Why you hate twitter. In 140 characters or less.

Free to enter. Fun to enter.
Other people do crosswords, writers work on sonnets or competitions like this.

Words with Jam are giving away three mugs (who said you were going to get rich as a writer). All you have to do is tell in exactly 140 characters (including spaces and punctuation) why you hate TWITTER. Simple as that.

 

Entries should be sent in the body of an email  to danny@wordswithjam.co.uk. (I'm told attachments will be mortared all to hell.) Closing date 5th of September. 
Why not...if you complete a crossword, you just complete a crossword....

Write a novel in three days? Of course you can. But can you edit it...

3-DAY NOVEL COMPETITION

Doing anything the beginning of September? No? Then you might want to consider taking part it a 35 year old literary marathon that has produced 25 published novels in its time and a lot of tired writers. The competition is international and differs from NaNoWriMo

• It's shorter - a month is so-o-o-o long
• It costs to register
• There are prizes

Early-bird registration (deadline: August 15) costs $50 which at today's exchange rates is nearly £32 and about 40 euro. That's quite a lot of money but if you do submit (there's no obligation) someone is actually going to read it. First prize is publication by the organisors, second prize is $500 and third prize is $100.

The Nitty Gritty 

The actual writing AND editing must begin no earlier than 12:01 a.m. on Saturday, September 1, and must stop by 11:59 p.m. on Monday, September 3. It's run on the honour system but they do ask you to give details of a witness who can verify that you've obeyed the rules.
There are no limits to the novel’s length, but they expect something in the region of 25,000 - 30,000 words. I may sound a bit picky but that's not really a novel - it's more like a very long short story. I'm not knocking it though - that's 30,000 words entrants might not have written otherwise - 30,000 words that could grow into something big and important. I approve of seat of the pants writing, where you're forced to convert all the ideas you've had floating in your head into ink and paper, forgetting the niceties of the semi colon and proper meal times.
I guess the organisers will get suspicious if you submit a proper novel length submission (that's usually reckoned to be between 80,000 and 100,000 words) accurately typed with evidence of immaculate copy editing. They say they can always tell if someone has cheated...and I bet they can, because I cannot understand why they don't let you edit afterwards. It just doesn't make sense (like some of the manuscripts submitted, I presume).

White Hot and Ice Cold

72 hours of burning fast writing sounds great - sounds like the kind of creative kickstart some of us need (hand goes up) - but editing is done with an ice cold pen, ripping out scenes, squelching witty asides and strangling endearing characters because they don't serve any useful purpose in the story. And you need distance to do that - at least a week (Aristotle recommended nine years) but definitely not during that white hot creating phase.
What do you think?
Anyone done something like this? Can you edit and write at the same time?

Sussex Only

As part of the celebrations marking the Queen’s Jubilee this summer, East Grinstead Town Council is launching a Short Story/Poetry competition.
Entry fee £3 each submission - £10 for four.
First prize in each category: £100, and a commemorative Jubilee plaque.
Second prize in each category: £50 and a commemorative Jubilee plaque.
Deadline is 1 May and entry is open to anyone

"who lives or works in, or has a connection to, Sussex."

Poems up to 40 lines long can be humorous or serious, on a theme connected to Sussex, or the Queen’s Jubilee, and containing one of the following words:

• service
• reign
• queen
• soldier
• sixty
• Sussex
• England

Short stories, up to 1000 words, should start with one of the following first lines:

• Sixty years? It didn’t seem possible…
• As the On Air light glowed into life, the Queen discarded her prepared speech and addressed the nation in her own words…
• She had no umbrella, so the Queen caught up her collar, glad to hide her face from the rain and from the few stragglers lingering in the thin drizzle…
• Behind the Prime Minister’s back, the Queen suppressed a giggle, pleased that a lifetime of decorum had not quite extinguished her sense of humour…

The Town Mayor will present prizes if recipients are close enough to travel to East Grinstead, and winners who wish to receive their prizes in person will be invited to read their winning entries during the weekend celebrations marking the Jubilee.

