How to Kickstart Your Comedy Writing Career

Many scriptwriters and comedian started their career by contributing ideas and one liners to topical sketch shows. The BBC have a new one starting in the summer and they will be actively seeking new writing each week. Newsjack takes a comical look at the week's news stories and the pilot will be broadcast on Thursday 4 June at 11pm on BBC Radio 7. The series proper will begin a fortnight later.

If you want to write for Newsjack, here are a few simple guidelines

    * Listen to the show. It will be available on iPlayer after broadcast.
    * Submit your material for each show on or before noon on Monday each week
    * Be funny
 For more information click on the title of this post

 Photo was taken in Brighton Sealife Centre in 2007 by AtomicShed - featured here under the wonderful creative commons license

A chance to be ebook published

I've just heard about Espresso Books. It's a brand new ebook publisher set up by a fellow veteran of the Goldsmiths Creative Writing MA. (If you are thinking of doing a Masters in creative writing yourself feel free to drop me a line, I'd be happy to share my experiences...But I digress, this post is about getting your work out there to the people who really matter - readers).

Anyway, the wonderful thing about being brand new is that Espresso Books  are hungry for new manuscripts. AND because they are publishing in digital format only, they pay 40% royalties on all sales. 
This is what they have to say:

We publish commercial fiction and popular non-fiction, aimed at the mass market.

We normally want at least 10,000 words per ebook (you’re welcome to query us with something shorter, though). There’s no maximum word limit.

We’re looking for:

• Short story collections (typically totalling around 20,000 words per collection)
• Novellas in any genre
• Full-length novels in any genre
• Children’s fiction
• Popular non-fiction, from 15,000 words upwards
• Poetry collections

(If you’ve got something that doesn’t fit into any of those categories, drop us an email – submissions@espressobooks.com – and we’ll let you know if we’re interested.)

We’re particularly keen to promote new voices, so we accept unsolicited submissions.

Please follow these guidelines when preparing your work for submission:

• Send all work as a .doc, .docx or .rtf attachment. (See our FAQ for help with this.) It doesn’t need to be double-spaced.
• Send us at least the first 5,000 words of your novel/non-fiction book. You may send more – if you have a complete manuscript, send us the whole thing. For a short story collection, please send at least two complete stories. For a poetry collection, please send at least four poems.
• Give us a brief synopsis of your entire novel, or an outline of your non-fiction book.
• Let us know roughly how long the whole book is, in words (e.g. 60,000 words).
• Please include any illustrations or diagrams. We cannot supply these.

We edit all the books we published, though we’ll give you a chance to approve our changes prior to publication. We’ll also produce a cover design for the ebook: let us know if you’d like to supply your own artwork.

We can only accept submissions by email. Please don’t send your work on disk or on paper through the post – we won’t read it and won’t be able to return it either.

Send all submissions to submissions@espressobooks.com with the word “Submission” and the title of your work included in the subject line.

Worth thinking about I think you'll agree....you can go to Espresso Books website by clicking on the title of this post...Good luck 

100 stories for Queensland

I have family in Brisbane and it sounds tough out there.
A charity anthology of short stories is being compiled for Queensland and here's how you can be part of something special.
Wanted previously unpublished short fiction between 500 – 1000 words with an uplifting or upbeat nature
DEADLINE: Friday, 28th January 11:59pm (Australian Eastern Standard Time)
I've done some research and reckon that's 1.59pm UK time
For more details click on the title of this post and good luck Queensland...

HANG UP YOUR GARGLE BLASTER.......If you're a Sci Fan get your pen out and write

ANGRY ROBOT ™ is a new global publishing imprint that's based in the UK. The website says it publishes the best in science fiction, fantasy and something I haven't worked out yet. Can anyone tell me what WTF is?!
I wanted to write about them because they are doing something very special in March 2011. For one month only they will operate an open door policy for unpublished, unrepresented writers (that means anyone who doesn't already have an agent can just send them a mansucript). They promise to read through every submission received and the best of will be considered for publication.
Have a good look at the website (by clicking on the title of this post) and check out the kind of writing that gets ANGRY ROBOT excited.
And if you find out what WTF means please let me know.

