Competitions to Enter in August

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1000-Word Challenge, All Desires Known, Bench Theatre's Supernova Festival, Costa Short Story Award, Exeter Story Prize, HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Award, Ilkley Literature Festival, Of Human Telling, Writers' block

When is a short story competition not a short story competition? I’ve been entering these things for years, only ever winning two and being short-and-long-listed on a handful of other occasions. HOWEVER, winning isn’t all that’s on offer.

Competitions can be incredibly successful for curing writers’ block. If you’re stuck with your novel, turning your back on it and creating something new, perhaps in a different genre, can help you return to your manuscript with fresh perception.

Writing a short story might also develop a character or set of characters who will take hold of your imagination and inspire something much more significant. Tanya’s two published novels — Of Human Telling and All Desires Known — had their genesis in a short story about people living in the shadow of an English public school. My own novel, currently being edited prior to submission, began life as a short story, but elicited the comment from a judge that she felt the subject matter: ‘really called for a book’.

Competition entries can also help develop the persistence that writers desperately need. A story that failed in the Olga Sinclair Award several years ago served its time in my rejects drawer, was then re-written and re-named, and went on to success in the Hysteria Short Story Competition. It can be seen under Writings on our masthead, together with Tanya’s Across the River, a winner in Writer’s Forum, and Marshmallow Truth, a winner in Writing Magazine. Both stories were entered in a number of competitions over the years without any real success. Persistence pays off.

So what’s stopping you?

Costa Short Story Award. Short stories up to 4,000 words on any theme. Prizes: £3,500; £1,000; £500. FREE ENTRY.  DEADLINE 3 AUGUST. Entry details from: http://www.costabookawards.com

Ilkley Literature Festival Short Story and Poetry Competition for short stories and poetry. DEADLINE 1ST AUGUST. Short story, maximum 3,000 words. Entry fee £5. Prize: £200. Poetry, maximum 30 lines. Entry fee £5. Prizes: £200; £100; £75. Details: http://www.ilkley-literaturefestival.org.uk/join-in/competitions

Exeter Story Prize and Flash Competition. Story: max 10,000 words. Flash: max 1,000 words. Fee: £12. Prizes: £500 plus trophy; £150; £100. Tricia Ashley Award for best humorous entry: trophy plus £200. Deadline 31 August. Details: http://www.creativewritingmatters.co.uk/competitions.html

1000-Word Challenge. Flash: max 1000 words. Entry fee: £5. Prizes: ££100; £50; £25. Details: http://www.1000wordchallenge.com

Bench Theatre’s Supernova 8 Festival of new one act plays will take place at the Spring Arts and Heritage Centre, Havant, Hampshire in February 2019 and if you are resident in the UK, or a British citizen, you have until 17 August to submit a play for consideration for the festival. There is no entry fee and although no payment is made, if your play is performed you will gain all-important performance credit. Submit original plays of a maximum of 45 minutes and no more than six actors. Shortlisted plays will be given feedback. Full details: http://www.benchtheatre.org.uk/supernova.php

The HWA Dorothy Dunnett Short Story Award is inviting entries of unpublished historical short fiction, set at least 35 years in the past, of up to 3,500 words. The winning story will receive £500, publication in The Whispering Gallery and on http://www.historiamag.com, mentoring sessions and tickets to the HWA Crowns ceremony in November, when the award will be presented. Runners-up will receive mentoring and invitations to the awards ceremony. The entry fee is £5 per story and the closing date is 31 August. Details: https://historicalwriters.org/dorothydunnett/

Aesthetica Creative Writing Award.  For unpublished poems of up to 40 lines and short stories of up to 2,000 words. Entry fee for poems: £12; short stories: £18. Details: http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/cwa

The Prague City of Literature Project is inviting applications for 2019 writer-in-residency stays. Six are available, each for a two-month period and writers-in-residence are reimbursed for a return ticket and provided with accommodation and a monthly stipend of 600 Euros. Applicants should have a cultural interest in Prague, at least one published literary work, a willingness to take part in the local literary life and a project they will be working on during their stay. At the end of their stay they must undertake to provide the Municipal Library in Prague with a text inspired by the residency to be used by the Prague City of Literature Project. Closing date to apply is 31 August. Details: http://www.prahamestoliteratury.cz

The C21 Drama Series Script Competition invites entries for a pilot script for an international TV drama series. Six finalists will present their script to a panel of commissioners and broadcasters, including representatives from Amazon, Netflix and the BBC. The winner will receive a $10,000 option from WritersRoom to develop the project. There is no entry fee. Deadline is 31 August and details can be found via: http://www.c21media.net/script/

The John O’Connor Short Story Competition 2018 offers a bursary to attend the John O’Connor Writing School and Literary Arts Festival in Armagh between 1 and 4 November, plus £250. The prize includes accommodation, but not travel expenses. The competition is for short stories between 1,800 and 2,000 words. There is an entry fee of £10. Deadline 28 August. Details http://www.thejohnoconnorwritingschool.com

As ever, please let me urge you to double check all competition details on the relevant website before entering.

