National Flash Fiction Day May 16th 2012
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Events on April 9, 2012
The first National Flash Fiction Day will be taking place on May 16th 2012 and if you want to be part of it you need to get your 
thinking caps on now.
There is a list of specially organised competitions listed here. Some are specific to certain parts of the country (this narrows down the field of entrants, so if you are lucky enough to live in any of the chosen areas – get writing!). Many are FREE to enter and there’s a variety of closing dates (but they’re mostly in April so don’t delay).
If you fancy getting involved in person, take a look at this list of planned events organised geographically. Unfortunately there’s none near me in the West Midlands but Derby ‘s doing well with 2 workshops going on.
So if you like your writing short, sharp and to the point – what are you waiting for?
5minutefiction First Birthday Competition & Book Launch!
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Promotion, Short Story, Successes on April 5, 2012
5minutefiction has launched a short story competition to celebrate its first birthday.
Entries can be on any theme and any length between 100 and 1500 words. Closing date is June 1st 2012 and the entry fee is £2.
First prize is £100, second prize £50 and third prize £25. In addition, the winners will be published as part of an e-book short story anthology, along with up to 20 other additional entries. These stories will receive royalties from the sale of the book.
All entrants will also receive feedback.
Judging will be slightly out of the ordinary with 10 shortlisted stories being put to the public vote. Voters will be charged 10p to vote to help ensure only 1 vote per person.
Full competition details are here.
Also, I am pleased to announce that the e-anthology of selected stories from the last competition organised by 5minutefiction is now available. Time for Love contains 18 of the best entries from the Valentine short story competition – including mine (this could be the nearest I ever get to a book launch so I have to make the most of it)! Someone else you might have heard of, Simon Whaley, also has a story in there. 
Time for Love is available to purchase from Amazon here. At only £1.54 it’s cheaper than the Kindle version of Woman’s Weekly Fiction Special – and might just help you win this competition!
If you don’t have a Kindle, download free software here to allow you to read Kindle books on your laptop.
A Royal Day Out by a Proud Mum
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Non-writing on April 2, 2012
I was a guest of His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh at St. James’ Palace – at my elder daughter,
Eleanor’s D of E Gold Award presentation.
Eleanor travelled from Leeds, I caught the train from Birmingham and we met for lunch at Victoria before strolling over to our appointment at the palace (via Fortnum and Mason, where I ogled some beautiful but exorbitantly priced leather-bound notebooks).
Once inside the palace the young people were drilled in how to stand in horse-shoe formation in groups of 30 for meeting the Duke. Whilst waiting for him to arrive, Phil Brown gave an interesting and motivational talk on his experiences in the 4×4 relay team in the 1984 Olympic Games.
Then it was the moment we’d been waiting for – Prince Philip’s arrival. He spent some time chatting with each of the ‘horse-shoe’ groups plus any of the parents he spotted wearing a Gold Award badge from their youth. Then the certificates were presented (unfortunately not by the Prince) and it was a proud moment when Eleanor’s name was called.
Eleanor is continuing the expedition skills she learned during her D of E time by tackling the 3 Peaks Challenge (climbing Snowdon, Ben Nevis and Scafell Pike within 24 hours) in May in order to raise money for ShelterBox, which delivers emergency shelter to people made homeless worldwide by disaster. Her target is to raise £250 and she’s launched a fundraising page to supplement the cake sales and tin shaking she’s been doing at university. Please take a look at her page and sponsor her for this worthy cause if you possibly can. As they say, every little helps!
And that’s enough showing-off by a proud mum – next post we’ll be back to work and the subject of writing.
Escape to the Country by Patsy Collins
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Authors, Books, Writing on March 29, 2012
Patsy Collins’ debut novel, Escape to the Country, 
will be published on 30th March 2012 and I am honoured to have Patsy visiting my blog today. I asked her a question I’m desperate to know the answer to. This is what she had to say:
Out of My Depth!
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Authors, Resources, Writing on March 26, 2012
I’ve mentioned before my intention to enter the Good Housekeeping Novel Writing Competition and I’ve been beavering away at my entry since January. I wrote 20,000 words and then paused to take stock and prepare my entry which had to consist of the first 5,000 words plus a full synopsis. The synopsis was a challenge because until then I’d been writing without a detailed plan but after some thought I managed it.