FInd out more here

A WORLD AWAY FROM HOME Irish Post competition

The Irish Post is looking for an original short story of up to 3,000 words reflecting Irish life in Britain.
The winner gets free travel to Listowel Writers’ Week, which takes place May 30 - June 3, plus £500 prize money. Their work will also be published in the official Listowel
Writers’ Week brochure and in The Irish Post.
Entries can be either posted or e-mailed... Send them to: Listowel Competition, The Irish Post, Suite A, 1 Lindsey Street, London EC1A 9HP
or email editor@irishpost.co.uk
Include the story title, your name, address and telephone number.
Closing date for entries is March 2, 2012.
For full details and updates visit www.irishpost.co.uk

Fiction for children - free competition

Commonword - a Manchester based organised with a mission to help new writers - has launched a competition for unpublished authors of children's fiction. (They have a very specific definition of what that means, but basically if you have already published something in another field - as long as it is not a novel for children - you should be ok. Read all the conditions thoroughly before submitting though...)

What they want

(Up to the) First 4000 words of a children's novel already written. Synopsis. Biography.

When they want it

February 29 2012

Special feature

The writing has to "embrace ethnic diversity" OR the author must "through their own ethnicity and culture."

Who can submit

Over 16

Resident in UK

Unpublished - read the terms and condititions

What you get (fingers crossed and a lot of hard work)

£500 cash prize

professional mentoring 

£100 worth of Puffin books of the winner’s choice.

Honour and Glory. (Although it won't help you at Sainsbury's check-out, it could be just what you need to interest an agent or publisher) 

Shortlist for the BBC National Short Story award

This is the sixth year that the BBC has run its short story competition - only open to authors who have already been published - and throughout this week you can listen to the shortlisted entries.

The winner will be announced on Monday 26 September live on BBC Radio Four's arts programme Front Row and will receive £15,000 which must make it one of the most lucrative - as well as prestigious - short story competitions in the world. Honour and glory is great, but it's even better when it is backed up with some money, especially as there are few paying markets for short stories.

The runner-up gets £3,000 and the other three authors £500 each.

This year's shortlist is:

'Rag Love' by M J Hyland 

Set in Sydney, a magnificent cruise ship is in harbour and all one down-and-out couple want is an hour together in the top suite. Described by the BBC as "eerie".

'The Heart of Denis Noble' by Alison MacLeod

This story is drawn from real life; it shows  Denis Noble, the pioneering systems biologist, awaiting an operation on his heart – the organ that he has spent his whole adult life studying – and looking back to consider the relationship between the heart of love and the heart of science.

'Wires' by Jon McGregor (runner up last year) 

A young woman's life flashes before her eyes as an unusual object flies towards her windscreen on the motorway.

'The Human Circadian Pacemaker' by K J Orr

As an astronaut attempts to re-adjust to life on earth, how will his wife cope and can their relationship ever return to its old rhythm?

'The Dead Roads' by D W Wilson 

An American road trip story where two old school buddies try to win the affections of a free-spirited girl; then a mysterious man enters the picture...

Each of the shortlisted stories will be broadcast daily on BBC Radio 4 at 3.30pm from today Monday 12 September. It's also available as a free podcast available to download for two weeks from www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/nssa.

Margaret Atwood says that writing is an apprenticeship and that we all learn from our masters, some of them are alive and some of them are dead...This short list should offer a real insight into contemporary writing that demands attention. I'll be listening and learning (and probably disagreeing with the judges) 

Twitter Writing Competition

Do you tweet?
I do, as I've mentioned before in this blog. (Follow me @agoodconfession)
Yes, it can be a time waster.
Yes, it can give you the false idea that you're connecting with people when in reality you are just sitting at your desk thinking on the keyboard
But it can also be a great source of information, advice and entertainment. The wit of other contributors never stops surprising or delighting. 
It can be a channel for protest. 
Twitter users bombarded companies last month pleading with them to stop advertising with the News of the World.
It can also be wildly misleading.
There were numerous tweets last week about a riot happening right outside my front door in central Brighton when all was quiet, all was peaceful. (Brighton prefers a riot of colour - the  police marching at Pride last Saturday got a big cheer.)
It can also be creative. Yes, truly. Give it a go with this just launched twitter writing competition that is marking the inaugural Brighton Digital Festival.
To take part in the Twitter competition use #FLF11 so the organisors can start tracking your story submissions.

 Email flashlitdigital@gmail.com with queries.
More info about Brighton Digital Festival: http://brightondigitalfest​ival.co.uk/

Best Comedy Scene Competition

Words with Jam are looking for a scene that is LOL funny. It can be a stand-alone sketch, a complete scene from a novel/short story, play, script or anything else you can think up.
You are also allowed to include a brief (40 word max) synopsis to introduce the scene but the organisers stress that it really just the jokes that they’re interested in.

So don’t worry too much about character development/setting etc unless it is integral to the humour.

Word limit 1000 words maximun - no lower word limit.