Critical reviews: thick skin required

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All Desires Known, Iris Murdoch

In this world nothing is certain except death and taxes, wrote Benjamin Franklin. Authors might want to add nasty reviews to the list.

Every novel that is ever published will get at least one bad review – that is, if it gets any at all. You cannot as an author please everyone.

But a critical review still makes for painful reading. You’ve done your very best and here is some stranger being rude about your work. It feels like a personal attack, and no amount of re-reading of praise in other reviews removes the sting.

Some critical reviews – however unpleasant they are to swallow – may be a good thing. They can point out weaknesses of which we’d been entirely unaware. This is useful constructive criticism, offering things to consider when writing our next novel. We can be very grateful for this help.

The nasty reviews where you can’t help thinking that the reviewer hasn’t bothered to read the book can be dismissed but they are still irritating. One less than complimentary review of my novel All Desires Known said something about its sleepy village backdrop, which struck me as odd as it’s set in a busy town with scenes involving the local theatre and mentions of  Waitrose! Clearly I had failed to give enough sense of place …

Authors have a range of advice for coping with negative reviews. Worth remembering is that most would-be readers have learnt to be suspicious of nothing but praise and a hundred per cent crop of five stars. All those friends and relations roped in …

Iris Murdoch’s philosophical approach might come in handy as well. ‘A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A rose by any other name…

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All Desires Known, Barbara Pym, Godliness and Good Learning, Names

Choosing names for the characters in a novel isn’t the delightful self-indulgent process you might imagine it to be. A whole load of complications and worries crop up, some of them too late…

There are obvious guidelines. Don’t have characters with similar sounding names or even starting with the same letter. Vary the length of names. Avoid names that have developed particular associations in the modern mind. Get the generation right. A man under eighty is unlikely to be called Reginald, Derek or Eric. Women called Joan, Dorothy or Barbara will probably be seventy plus.

But already one is entering a minefield.

The off-stage mother-in-law in my novel All Desires Known is nicknamed Buttery Barbara by my heroine; Barbara is someone who spreads her fundamentalist views too thickly – at least in the eyes of her daughter-in-law Nell. The reader may perceive that Nell is an unreliable witness; the worst we actually gather about Barbara is that she overdoes her well-meant evangelism. Buttery is nicely ambiguous… All the same, apologies had to be made to the three altogether lovely Barbaras I know – and Barbara Pym is my favourite author.

Some characters cry out to be called by a particular name; they wouldn’t become as real with any other. The godly chaplain in All Desires Known was always going to be called Martin (after reading the moving story of Martin White Benson, son of Archbishop Benson, who died aged seventeen of meningitis, in David Newsome’s fascinating study of Victorian education and Christianity, Godliness and Good Learning). Illogically, my sadistic bully had to have the surname Benson. Unfortunately this is also the surname of my kind doctor. More explanations required.

It was only at proof-reading stage that I realised my heroine and slippery husband had almost identical names to the happily married couple down the road. Some hasty last-minute adjustment ensued. Worst of all was discovering that a character who comes to a sticky end shares a name with someone to whom an old friend had just become engaged.

So, some unexpected snags, and alarm about hurting people’s feelings. But I suppose you’d never publish anything at all if you worry too much. A remark attributed to the American film producer Samuel Goldwyn offers a comforting perspective: ‘Now why did you name your baby ‘John’? Every Tom, Dick and Harry is named ‘John’.

Judge a book by its cover…

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All Desires Known, Gwen John, National Portrait Gallery, Waterstones

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‘If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use reading it at all’. Oscar Wilde said this, or something very like it. I have to agree with him.

This may be an age thing. As you get older you realise with dismay that there are going to be many excellent books you are never going to read. Time is short. Is it too short to waste it on anything that isn’t worth reading more than once?

It was with these thoughts in mind that I chose how I wanted my self-published novel All Desires Known to look. It’s not a plot-driven page-turner. If readers enjoy it, it will be for its examination of character and its prose style. I hope they will look forward to the next chapter for the pleasure of reading, rather than only caring about what happens next. I hope they will be sorry when they see there’s only one more chapter left.

So I needed All Desires Known to at least look like the kind of book people want to read more than once. It doesn’t matter if airport paperbacks end up dog-eared with broken spines – they’ve served their purpose of instant entertainment. But if a book is going to be sticking around on an owner’s shelf waiting to be pulled out again it should be a work of art in itself, not just a vehicle for words. Quality paper, a graceful, traditional font, a smooth matt laminate cover with flaps. A book which is a joy to look at, to hold and to turn the pages. Something like Persephone books in fact.

