Greengage Jam

September 13, 2021

Made with my own hands. It doesn’t look that great (or very green), but it tastes all right!

I remember when I were a lad there was always a competition over who got the single greengage one out of the box of Lyons’ jam tarts. Those were bright green – probably carcinogenic if not actually radioactive…

Wit to Won’t

September 7, 2021

I think I may owe an apology to anyone who may have entered the Wit to Woo contest after seeing it on my list. I believe they were originally supposed to announce a short list in mid July. On 29 July, their Facebook page claimed winners had been notified and an announcement was coming soon. Comments were barred.
Nothing has happened since except that the website has gone down. In effect they have disappeared, and it seems we must assume the worst.

September 2021 Competitions

August 19, 2021

Here’s my regular look at writing competitions I might enter during the coming month. The ones I know of seem to be grouped in the later part of the month (which I suppose means more time, though things could be hectic on 30th!). This month we’ve got several unusual formats, and quite a few freebies.

  • The Lee Smith Novel Prize is free to enter (yay!) though you can make a voluntary donation. You only need a minimum of 25,000 words, which is pretty slim for a novel. Top prize is $1,000 and publication. 
  • Those lively people at Globe Soup are running another 7-day contest. You register in advance (by 6 Sept), and then get assigned a theme and genre for your story, which must be written in 7 days! Word counts can be up to 2,000, the prize is £500, and again, it’s free (yay again). Looks like fun, but I don’t know how I would manage with some genres.
  • Impress invite submissions of a proposal, synopsis and sample chapter (up to 6,000 words) of your book. The entry fee is £25, the prize is £500, and you might be published. The deadline is 13 September.
  • Dream of Shadows wants stories about Halloween Monsters. The entry fee is £6 with a prize of £300, max 1,500 words and the deadline is 15 September.
  • You think seven days isn’t much time? The Mollie Savage Memorial Writing Contest (formerly Three Cheers and a Tiger) from Toasted Cheese  is a 48-hour short story writing contest which runs twice a year. Topic and word count will be revealed on 17th September (we know it’s fantasy/SF) and entries must be in by 19th. First prize is $35, or $50 if they get more than fifty entries. It’s free (three yays!).
  • Streetcake Magazine want up to 2,500 words and they want them experimental in style. Entry is free (what’s going on this month?); no cash prize but some mentoring, networking, and a book bundle. The deadline is 20th September.
  • Dream Quest One offer a prize of $500 for a story of up to five pages, with an entry fee of $10 and a deadline of 22nd September.
  • Beechmore are looking for pieces of writing on the theme ‘Perspective’, and their top prize is £200 plus a year’s supply of their journals. And yes – it’s free to enter! The deadline is 25th September.
  • Literary Taxidermy is back! This is the contest where you are given the first and last lines of an existing work and you have to write a new story to fit between them. This year the first and last lines are from a short story by Katherine Mansfield. The maximum word count is 2,500, the entry fee is $10, and the top prize is $500. The deadline is 26th September.

All the others have a deadline of 30th September.

  • The First Page Challenge calls for, guess what, the first page of your novel. The entry fee is CA$5 and the top prize is CA$70 plus online publication and access to a course.
  • LWB, by contrast, want the hundredth page. You can enter a novella, but it must be at least 20,000 words. The entry fee is £7, and first prize is £50: you also get four books and  a report on your work.
  • The annual Hammond House competition is back. As before the maximum word count is 5,000. The entry fee is £10, the top prize is £1,000 and the theme is ‘Stardust’.
  • The Juniper Prize is for short story collections of 15 to 30 pages. The entry fee is $30: top prize is $1000.
  • Red Hen want a minimum of 150 pages: the entry fee is $25 and again the top prize is $1000.

I’ve been doing these posts for a year now – how time flies! Good luck if you enter any of these competitions; if you are long-listed, win, or get some recognition, please do let me know.

Baby Boomers Plus

July 24, 2021

My story Excessively Repetitive won the Living Springs Baby Boomers plus competition! The prize is $500 and the story will appear in their next anthology. The title is appropriate, by the way, but I must admit I took childish pleasure in being able to say things like ‘my entry for your competition is excessively repetitive’.