Prizes: £200 First Prize (plus publication in Words with JAM) and five runners up of £25 each (plus publication on the Words with JAM Blog) and a hardback copy of Christopher Brookmyre's Where the Bodies Are Buried

Entry Fee: £5, plus £3 per entry thereafter

Closing Date: 19th August 2011

Winners will be announced in the October 2011 issue of Words with JAM.

For more details on how to enter: http://jdsmith.moonfruit.com/#/main-competition/4550153175

Free to enter writing Competition

Like me, you may not have known that August 30th is The International Day of the Disappeared. It commemorates people who have gone missing throughout the world in situations of violence and armed conflict and the Red Cross are bringing attention to it this year with a free competition. It is a reminder of the hundreds of thousands of families who are unaware of the fate of their loved ones, and organisations like the Red Cross who work to restore family contact between separated family members.

There are only two rules (isn't that refreshing to hear)

1. Your writing should be based on the theme of ‘the disappeared’.
2. It should fit onto one side of A4 paper.

So this could be poetry, prose, a comic strip, a short story, an excerpt from your diary, a song... anything as long as it relates back to the theme.

Entries can be either typed or handwritten. (Now there is generous. Be kind on the judges and make sure your writing is clear by giving it to someone to read before you post it off.) Drawings and illustrations are also welcomed, but remember – this is a creative writing competition – so these should accompany your message, not be the message.  

 Deadline is August 30 

Prizes

The winning entry will receive a £50 cash prize and a £50 national book voucher.

A compendium of the top entries will be compiled and published for International Day of the Disappeared 2012. All authors of published entries will receive a free copy.

How to enter

You can enter by emailing your work to entries@redcross.org.uk or by posting it to:

Creative writing competition
British Red Cross
Bradbury House
Apple Lane
Sowton Industrial Estate
Exeter
Devon
EX2 7HA

Terms and conditions

1. Entries must be original, unpublished and not accepted for publication. They should be written in English.
2. The name and address of the entrant should be clearly listed separately from the entry itself.
3. Receipt of entry will be given by email if a valid email address is supplied.
4. A list of commended entries and the winner will be posted on this website, and sent out by email to addresses provided.ttp://www.redcross.org.uk/What-we-do/Finding-missing-family/International-Day-of-the-Disappeared/Creative-writing-competition
5. Copyright will remain with the author, but the British Red Cross reserves the right to publish any winning or commended entries after the end of the competition.
6. The winning entry will be announced within a month of the deadline on 30 August, 2011.
7. The judges' decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into regarding the results.
8. Submitted entries will not be returned.
9. Neither the judges nor competition organisers are eligible to enter the competition.

Short Story and Poetry Competition

Hurry along to to the Ilkley Literature festival website at http://www.ilkleyliteraturefestival.org.uk if you have a short story (maximum 3000 words) or a poem (30 lines or less) that is polished and ready to go - closing date is Monday

First Prize is £200 and all winners and runners up will have the opportunity to read at the Festival in October.
Entry fee: £4 per story or poem

Mslexia's how-to poetry guide

To coincide with the MSLEXIA poetry competition (closing date July 14) the writing magazine have published an excellent guide to writing poems.

The last instalment is all about preparing your work for submission.

Summing up the advice in one sentence it goes something like...if you think it is ready to send off, don't...until you've answered the following questions:

Hold out the poem and scan it - does it look right on the page?

Does the poem fit the magazine or competition you’re targeting?

If it is free verse, what were your reasons for choosing to break the line there? (Clue: you really should have a reason...)

Does the poem feel abrupt? 

Is it too wordy?

Lots more advice (and answers) on the website - click the title of this post to go there

Short Story Competitions with added value

This morning I came across two short story competitions that include a short critique of your story for the entry fee. That does sound like a very good deal. I am emerging from a heavy round of marking (university non fiction and adult education fiction) and know only too well just how long it takes to give written feedback.
Competition entrants should be realistic - they can't expect anything very detailed and probably a few generalised standard paragraphs will be included in the response...but, even so, it is a generous add-on that should give writers some insight into their work.

Writers’ Village Best Writing Award Summer 2011

Wanted: short story up to 3,000 words on any subject. 

Entry Fee: £10 for up to two stories.

Prizes: £200, £100, £50, 5@£20; winning entries will also be published online. 

Deadline: June 30 2011

Writers’ Village, The Old School House, Leigthon Buzzard LU7 9DP.