Publish your poem

Want to find a home for that well crafted poem - the one that went down so well in workshops? Entering a competition is one option but you could also consider submitting for publication in a literary magazine....such as The View From Here
It has both a print and on-line existance and publishes author interviews, book reviews and original fiction and poetry.  Although it is British based, it is edited by an international team and - this is the really interesting bit - ithas a close working relationship with some big names in publishing such as Random House. There's no money in appearing in The View From Here but it's a damn fine writing credential and it could get you noticed.

Read the magazine (click on the title of this post o go to the website), do your research and polish your best work until it shines.  This is what The View From Here are looking for in the next six months....

November: “Regret For Dinner”
December: “Empty Rooms”
January 2011: “Absent Light”
February: “Sweet Nothings”
March: “Forget About It”
April: “Fools”

Got a Camera? Got 330 words?

Of course you have!  Just combine the two and submit to this short fiction website. (Click on the title of this post to go there) Poets love the freedom that rules can give and it's good for prose writers too. I always think the worst thing you can say to a writer is that you can write about anything, for as long as you like and there's no deadline. Here the picture you take is your subject - go anywhere you want with it within that restricted word limit. There's no deadline so give yourself one: submit before the kids go back to school, by next Friday, by October....

Looking for Scottish writers

New Writing Scotland publishes works by writers resident in Scotland or Scots by birth, upbringing or inclination. (I love that last one....who do they mean? I am guessing people with Scottish roots for whom Scotland is an important part of their mental make up but in the end it must be a self defining category.) They are looking for all forms of unpublished writing: autobiography and memoirs; creative responses to events and experiences; drama; graphic artwork (monochrome only); poetry; political and cultural commentary and satire; short fiction; travel writing or any other creative prose may be submitted, but not full-length plays or novels, though self-contained extracts are acceptable. 

Submission deadline September 30 2010:
Click on the title to go to New Writing Scotland find out more.

When one person speaks

Just come across The Good Ear Review US based website dedicated to publishing original monologues that show "quality writing".Worth reading and worth submitting to as well. If you haven't written one already look at a secondary character in a short story you're working on or novel-in-progress and give them a voice. You will unearth new depths to that character and perhaps a new story.

A good monologue (in my very fallible opinion) should have

1. A distinctive voice
2. Give a sense of time and place
3. Drip feed information
4. Sound like a real person

It seems to me that writing a succesful monologue you have to navigate two major challenges -- FIRST: making it feel natural even though it may not be clear who the character is addressing or why and SECOND: providing information that the reader needs to have but that the character would not realistically tell her or himself. We don't look in the bathroom mirror thinking: I am a 34 year old  advertising copywriter worried about my current relationship and still jealous of my younger brother who...We look in the bathroom mirror and think: bad hair job and is that a spot? At my age?!
Click on the title of this post to go to The Good Ear Review

SUBMIT TO PENGUIN for a limited period only

Just heard - in a very round about way  - that Penguin are accepting unsolicited manuscripts by email for three months. Haven't seen this on any literature/writing websites so perhaps they aren't promoting it in fear of drowning under an avalanche of words. 

The following is from Penguin's website. You can also click on the title of this post to go straight there. Good luck!

 Our company policy is to not accept unsolicited manuscripts or synopses and we cannot enter into correspondence about unpublished work. However, for a limited three-month period from the beginning of August until the end of October 2010, we will be inviting submissions to be sent in electronically to the following address: submissions@uk.penguingroup.com.  We ask that email submissions comprise a brief covering note and synopsis and not a full manuscripts. Please do not send attachments, please write out your cover note and synopsis in the body of the email. We remain unable to accept hard copy submissions and will not return or be responsible for the safety of any that we do receive, so please do not send any original or hard copy manuscripts to us. We will not contact you with feedback on your submission and will only enter into email correspondence with you if an editor within Penguin is keen to progress your idea.

Modest writers step forward

This month a new Irish literary review are accepting submissions for the inaugural issue of A Modest Review, a journal of short fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction.

Short fiction: minimum 1,000 words
Poetry: no restrictions
Creative nonfiction: minimum 1,000 words

Deadline: July 1st 2010
The website doesn't say, but I presume they are paying the usual reward for writers: honour and glory. However, I rather like their mission statement...

At Modesty Press we believe in three things above all else: happiness, good health, and fantastic literature. Our mission is to publish challenging new writing in beautifully designed books at a reasonable price.

We hope to publish in a variety of print formats - novels, novellas, fiction and nonfiction anthologies, as well as a literary review. For the more digitally inclined we plan to offer streamed audio recordings of all publications and podcasts available for free download.