Pots

July 24, 2021

I painted some little flower pots for Mum’s birthday (shh – it’s still a few days away!). Light sanding, coat of gesso and away we go. The artistry is not great, but it’s a few years since I gave her anything home-made for her birthday. (Don’t worry, I have got some other items!)

August 2021 Competitions

July 15, 2021

H04A7B972-83E8-42FA-92C8-5F8B122D1A2Bere are the writing competitions with deadlines in August that I might enter – though to be honest I have reservations about a couple.

  • Grindstone wants stories of up to 3,000 words; the entry fee is £12 and the top prize is £500 – deadline 1 August.
  • Then the mighty Costa competition is back. As always, there are two rounds. The judges pick three stories and then the public votes to decide the winner. The word limit is 4,000, and the top prize is £3,500 plus immense prestige. Best of all, it’s free to enter – but the deadline is 2 August, so we need to get moving.
  • Future Folklore also offer free entry for stories up to 2,000 words, and offer a top prize of $400. The story must be ‘cli fi’ – fiction about climate change. My impression is that they’re looking more for optimistic views of how we might deal with the problems, rather than anything bleakly dystopic. We’ve got until 8 August.
  • Gival want chunky sized stories – 5,000 to 15,000 words. Entry is $25 and the prize is $1,000, with a deadline of 8 August.
  • Arena fantasy magazine asks for up to 3,000 words inspired by a picture (of a medieval army in action). Entry is £10, but the top prize is only £100, which doesn’t seem a very generous ratio.
  • The VS Pritchett competition run by the Royal Society of Literature, no less, is for stories up to 4,000 words; entry is £8 and the prize is £1,000. The deadline is 20 August.
  • The Val Wood prize has the theme ‘Now and Then’, intended to mark the end of lockdown and reflect times of positive change. Stories can be up to 2,000 words long, and it’s free to enter, with a prize of £100. The deadline is 28 August.
  • The Masters Review asks for stories under 6,000 words. The entry fee is $20, the top prize $3,000, and the deadline is 30 August.

All the others have a deadline of 31 August.

  • Aesthetica, that bastion of intellectual art and design, wants stories of up to 2,000 words. The entry fee is £18 and you could win £2,500 and a consultation with Redhammer Management (which I believe is Peter Cox of Litopia).
  • Blue Mesa has a generous word limit of 6,000: entry is $12 and the prize is $500.
  • The Exeter Story Prize has the same limit, and the same fee and prize, except in pounds instead of dollars; you’re allowed up to 5,000 words.
  • NAWG wants stories up to 2,000 words, with an entry fee of £5 and a prize of £200.
  • SaveAs, of Canterbury, allows up to 3,500 words, on the theme ‘horizons’ in honour of TS Eliot (no, I don’t really get it, either). Entry is £4 and the prize £200.
  • Seven Hills asks for up to 3,000 words. The entry fee is $30 and first prize is $150 – an even meaner ratio than Arena’s! (Update – they increased the first prize to $300 and extended the deadline to the end of September.)
  • Finally, if you have a whole collection of stories, running to between 130 and 180 pages, St Lawrence would like to see it. $27 is the fee and the prize is $1,000.

A Lion and a Unicorn

July 14, 2021

Met a lion and a unicorn on my constitutional today. Lenny is a recent addition to the garden created by Claudio Funari just up the Wandle from us: I believe the unicorn is from CAOS, the Carshalton artists who do a lot of fun stuff, knitted hats for pillar boxes a specialty.

Show, Don’t Tell

July 13, 2021

There’s an interesting discussion here of the oft-quoted rule for writers ‘show, don’t tell’. It means, for example, don’t write ‘Emma felt sad’, write something like ‘Emma’s lip trembled. She raised one hand to the tears that had begun trickling down her cheek’. Why is that a good way of doing things? First, it may be more vivid and engaging. Second it guards against a fault of poor writing in which emotions are simply pasted on like labels, characters being assigned feelings without the writerly groundwork being done.However, to treat it as an absolute rule goes much too far, as with over-zealous application of rules like ‘no adverbs’ and ‘no passive mood’. Nothing is totally forbidden when you’re writing, and direct description of thoughts and emotions can be very valuable. Take this passage from Jane Austen’s Emma.