Click on the title of this post to go to the website

Laurel House Creative Workshops Short Story Competition

Wanted: short story up to 4,000 wds on any theme; each story entered will receive a 400 wd critique.  

 Entry fee: £4 per story. 

Prize: £100, plus full critique and publication in a LHCW anthology.

Deadline: July 4 

Laurel House Creative Workshops, Laurel House, Groesfaen, Rhondda, Cynon Taff CF72 8NS

Couldn't find a website for this one...

And here's one that awards the winner with a bottle of sparkly stuff as well as hard cash 

The Ifanca Hélène James Short Story Competition

Wanted: short stories up to 2,200 words.  

Entry fee: £3 per story 

Prizes: £100 plus a bottle of champagne; £50, £25.

Deadline: July 1st 2011

The Ifanca Hélène James Short Story Competition, Green Plain, 185 St David’s Road, Letterston, Haverfordwest SA62 5SS

http://ifancahelenejames.wordpress.com. 

This is a new competition to celebrate the life of a writer, dancer, herbalist and homeopath who died in a car crash last September.

SUMMER LOVING Free to Enter International Short Story Competition

Pretty Pink & Green Love Heart free Creative Commons, a photo by Pink Sherbet Photography on Flickr.

Wanted: a story about Love
Length: A minimum of 500 words and a maximum of 1000
Deadline: July 31st
Run by Brighton Community of Writers: they say:-

You don’t have to become Barbara Cartland – it can be soppy, romantic, dark, uplifting or depressing – even terrifying (much like love itself). Just impress us! Any genre welcome, but please send any pure pornography to those who’ll appreciate it more than we will and who are a lot more likely to publish it.

Check out the rules at Brighton COW's website (click on the title of this post to go straight there). For this competition there are two extra rules

1) Give the story its own title (and you can't have Summer Break...Brighton COW are very clear about that...)
2) Include the title of your short story in the subject line of email entries. GOOD LUCK

POSH BINGO - what writing competitions should be called

I'm indebted to Kate in my Friday morning class for that insight (and she tells me she got it from someone else). I think it is important to remember that luck has a lot to do with winning competitions or publishing contracts.
Our responsibility as writers is to do the best work we possibly can and then go away, walk the dog, have a drink, cook the dinner and revise it some more; it's our job to be different and original and exciting and when we are marching along the same route as other writers to do it in such a way as though it seems like the very first footfall.
But when we do submitt it is chance that dicates whether it drops onto the right editor's desk at the right time or it appeals to a particular judge's very subjective view of the world....
A lot of writing careers have been launched by competitions  - not by the winning of them or even the taking part, but because they provide a focus and a deadline.
The worst thing you can say to a writer is that you can write about anything you like, for as long as you like and it doesn't matter when you finish...(Well, perhaps not the worst. 'Your writing is bland drivel' is probably higher up the list.)
PS Sorry that the last post appears to be shouting at you. I have no idea why it is in caps when it is sober and well-mannered lower case on my screen. I wrestled with it for awhile but I decided that it was such an interesting competition that it was better to post in A VERY LOUD VOICE than keep the news to myself.

Life Writing Competition

The Society of Women Writers and Journalists have launched an international life writing competition.
length - 3000 words
deadline - September 30 2011
entry fee £7
prizes: there are two age categories (which is unusual in an adult competition): 20 to 40 year old and over 40s and three very decent cash prizes for each category: 1st - £3,000, 2nd - £1,000, 3rd - £500.
Judges are Katie Fforde and Sophie King - both big in romantic novelist association. 

(ps  Open to men too - check out all the conditions by clicking on the title of this post.)

 

International Travel Writing Competition - fiction and non fiction

It might mean writing over the weekend but here's a competition aimed at budding travel writers as well as those who have already established themselves in this field.  It is the first ever Travel Writing Contest organised by Rossgill Media  - they may run more if they like the response.
First prize is  £100 AND feedback from two published travel writers - judges Paul Gogarty and Bill Corbett.  The deadline is midnight May 31, 2011 and the entry fee is £3. They are looking for writing between 1000 and 3000 words long
The special element is the very wide interpretation of what constitutes travel writing. Here's what the organizers say: 

We'd love to see how travel has changed your perception of the world and your sense of self (or your characters, if you're submitting fiction). If you are submitting fiction, are you or your characters able to appreciate the ways of the inhabitants? Can you share their time and space, interact, and become a part of the experience? Or do you feel very much on the outside, looking in?

 Alternatively, your piece could be about an inner journey or, say, an experience far from home. For example, a man travels to meet his biological father after learning that he will soon become a father himself. A woman returns home to take care of an aging mother.

