Archive for category Successes
The Museum of Broken Relationships
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Non-fiction, Resources, Successes, Travel, Writing on December 20, 2012
I was leafing through the Independent on Sunday and came across a travel article on Zagreb. It mentioned the Museum of Broken Relationships which immediately fired my writer’s imagination.
The museum contains exhibits that each recall the breakup of a relationship. Each object is accompanied by a narrative telling its story such as:
- A lover’s mobile phone, given to the girlfriend he’d just broken up with, so that she couldn’t call him anymore
- An axe that was used on the furniture of an unfaithful partner
- A garden dwarf that was thrown at an ex’s windscreen on divorce day
The place sounds like a building full of writing prompts with a whole wealth of relationship stories, just waiting to be written. There’s a cafe there too – so somewhere to sit and jot down notes whilst enjoying mulled wine and pepper cookies (the house specialities according to the website).
The museum also accepts new exhibits from people wishing to get rid of stuff that reminds them of a painful breakup. What would your hero or heroine donate?
Look out for the museum’s touring exhibitions, there was one in Lincolnshire earlier this year and one in London in 2011 – if only I’d known I could’ve collected enough ideas to last a lifetime! Instead I’ll have to save up for a flight to Zagreb …
P.S. I had an acceptance from People’s Friend this week – hurrah, a great way to end the year!
Easy Reads – D.C. Thomson
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Markets, Successes on October 8, 2012
Many moons ago I started writing a My Weekly Pocket Novel. At that time they were 30,000 words and I thought that was an achievable target. When I was part way through, the required word count went up to 50,000 – so I adjusted my plot and carried on. I reached 50,000 words and the end of my story. Then I lost confidence in what I’d written and decided it was so bad that I couldn’t possibly send it out.
So it sat gathering virtual dust on my hard drive.
Then the news came from Maggie Seed that My Weekly Pocket Novels were being replaced by the new Easy Reads imprint and she needed manuscripts. I decided it was now or never. So I wrote a synopsis and polished up my first 3 chapters and, with nothing to lose, emailed Maggie.
A week later, I nearly fell off my chair when she replied and asked to see the rest of the manuscript. Unfortunately the rest of it was still in ‘first draft’ stage. So I’m now busy editing and trying to knock it into a coherent shape.
Of course, there’s still a high probability that the whole thing will be rejected so I’m not sitting here with rosy coloured specs on planning my launch party. But it’s nice to know that the basic idea, outlined in the synopsis, was not total rubbish!
So if you’ve got something languishing in a bottom drawer – why not get it out and search for a market? If you don’t submit then you’ll never get published. But if you do submit…who knows what might happen!
For more information on Easy Reads have a look on womagwriter’s blog.
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’.
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.
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.
Persistance Pays
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Markets, Successes on February 2, 2012
Most of us have ‘favourite’ stories, poems or articles that for some reason have never made it into print. For some
Image via Wikipedia
reason we particularly like these pieces but it seems no-one else does! Recently I resurrected a couple of stories which had unsuccessfully done the rounds but which I thought had a strong idea behind them.
The first was a ‘twist in the tail’ about a fortune-teller and was based on an anecdote that a work colleague told me. It was rejected by both Take a Break Fiction Feast and The Weekly News. I managed to distill the essence of the story down into just 60 words and emailed it off to Real People, which publishes a 60 word story each week and pays £25. And finally my fortune-teller tale found a home! It was published a couple of weeks ago and now I feel that I can stop fretting over that ‘favourite’ and move on.
Similarly, another story, set partly in the early 1980s and partly in the present day, had flopped in a couple of competitions and had been rejected by Woman’s Weekly. It then also got turned down by My Weekly – but this time with a few words about why it wasn’t quite right. I took notice of the comments, reworked the story and sent it off yet again – this time to People’s Friend. This week I had an email from one of the People’s Friend fiction team saying that they liked the story, but also listing a number of changes that would be necessary before it could be considered for the magazine. So now I’m editing the story yet again and crossing my fingers that when I re-submit it, People’s Friend will say ‘Yes’ and finally give my story a home.
So if you’ve written something you really love but can’t seem to get it accepted anywhere – keep trying. Persistance can pay!
