccentric gardeners, and so many dreams involved in gardens throughout history.

www.sarahsalway.co.uk

www.writerinthegarden.com

Heart v Head

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EU referendum, Head, Heart, Jane Austen, Leave, Remain, Shakespeare

I’ve heard someone answer, when asked about the EU referendum, that their heart says Leave but their head says Remain. Heart v Head? That’s the theme of so many stories. A whole sub-genre of romantic novels, perhaps. Which are your favourites?

I first thought that Persuasion was in this category, but I’m not so sure now. When we get to the end we see that Heart wins, but by then we so much approve of Captain Wentworth that we would put Anne marrying him in the Head category too. Hmm.

In the typical Heart v Head story the presumption is that heart is in fact right.   Of course Jessica should elope with Lorenzo – they are young and attractive and in love. The practical and social downsides of this are simply discounted, or not even considered.

Can you think of a story where Head wins?

Thought not. As a writer, would you compose a story-line in which Head wins over Heart? Would such a novel work? Would people buy it?

(And how does that help decide over the EU …….. ?)

A surprising win

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Writing Magazine June issue

You can never know what will please the judge of a short story competition, I’ve discovered recently, and this is very cheering as it means there’s always hope and the unexpected can happen.

The June issue of Writing Magazine contains my story Marshmallow Truth; it’s the winning story in a subscribers only competition.  But the story is very different from anything else I’ve ever written, which you could see as a little disconcerting – some stories which I like much better and are written in my usual more traditional style have never got anywhere in competitions!

However, it’s a very nice reward for straying out of my comfort zone. We are always being told to do this more often and now I am encouraged to make the effort. Thank you Writing Magazine – I am especially grateful to the editor for his sensitive and thoughtful comments about the story.

 

 

Woman’s Weekly Workshop

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adverbs, Della Galton, Gaynor Davies, short story workshops, Woman's Weekly

Going to a Woman’s Weekly short story workshop held at their headquarters in Southwark Street, London, might not be the first choice of outing for some of the members of ninevoices, but the four of us who went reckoned that it was a fun day out, even if we didn’t learn anything startlingly new.

Woman’s Weekly fiction editor Gaynor Davies and writer/Writers Forum magazine agony auntie Della Galton talked us through what WW are looking for, what pitfalls to avoid and how to maximise our chances of success when submitting.

Short writing exercises followed, and the roomful of ladies – yes, no men dared to join us – read aloud our scrambled-together sentences. The criticism and praise given by Gaynor and Della was useful if brief – and occasional outbursts of hilarity and the overall atmosphere of non-competitive goodwill made the day a non-threatening experience.

A lot of credit must be given to our two warm-hearted, quick thinking and professional mentors for this; it can’t be easy balancing the varying demands and personalities of so many would-be WW contributors all coming to the workshop with different expectations.

One criticism we might make is that there were too many of us crammed around a very long table, and some attendees probably felt too far away from Gaynor and Della to engage and contribute as much as they might have done.

Would we go again? WW also offer workshops on twist in the tale and crime, so it’s a possibility. But it’s likely that even with these variations it would be basically going over the same ground. We ought to know the rules by now.

I’m glad I went. We all need to try something different sometimes, even if our heart sinks at being told for the nth time to avoid those apparently ruinous adverbs. It’s good to be reminded of what a story should be. And it’s rather inspiring to meet lots of enthusiastic and friendly women all prepared to have a go at something that isn’t as easy as you’d think…

 

 

 

A winning story

Maggie has kindly agreed to share the story that won her the Henshaw Press Short Story Competition. Read it on our Writings page.

What is a good short story?

Tags

Bridport Prize, competitions, judging, Short stories

‘All judging is arbitrary and personal.’ This was Kate Atkinson’s opening remark in her report as judge of the Bridport short story competition back in 2001. So, some consolation to the thousands who hadn’t won.

I read the report carefully. I intended to enter the competition the following year. What did this particular judge look for? ‘That elusive something that sends us away knowing our lives have been improved in some small indefinable way…every good story is a journey at the end of which the reader and the writer gain the satisfaction of having been taken somewhere. Somewhere else.’

This was inspiring advice. Every one of the short-listed stories published in the 2001 Bridport story collection had achieved this effect. If only one could write like that!

Tobias Hill, the judge in 2002, pointed out in his report that not all good writing makes good short fiction. ‘The short story has its own particular demands and it is not a short cut to a novel, or a poem unpacked from its shrinkwrap, or a play with the exits and pursuing bears all painstakingly painted in.’ Many of the Bridport entries ‘didn’t really understand what the short story is about, or what it is capable of doing.’ Mine was evidently one of them.

Rose Tremain made some pungent – and ultimately helpful – comments in her report in 2003. ‘It is as hard to write a really first-rate short story as it is to write a really first-rate poem. Both need a strong informing idea. Both demand an economy of means… Very few stories…had any poetic coherence. Very few had tight plotting. Very few sounded any original note and very few were either moving or funny.’

What did the winning ones have in common? ‘A sense that the writer knows what she/he is doing. Good writing is like a boat which doesn’t leak, which has a sure hand at the helm.’

A nice nautical allusion for those of us who feel all at sea when it comes to short stories – and something to keep us on course when we enter this year’s writing competitions.