Check out all the rules (and follow them to the letter) by clicking on the title of this post

Flash 500 writing competition

If you write short and tight, if you are more Raymond Carver than Charles Dickens, this is one to put in your dairy because FLASH 500 runs every quarter.
Here are the deadlines for 2011
31st March
30th June
30th September 
31st December.
The results are announced within six weeks of each closing date and the three winning entries each quarter are published on the competition website. The judge changes each quarter which is good because once the no-hopers are weeded out and the entries that have a compelling idea but need more words to work (they read like Ugly Sister shoes - a painful squeeze), then decision making has to be subjective, what will appeal to one judge will leave another unmoved. 
No set theme and the entry fee is £5 for one story and £8 for two

Prizes
First: £250 plus publication 
Second: £100
Third: £50
Highly commended: A copy of The Writer’s ABC Checklist
Click on the title of this post for more information

Flash NON Fiction competition with a great prize

Arvon - the ground breaking residential creative writing course people - are offering a whole week away as first prize in their new competition. 

Here's the details from their website (click on the title to go straight there).

Edith Wharton would compose in bed on a writing board propped upon her lap, while Roald Dahl conjured his creations in a shed at the bottom of his garden...

When we posed the question to some of our tutors, we had a fabulous response. Penelope Shuttle likes writing in the attic, Isy Suttie in a messy bedroom amidst dirty clothes, while Simon Armitage admits his favourite place to write is in his head.

Now we're inviting you to take part in Arvon's 2011 competition to win an Arvon week of your choice.

To enter, please send in a piece of flash fiction or poetry that describes your favourite writing place. The winning entry will be chosen by Sunday Times journalist Cathy Galvin.

Send your story on a postcard with your contact details to:

Postcard Competition

The Arvon Foundation

Free Word Centre

60 Farringdon Road

London, EC1R 3GA

Closing date is 21 May 2011.

Instead of an entry fee to take part in this competition, the Arvon Foundation would be grateful for a suggested donation of £5.00 to support its charitable work. Cheques should be made payable to The Arvon Foundation.

Where do you write?
Me? ...tried both the dedicated office at bottom of garden and corner of dining room table with the television blaring in the background ...when it's not working they are too cold, too warm, too isolated, too noisy...when it is working then I think anywhere I can plug the laptop will do.

Not convinced by Simon Armitage:  writing in your head is not the same as writing on the page. One is creating, dreaming, gathering together the stuff that might eventually solidify into a poem or a sentence. One is clouds: the other is concrete.

Ever been to Italy?

Ever walked through the back streets of Naples....or listened to the quiet of a Venetian backwater after dark...or the stars of the opera at Verona...or strolled up and down, up and down, up and down the strand at Lido di Jesolo after supper...

The Posara Prize - run by Watermill Courses in Tuscany - is a free to enter writing competition for original, unpublished pieces of no more than 2,000 words, with the theme of 'A Foreigner in Italy'. The work can be fiction or non-fiction: the important thing is to capture the emotion of Italy, as seen through an outsider's eyes.

You can write about the people, the countryside, art, architecture, food and wine – in fact, anything that makes Italy interesting, inspiring, exasperating or even frightening.

The winner will receive a prize of £1,000 which isn't at all bad...but the closing date is quite soon Monday February 28 so get your pen and write...

Click on the title of this post for the full rules and the official entry form

Writing the BLUES...

You're going to have be quick on this one because the closing date is January 15 2011, but if you already have a short story or poem that fits in with the theme then you might want to have a go because the first prize is worth having: a week at an established writer's retreat in Greece. Tempting isn't it?
And the theme is BLUE
The organisors are asking you to create something "bluer than blue".*   

Short stories maximum of 3000 words: Poems up to 500 words. Fee: £6

For more information click on the title of this post.

*Google produced 920,000,000 results for the word BLUE in 0.7 seconds…. Here’s mine in seven minutes or so: blue sky, blue sea, blue mountains, Blue Peter, blue lagoon, singing the blues, having the blues, blue films, Joni Mitchell’s blue, sapphire, lapis lazuli, woad, periwinkle, gentian, delphinium, Blue John, the Virgin’s blue cloak in renaissance paintings, Paul Newman’s eyes…

(By the way the picture posted below is a Creative Commons image of Mount Etna www.flickr.com/photos/gnuckx I do know that Etna is not in Greece but I thought it was such a beautiful photo I had to share it....)