Then I decided to send the 5,000 words and synopsis to novelist Patricia McAughey (who writes as Patricia Fawcett) for a critique. Patricia reads for the RNA New Writers’ Scheme and also runs a reasonably priced private critique service for all types of fiction except fantasy, sci-fi or children’s. She can be contacted through her website for a quote.
Patricia sent me a detailed report which very tactfully told me that my story didn’t work because I was still in ‘short story’ mode. She said, “Slow down. You are rushing things. I know it is tempting to try to get all the ideas down but you are writing a longer piece and there is no rush. Relax.”
She went on to explain that I was giving the reader no idea about the setting. One of the scenes was in a Derbyshire cafe but I didn’t describe the interior, the waitress, the view or even indicate whether the place was full or empty. Patricia suggested painting a broad picture of the scene and then honing in on small details such as a woman trying to get a pushchair through the gap in the chairs.
There was a similar problem with my characters. Patricia said, “… I don’t have any great affection as yet for either of the two central characters simply because I don’t know enough about them…”. I had omitted rather obvious details like what the heroine did for a living or what she looked like!
It wasn’t all doom and gloom. I did get words of praise for my dialogue (which I love writing) and my synopsis.
So if you’re trying to move from short stories to longer fiction, take a moment to check that you’ve added depth to your writing. Make sure you haven’t skimmed over the setting or the characters’ backgrounds. Have you described what it smells like in the kitchen? Have you mentioned what your hero is wearing as he meets the heroine for the first time?
Later this week Patsy Collins, a successful short story writer and debut novelist, will be guesting on this blog and attempting to explain how she made the leap from short stories to seeing her first novel published.
Happiness Poetry Competition
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Poetry on March 19, 2012
I’ve had an email from Alex Black of PrintExpress.co.uk. Following on from their previous successful poetry competition (which I mentioned on this blog some months ago) they are running another FREE poetry competition to win £100.
Alex describes the competition as follows:
Coffee Shop Writing
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Writing, Writing Handicaps on March 15, 2012
Have you ever tried writing in a coffee shop?
Image via Wikipedia
I fancied myself as a J.K. Rowling sort of writer – scribbling away in the corner of a cafe, far from all the domestic distractions and guilt trips (like ironing, kitchen cleaning etc). So when my daughter bought me a Costa Coffee gift card I decided to indulge my fantasy.
11am on a Friday morning and the cafe was busy but I managed to find a nice little table hidden away at the back – just right for me, my latte and my notebook. I had a few sips of coffee, found my pen and started to write and that’s when I noticed the noise level. All around me were groups of women yakking at the tops of their voices (or so it seemed). I’d never noticed this decibel assault before (probably because I’m usually one of those yakking women when I go out for coffee!) It was impossible to stop myself tuning into what they had to say:
“That’s Mark’s ex. Now he’s with the one with the crooked eye.”
“They stitched her up so the baby couldn’t come out and now she’s nearly 2 weeks overdue.”
“She was sick at the altar whilst she made her wedding vows.”
At home I write in silence with not even the radio on for company so all this was hard to take but I did eventually manage to tune out and write.
The next problem was – how long can you sit with an empty latte glass in front of you without feeling obliged to buy another or leave? It was a situation made worse when the waitress whisked my glass away leaving me with nothing – but she completely ignored the tables of women who’d been there much longer than me. So I gave up and went home.
Would I try coffee shop writing again? Yes – I’ve still got £7.65 left on my gift card and it was good to get away from the PC and back to pen and paper. But I’ll try to go when it’s not so busy next time and have a pot of tea – so it’s not so obvious when I’ve finished & the waitress won’t whisk it away!
Where do you prefer to write?
Flash Fiction Competitions
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Markets on March 12, 2012
If you’re struggling with a story, agonising over an article or gnashing your teeth about the novel, why not take a short break to recharge your batteries and have a go at some flash fiction instead? Spending a short time playing around with just a few hundred words (or less) will get the brain cells working again, send you back to the magnum opus refreshed and also give you that lovely satisfied feeling that comes from finishing a piece of work and submitting it.