Emma’s eyes were instantly withdrawn; and she sat silently meditating, in a fixed attitude, for a few minutes. A few minutes were sufficient for making her acquainted with her own heart. A mind like hers, once opening to suspicion, made rapid progress. She touched—she admitted—she acknowledged the whole truth. Why was it so much worse that Harriet should be in love with Mr. Knightley, than with Frank Churchill? Why was the evil so dreadfully increased by Harriet’s having some hope of a return? It darted through her, with the speed of an arrow, that Mr. Knightley must marry no one but herself!

Emma’s realisation that she has loved Knightley all along is brilliantly done, the turning point of the novel and I think, one of the great moments in English literature. How could it be done by just ‘showing’? What outward behaviour on Emma’s part would convey the same thing? I doubt it could be done at all, and if it were it would surely be long-winded, vague, clumsy, and give none of the pleasure the actual text delivers.

Austen, like most great writers, often does some telling. Indeed, if she didn’t she could scarcely have pioneered the use of ‘free indirect’ style, the last great achievement of nineteenth century literature, in which the characters thoughts are voiced by the author. For example, the last sentence in the passage above could just have been ‘Mr Knightley must marry no-one but herself’ (I’m not suggesting that would have been an improvement.)

I would in general say to people who want to advise writers – show us things we can do, don’t tell us about things we mustn’t!

July 2021 Competitions

June 19, 2021
163FD447-50E2-4524-A839-A0AD1D070605 Here’s my regular look at writing competitions I might enter during the coming month (so no poetry or competitions not open to UK writers, for example). The majority have deadlines at the end of the month, so you mostly have a bit of time to work on a story.
  • Ambit seeks stories of up to 1,000 words (arguably flash fiction) on the classic Ovid/Kafka theme of ‘Metamorphosis’; the entry fee is £6 and the top prize is £500. You’ll need to get writing because the deadline is 1 July.
  • The Gutsy Great Novelist Page One competition requires only the first page of your novel-in-progress, by 7 June. The entry fee is $20 and the top prize $1,000.
  • The H.G.Wells prize is for stories between 1,500 and 5,000 words on the theme ‘mask’ with a fee of £21 and top prize of £500; the deadline is 12 July.
  • The Doris Gooderson prize from Wrekin Writers is for stories up to 1,200 words in length. The entry fee is £5, the prize £200, and the deadline is 13 July.
All the others have a deadline of 31 July.
  • The Novel London competition asks for your first 3,000 words plus a synopsis. It costs £11 to enter and the top prize is £500 (plus mentoring).
  • The Olga Sinclair Prize, from Norwich Writers’ Circle, is for stories on the theme ‘lost’. The word count limit is 2,000, the entry fee £9, and top prize £200.
  • The Seán O’Faoláin prize from Munster Literature is for stories up to 3,000 words, with an entry fee of €18 and prize of €2,000.
  • The Fiction Factory First Chapter competition requires, guess what, the first chapter of your completed novel. Although you can send a chapter of any length, it seems only the first 5,000 words will be taken into account. The entry fee is £18 and the top prize is £500.
  • Fabula Press is back and wants stories of up to 6,000 words; the fee is $10 and top prize $500.
  • The regular Cranked Anvil competition comes round again next month with a word limit of 1,500, entry fee of £5 and prize of £150.
  • Anthology offers a prize of €500 for stories up to 1,500 words on the theme ‘memories’.
  • HISSAC (Highlands and Islands, but you don’t have to be Scottish) wants stories up to 2,000 words; the entry fee is £5 and the prize £200.
  • Finally, you need a humorous piece of up to 2,500 words to enter the unique To Hull and Back competition. The entry fee is £15 and the cash prize is £1,200. In addition, a selection of stories will be published in an anthology, and the winning author’s face will be photoshopped into a dramatic picture showing them on a motorbike journey to Hull (think Meatloaf album cover). In addition, the organiser will strap the winner’s copy of the anthology to the front of his Harley Davidson and ride from Bristol to Hull and back, returning the book with whatever damage the elements may have inflicted along the way. I said it was unique!
Good luck if you enter any of these; if you are longlisted or win, please do let me know.