Every little helps…
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Successes, Writing, Writing Exercises on December 9, 2011
Writing is a frustrating occupation with little reward. It’s easy to get fed up with the rejections, the publications that
don’t bother to reply at all and that blank piece of paper which refuses to be filled with wonderful prose.
So why do any of us keep writing? Why do we pick up a pen or drag ourselves to the keyboard day after day? Is it the pleasure of losing ourselves in another world (in which case it would be easier to just pick up a book written by somebody else)?
Hope is what keeps me going. Hope that the editor might like this article pitch, hope that this story might win the competition or this reader’s letter might bag me the star prize.
This hope is fired by small incidents and minor successes along the way – things that cheer me up when the bigger prizes are eluding me.
One of these was my writing group’s Christmas meeting last week. Our new program secretary, Moira, organised a fun competition for a piece of writing containing the phrase ‘It happened every Christmas’ – with prizes from her attic store cupboard. We all took some food (there was way too much food!) and listened to everyone’s entries. We had fiction, poems, memoir and articles. Moira had the unenviable task of awarding the prizes. I received a scented candle in a pretty box (pictured). It may not be an award to add to my CV but it gave me a boost.
A couple of days ago I met up with my writing buddy, Helen. She didn’t award me any prizes but I did get inspired from our chat about plans for 2012. I came away knowing that I have to produce a certain amount of finished work otherwise I’ll let the side down.
Finally, I’ve been shortlisted in the latest Emerald Writing Workshops competition. It’s good to see a couple of other familiar names on the list – fellow blogger, Susan Jones and Sharon Bee who runs the Fiction Addiction website. Fingers crossed for us all!
So, maybe I haven’t won the Booker this month but there have been plenty of little things to keep me going!
Reflected Glory
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Successes on November 17, 2011
Sometime ago on this blog I mentioned a competition run by the West Country Writers’ Association to win a weekend away at their Annual Congress in 2012 (see here). This is a competition they run every year (and I was the lucky 2011 winner).
Well, I’m pleased to announce that the 2012 winner is Tracy Fells – who found the competition on this blog (hence my reflected glory!) and left a comment to let me know of her win. Congratulations, Tracy!
Tracy also heard about 2 other successes on the same day as this win – visit her blog to read about them.
If anyone else has any successes from anything I mention on this blog, please let me know so that we can all share it. I find it spurs me on to know that ‘ordinary’ people are winning things and getting published – if they can do it then so can the rest of us!
Poetry, Pictures and Andrew McMillan
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Competitions, Events, Poetry, Successes, Uncategorized on October 10, 2011
On Saturday I went to Morley in Yorkshire to collect my certificate for the Friends of Morley Literature Festival Short
Story Competition. It was a lovely evening which featured Andrew McMillan (not sure if he’s any relation to Ian) reading poetry that had been written for a special project undertaken in conjunction with the Literature Festival.
Four families in the area chose paintings from Leeds Art Gallery to hang in their homes for 3 months. Andrew went out to visit these families and talk to them about how they felt about the art works. He then used these conversations as triggers for poems. Three local schools also chose pictures to hang in their classrooms for a similar project but this time the children wrote the poems with Andrew acting as their mentor.
Andrew has a wonderful way of performing poetry and he brought the children’s colourful language & unusual ideas to life with his gestures, timing and strong regional accent. Similarly, hearing him read his own poems made them so much more vivid (for a non-poet like me) than simply reading words on a page.
So, to be a successful poet do you have to be able to perform with panache and carry the audience with your words? Or can you succeed as a shrinking violet? I imagine that few people buy books of poetry these days and therefore a confident performance is essential to build a following.
The evening continued with a gig by the comedian Arthur Smith (of Grumpy Old Men). He was brilliant but surprised me by including poems (which he knew off by heart) in his act. My favourite was The Mower by Philip Larkin, which is a rather sad tale about a hedgehog.
Also – until midnight on Friday (14th October 2011) I am donating £1 to the RNIB for each new subscriber to this blog. Simply enter your email address in the box on the right – it’s free and you can unsubscribe at any time. More information is here.
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