In modern publishing, the cover has to advertise the contents and inform the buyer exactly what kind of book it is. A publisher’s design department will know about what colours and graphics to use, what matches the market for your book, what catches the eye on Amazon. All very important, but it’s not your choice. Here’s where self-publishing has its rewards. You can have exactly the cover you want.

The heroine of All Desires Known, Nell Garwood, is an artist whose revealing portrait of an enigmatic public school chaplain misleads Dr Lewis Auerbach, the Jewish child psychiatrist who is caring for her daughter. The role of art in exposing the truth is played out through scenes at Wharton school, the Mall Galleries and finally in the National Portrait Gallery. So the cover of the book had to be a painting.

It is Lewis who spots the uncanny likeness between a portrait he has seen at Tate Britain and Nell Garwood. This is why All Desires Known has on its front cover Gwen John’s painting of The Convalescent, painted in 1918-19. A young woman deep in private thought, torn by the rights and wrongs of life, holding on to her interior life. We don’t know who the model was, only that Gwen John painted her many times while living in Paris where she had a passionate love affair with the sculptor Auguste Rodin. Here is the same intense psychological insight that Nell showed in her work, but so disastrously lacked elsewhere…

All Desires Known is all about moral vacillation and our infinite capacity for self-deception. Gwen John’s beautiful muted painting might not dazzle on the tables at Waterstones, an eye-catching seller for my novel, but it’s a perfect work of art you want to go on looking at and that’s what matters most on the cover of a book.

Marketing is no fun

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All Desires Known, Marketing

“So what’s it all about then?”

The polite enquiry from people who haven’t read my novel All Desires Known. A nasty moment when my mind becomes a blank sky, thoughts disappearing like migrating birds. A faltering explanation which gives the wrong impression and might be about a different book altogether. My novel is boring. I am a bore.

Ridiculous to be floored by the question. If you’ve written and published a novel of course you know what it’s about. But it’s about lots of things and you aren’t any good at soundbites.

There’s no excuse. “Sum up your novel’s unique selling point in a single sentence” – anybody who’s attended a creative writing class or read a writers’ magazine will be familiar with that little exercise. Can it really be done?

I only know it needs to be. Here’s what I wanted to say to my questioners.

The contradictory and confused impulses of the human heart; the claustrophobic world of public schools; false allegations of abuse; the devastating nature of teenage mental illness; and over it all, the power of art to reveal and redeem.  Do we have a right to be happy at the expense of other people? How far should sacrifice be taken? It’s a question that the three main protagonists of All Desires Known have to face.

Psychiatrists get a bad press. They’re usually presented as creepy, sinister or plain barking. The hero of All Desires Known, Dr Lewis Auerbach, a Jewish expert on childhood psychosis, reverses the trend. He’s a good man, he’s giving his life to helping children with mental illness, he thinks he can stick to the rules he’s set himself. He’s got his life organised into two tight compartments…

Nor is Martin Darrow, the exemplary chaplain at Wharton public school, any more successful at knowing himself – and to what depths he might sink. There’s a lot of hot air talked about forgiveness, especially by the Church. It’s easy enough to preach. And where is God in the whole homosexual debate?

It’s hardly surprising that the heroine, portrait painter Nell Garwood, is attracted to these two men. Like them, she has made wrong choices in the past, misread herself and other people, not least her indulgently generous husband Alastair.

People are not what they seem, cries Nell, halfway through the novel. No, they aren’t, we’re all getting it wrong about each other most of the time. In All Desires Known, characters comment on each other, but they’re all prejudiced in one way or another, so are they reliable narrators? The reader must work it out, but there must always be uncertainty, because people and life will always be half-finished and messy.

How can this be summed up into a handy soundbite selling sentence? Writing a novel is easy compared with marketing it.

 

Church Times – reviews worth reading

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All Desires Known, Barbara Pym, Church Times

Reading reviews of one’s published writing can be a mixed experience. Grateful pleasure when the reviewer has understood what one was trying to achieve, a disconcerting recognition that a particular criticism may be justified and occasional irritation when it’s obvious that the reviewer has apparently only read the first and last pages.

A clear, accurate and sensitive review of Tanya van Hasselt’s novel All Desires Known  in the Church Times 7th November written by Sarah Meyrick left the author feeling thankful that here was someone who appreciated the story for what it was – and who wanted more about the character at the religious heart of it. But this will have to come in another novel…

Here’s an extract from the Church Times review, reproduced with permission from the editor.

‘… an easy and enjoyable read. The author clearly knows the world of schools from the inside, and paints a largely convincing picture of a family in meltdown. The book asks questions about betrayal and forgiveness – just how possible is this? What are the boundaries between patient and psychiatrist – and where does the responsibility for a patient’s well-being begin and end? Do we have a right to be happy?

‘The author’s experience as a writer of short stories (she recently won joint first prize in the Barbara Pym centenary competition) shows in her sure touch…’

The link to the Church Times: http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/