Flash fiction seems to be growing in popularity and here are just a few of the competitions and markets for it:
Flash Fiction World runs quarterly FREE to enter competitions – plus the site contains details of other competitions and helpful advice for the writer.
Emerald Writing Workshops runs quarterly 500 word story competitions with cheap entry fees – I’ve extolled the virtues of Eddie Walsh and his competitions before, so I won’t go on and on again.
Real People Magazine pays £25 each week for a 60 word story – most of which tend to have a twist in the tail.
And don’t forget the ‘Win a Book’ competitions which appear each month in Writing Magazine. They usually ask for around 250 words on a particular theme. I find them great for kick starting the grey matter and for trying a genre I might not otherwise consider – I recently won the ‘Paranormal’ competition and have had a go at ‘Pitching a SitCom’. These competitions are a quick and easy way to step outside your comfort zone.
If you know of any other extremely short fiction markets then let me know – I’m always looking for reasons to deviate from my current project!
Motivation
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Writing on March 8, 2012
Image via Wikipedia
What motivates you to pick up a pen or put fingers to keyboard and write? Is it the hope of riches and fame? Is it the need to communicate your thoughts and opinions to others? Or is it because those ideas buzzing around in your head won’t go away until they’ve been captured on paper? Or may be just because you enjoy it?
I expect most of us write for a combination of these reasons. Riches and fame might be at the back of our minds but we know that penning a bestseller is as likely as winning the lottery, so money alone is rarely the primary reason for becoming a writer – but the odd cheque for a story, article or reader’s letter certainly helps the enthusiasm levels!
As well as the ‘grand motivation’ for writing, we all make smaller motivational decisions over each piece that we decide to write. For instance when you decide to enter a particular competition – is it because the prize is good? Or is it because it’s smaller competition and prize, so therefore there’s a greater chance of winning? Similarly, do you only write when you have known publication or market to target? Or if an idea pops into your head do you get working on it and worry where to send it later?
Long ago I learned that it’s virtually impossible to make any sort of living from the written word so I suppose I must write because I enjoy it – although most of the time it just feels like hard work! I like the satisfaction of completing and submitting a piece, along with that surge of hope that this could be ‘the one’ that successfully hits its target.
As far as the smaller motivations, I only write if I can see where I can submit the piece. But my chosen market doesn’t have to pay a fortune (I might choose differently if I didn’t have a ‘proper’ job and therefore relied on writing for an income) – I prefer to have a greater chance of small prize/payment than a smaller chance of a bigger pot of money.
Sometimes it’s not the ‘carrot’ that’s important – it’s the need to show those that have made fun of our writing ambitions that they are wrong and that we can write well enough to be published. John Malone discusses this ‘negative’ motivation on his blog here.
So, why are you writing?
MULTI-STORY.co.uk Short Story Competition
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Short Story on March 5, 2012
Helen Foley has been in touch from MULTI-STORY.co.uk to tell me about the current short story competition that is running on the site.
She says, “It is for an open-themed story of no more than fifteen hundred words, the entry fee is £5 for one story or £8 for two and the closing date is 30th April 2012. There are cash prizes of £300 for first place, £100 for second, £50 for third and the winning entries will be published on the site. The judge is the author, Jim Williams, whose ten novels, including the Booker Prize nominated Scherzo, have all been internationally published.”
Entry fees are payable via PayPal and submission is by email. Full details are on the website along with a few words from Jim about what his is looking for in the winning entry.
He says, ‘A prize-winning entry will show a knowledge, and understanding, of what makes a short story work. I’ll be looking for a distinctive voice, sharply drawn characters and the best possible use of language. Any dialogue should be engaging and appropriate.’
As well as being a successful author, Jim also has a brilliant sense of humour. Take a look at his blog post, Why I am Glad I’m a Writer and not a Plumber – I challenge you not to laugh!
So maybe a slightly humourous story might be a winner in the competition…
It’s a nice prize pot so, Good Luck!
Sally Jenkins 