Archive for category Short Story
Seeking a Short Story Competition
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Short Story on August 1, 2012
Eddie Walsh from the sadly defunct Emerald Writing Workshops competitions has refunded entry fees for his competitions that
would have closed later in the year. So now I’ve got £3.60 to use as the entry fee in another contest. So I’ve been looking around to see what there is with a £3 to £4 entry fee and discovered the following selection of short story competitions:
- Monthly ‘Writing Magazine’ Competitions – £3 for subscribers and £4 for non-subscribers but I’m going to give these a miss because, as a subscriber, I can enter the contests in the Writers’ News section of the magazine for free (I’ve unofficially set myself the challenge of entering the WN comp. each month & have managed 3 so far, with th 4th in the pipeline).
- Monthly ‘Writers’ Forum Competitions – £3 for subscribers and £6 for non-subscribers, plus there is the option of paying an additional £5 for a critique. This is a possibility but I know I’ll be tempted by the critique and a total of £8 is a lot for one competition.
- Dickens Bicentenary Writing Competition – £3 per prose piece/£2 per poem. Entries to be inspired by a character from a Charles Dickens novel. Closes 15th August 2012. Not for me – I’ve read very little Dickens so unless I went for Scrooge, I wouldn’t know who to base my hero on.
- The Word Hut 5th Short Story Writing Competition – £4 entry fee with prizes of £50, £25, £10. 1,000 words and an open theme. Closes 16th September 2012. I’ll give this one some thought and have a look through my ‘stock’ of 1,000 word stories.
- Speakeasy Open Creative Writing Competitions – £4 per story/£3 per poem with prizes of £125, £75 and £50 in each category. 2,100 words and an open theme. Closes 31st October 2012. This is another one for me to consider but I might have to write something new to meet the word count – most of my stuff seems to be shorter.
And if you’re looking around for other competitions to enter a good resource (which I’ve used in my searching) is the Writers’ Reign website.
Good Luck!
CAKE!
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Markets, Short Story on July 2, 2012
No, not the spongy, creamy, totally bad for you kind – CAKE is a project to help unpublished writers get their work in front of
the public. It’s based in Manchester and distributes short stories free of charge via a network of cafes and bars. Each issue of CAKE is also available to download from the website.
There’s no payment for the stories printed (as you would expect since no-one appears to be making any money out of this) but CAKE will do their best to give feedback on any stories submitted plus, if your story is selected for publication, you will also get a plug for your website/blog.
Stories up to 2200 words will be considered and there are no rules about having to live in Manchester to submit. Full details of the submission process are here.
Sadly, those of us who have been published in magazines are not eligible to submit stories but there is still something useful for us to take away from the FAQs on the website. Apparently over half the submissions they receive are about death in one form or another, so if this is the subject of your story then you need to find a unique way of making your tale stand out from the crowd or write about something completely different. I’m sure this advice will apply equally well to any short story competition that you choose to enter.
By the way – did you know that this is Love Your Local Bookshop Week? It runs from 30th June to 7th July. Reading about it made my conscience prick about the purchases of both traditional and e-books that I make at Amazon. So I used my postcode here and was amazed to find that I would have to travel 15.66 miles to get to my nearest independent book seller, even though I live close to a large city. These shops have suffered badly from the growth of internet and supermarket purchasing and, sadly, there doesn’t seem to be any way back for them now.
Demise of Emerald Writing Workshops
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Short Story on June 18, 2012
Those of you who’ve been following this blog for a while will know that I have promoted the competitions organised by Eddie Walsh of Emerald Writing Workshops several times. I felt these contests had a cheap entry fee and were run by someone genuinely interested in writing (and not just out to make a quick buck!).
Recently Angela Greenwood contacted me to point out that the Emerald Writing Workshops website no longer existed and she wondered if I knew what had happened.
When I asked him, Eddie gave me the following sad news:
“In early May I tried to change servers which was a big disaster as the new server is too technical and did not help me log in so site is in limbo. As I have lost the momentum I have decided that the NOBODY comp will be the last one for which I have had about 65 entries. I will refund fees for other comps by end June after judging this comp. Updates will be on www.kerbsidebooks.co.uk (type this into Google – for some reason it doesn’t work as a direct link) as well as results in due course. I will email ALL entrants after judging Thanks for your past support.”
So unfortunately there will be no more competitions – but Eddie is doing the honourable thing and refunding everyone.
I would like to thank Eddie for his competitions and his encouragement to new writers over the last couple of years.
Hope everything goes well for you in the future, Eddie!
An Acceptance from People’s Friend!
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Short Story, Successes on June 7, 2012
I had a lovely email from People’s Friend this week accepting a story.
The story was one of my favourites (you know how you get those sometimes – no matter how many rejections a story attracts, you keep tweaking and re-submitting because you think there’s something special about it and all you need to do is find the right market). This one started life as a competition entry and has been almost completely rewritten on its journey via Woman’s Weekly and My Weekly. Finally, People’s Friend asked for two lots of changes to make it fit their readership.
The acceptance email said it now had ‘the perfect balance of romance and emotion’. So all that remains is to recreate that same balancing act in another story!
I’ve no idea when it will appear in print – it’s gone into the magazine’s ‘story stock drawer’.
Competition Round-Up
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Poetry, Short Story on May 24, 2012
Some competition news for you today:
Balsall Writers’ Competition 2012
Balsall Writers’ Competition 2012 is open for submissions of short stories (up to 2200 words) and/or poems (up to 42 lines).
There is a £100 first prize, £75 second and £50 third prize. The entry fee is £4. It is an open theme with a closing date of 31/10/2012 and the results will be announced a month later.
An entry form is required and this can be found here along with full details about the competition.
Erewash Writers’ Group Competition Update
Debbie has been in touch from Erewash Writers’ Group with an update on the charitable donation part of their 2012 competition – this donation has now reached £50.00. Entrants to the competition can nominate a favourite charity to receive this money, the names will be put into a hat and drawn at the end of the competition. The closing date for the competition is 27th June 2012 and details are here.
5minutefiction First Birthday Competition
And a quick reminder that the 5minutefiction First Birthday competition closes on 1st June 2012. Entry is only £2 and the first prize is £100 plus e-anthology publication for the top entries. The e-anthology from the site’s earlier competition is now available here – for less than the price of a magazine!
Good Luck if you decide to enter any of these!
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.
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!
Mature Times and Yours
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Markets, Poetry, Short Story, Successes on February 23, 2012
I picked up a copy of Mature Times in the library this week. This is a free monthly publication aimed at retired people of both sexes and this edition (February 2012) contains the following announcement, which may be of interest to anyone writing poetry:
From next month, Mature Times will publish a reader’s poem in our Poem of the Month competition. Entries will be judged by our literary critic, Jacky Edgell, and the winner will receive a Mature Times pen set. Please submit your poem to; Poem of the Month Competition, Mature Times, Highwood House, Winters Lane, Redhill, Bristol BS40 5SH or email: editorial@maturetimes.co.uk
I also bought a copy of Yours magazine. This is a fortnightly publication, again aimed at older people and I guess more women read it than men. Usually it carries one short story per issue but this one (Feb 21 – Mar 5 2012) contains two stories, and one of those is the first instalment of a two-part story. This may be a one-off or it may be an indication that Yours is going to start carrying more fiction, including short serials. I’ve got my fingers crossed for the latter!
Finally, talking of serials, I won the competition on Womag’s blog to write the first 200 words of a crime serial!! Geraldine Ryan was the judge and provided the prize – a copy of her new book, Leave Over. This book contains two (previously published) complete serials, so I’m looking forward to reading it and maybe picking up some tips.
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