29/05/2012
Writing Opportunities and Competitions
When starting out on your path to publication the best way by far to improve your writing is to enter competitions and to submit your work to anthologies. This allows you to experiment with different voices and styles and get used to working towards a deadline.
Enter under a pseudonym. Enter multiple times if the T&C allows it.
Above all, write and write and write until you’ve found a voice and a style with which you’re comfortable.
Here’s a list of just a few of the many upcoming competitions and opportunities available online right now -
Wigtown Poetry Prize - closing date extended to midnight 31 May 2012
Bridport Prize - closing date 31 May 2012
Edwin Morgan Poetry Competition- closing date 9am, 4th June 2012
Mslexia Women’s Poetry Competition closing date 18 June 2012
Shortbread Stories - open to entries submitted between 9 April and 17 June 2012
New Scottish Writing - submissions to next edition accepted between 1 May and 30 September 2012
Mslexia Children’s Novel Comp. – deadline 10 September 2012
Short Sentence Crime - open to entries submitted between February and November 2012
Cinammon Press – multiple competitions – check the website for deadlines
Spilling Ink Review – multiple competitions – check the website for deadlines
- Please remember to check the individual Terms and Conditions and always follow submission rules to the letter
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20/05/2012
SWC Great Debate on Speculative Fiction
**SWC Great Debate on Speculative Fiction, Thursday 24 May at 7pm in the CCA ClubRoom, Glasgow.
If you’re around Glasgow on the 24th come along to the next SWC Great Debate where Douglas Thompson will chair a panel on Speculative Fiction (Sci Fi, Fantasy, Paranormal etc) . Join Kirsty Logan, Roy Gill, Neil Williamson, Gordon Robertson, and John Birch to discuss this hot topic. Bring your views, your ideas and your voice to the debate.
Come and discuss such questions as:
- Where are the female writers of speculative fiction? Are they all writing YA now?
- Why are there so few reviews of speculative fiction in the mainstream press?
- If a comic is now Graphic Fiction does that make it literature?
- Does Speculative Fiction attract less funding than literary fiction? If so, why?
- Why are so few writers of speculative fiction included in literary festivals – or hidden within the children’s events?
- Where does cross-over literature sit within the literary tradition?
- Why write speculative fiction?
- Is it easier to write science fiction and fantasy than mainstream fiction?
News!
I’ve recently taken up responsibility for co-ordinating events at the Scottish Writers’ Centre – check out the BookRambler Blog for full details.
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11/04/2012
Six-figure book deal for Mslexia prize winner
Don’t you sometimes have a sneaky suspicion that writing competitions are just about collecting the entry fee? Well think again! News that Rosie Garland has just signed a six-figure deal with Harper Collins for her book, The Beast in All Her Loveliness brightens the most cynical heart.
Rosie won first prize in Mslexia’s inaugural 2011 women’s novel competition.
Just the spur to finish that novel!
08/03/2012
Writing is easy for a woman? – thoughts for International Women’s Day
Singled out for newsworthy potential in today’s Telegraph is Aifric Campbell, sadly not, it seems, for the brilliance of her writing in On the Floor, but for switching jobs from City trader to writer. News copy needs a fresh angle and a simple announcement detailing the Orange Prize long list isn’t deemed interesting of itself. The ‘news’ is that Aifric ‘stopped working’ in the City because of the long hours away from her baby and stayed home and wrote books. Now, I know that this is a dumbed down distillation of the story of the novel but it’s also a negation of the creative process; the sheer, monumental effort of writing.
The message is that writing is an easier option than competing on the City trading floors.
Really? Is it only the male writer who writes with such intensity that it leads to physical exhaustion? Is writing a soft option for a woman?
Surely the article should investigate the process of writing and how it compares to City trading. How, for example, did she find time to write and be a full time mother at the same time – isn’t that juggling? What is the difference between working full time away from home and working full time in the home? And wouldn’t we think differently of Aifric if we also knew that, as well as writing full time, she lectured on creative writing, held a PhD?
Aifric received her PhD in Critical and Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia in 2007 where she has also lectured. She’s the recipient of an award from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, a Thayer Fellowship at the University of California at Los Angeles and writing residencies at Yaddo in New York.
Aifric has taught creative writing at UEA, University of Sussex and is now teaching at Imperial College, London. - from Aifric’s website -
Here’s a piece from the same newspaper on the writer Colm Tóibín’s day – a piece that doesn’t include any mention of family, babies, or juggling, but which does make much of his university posts…
ironically, it’s written to coincide with publication of New Ways to Kill Your Mother.
30/11/2011
The End
We got here. Some have completed 50,000 words and others, well, we took part, we tried, we toiled and we created new worlds, introduced new people, killed off a dozen, explored new planets and travelled many miles.
I didn’t WROTE make my 50,ooo this year! but I don’t feel that I failed. I’m hyped and ready to continue at a slower pace, taking time to re-read and probably, if I’m honest, delete around half of it and begin to shape the real story hiding within the sprawling mess.
Not yet though. That’s for next week.
Tonight – let’s just celebrate!
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