Writing Competitions

June 16, 2023 ~ JacciGoodingAuthor

Fancy having a go? Writing comps are a great way to hone your work, use a different voice, try something new, test yourself – 100 word flash anyone?! I’ve rounded up a few here for your delectation. Don’t forget to check the rules – some won’t take stuff already published online for example – and go for it. Everyone loves to win!

Closing on June 30^th is the South Warwickshire Creative Writing Competition Only £3 to enter with a £50 prize in each category, they’re looking for 800 words of fiction, creative non-fiction or 40 lines of poetry, all genres accepted. Still time to get your entry in.

Here’s a free comp to enter, closing date also 30^th June. The annual Writers College Short Story Competition is held to acknowledge excellence in creative writing in the short story form. The competition is open to any writer who is unpublished, or has been published fewer than four times. The competition is open the writers just beginning their writing journey. The 2023 theme is ‘Words Have Consequences.’

The Creative Ink Writing Short Story Competition 2023 is open to writers across the globe until July 31st 2023 at 4pm (GMT). Stories do not need to follow any particular theme or genre, but must be written in English. Maximum word count is 3000 words. 1st prize: £1000, plus a free creative writing course of the winner’s choice and publication on their site. 2 runners-up: £200 each. Entry fee: £9.

If you like a bit of flash, try Free Flash Fiction Write, edit and submit by 10 pm Friday 23rd June 2023 a flash fiction piece of between 100 and 300 words, on any theme. 1x Winner will receive £150.00 and publication, 2x Highly Commended will receive £30.00 and publication, 2x Shortlisted will receive £20.00 and publication
£3.75 fee per entry/story via PayPal or Stripe, £2.25 fee per entry/story via BACS (click here) (UK Bank accounts only ).

Here’s something a little unusual, or maybe not. If you like witches, then this one’s for you. A Coven of Witches is the next anthology from West Avenue Publishing and this is your chance to have your work included. All submissions must include witches, or a witch, as the main theme of the piece. Each author may submit up to three pieces for consideration. They accept short stories of up to 5,000 words and poetry of any length. Please email your submission as a Word document to westavenuepublishing@outlook.com Submissions will close at midnight GMT on the 30th of June 2023. The list of successful authors will be published on their website no later than 31st of July 2023, so please do keep an eye out. Successful writers will receive a one off payment of £10. Writers will retain all copyrights for their submission/s.

She Said, He Said…

April 17, 2023April 17, 2023 ~ JacciGoodingAuthor ~ 3 Comments

Overheard in a supermarket recently;

‘..so I told him straight, I wasn’t putting it anywhere near him…’

Fret not dear reader, I resisted the urge the hurl my trolley round the corner and follow the orator stealthily through the salad aisle in the hope of discovering what it was she wasn’t going to put anywhere near him, but I can tell you, the urge was incredibly strong. Instead, I distracted myself with the lack of cucumbers and pondered instead on what she could possibly have been talking about and how I could fit it into a short story. Was she reassuring him that she wasn’t putting the crocodile/the broken bottle/it anywhere near him, or was she refusing to put the crocodile/broken bottle/it anywhere near him? Alas it will always be a mystery to me as she disappeared down the cheese aisle still chatting on her phone and by the time I caught up with her in the bread aisle the call was complete. I had no way of knowing. Her poker face offered nothing. Brown or white bread seemed to be her only concern. We parted ways in the rice and bean aisle and by the time I got to the wine aisle a story had formed. The next hurdle was remembering it without writing it down. Well you can imagine what the outcome of that was.

Needless to say I returned to my office later that day and set about dismembering my 500 word short story which has been slowly growing and transmogrifying into a completely different story to the one I originally started writing. Gone were two of the main characters and in their place was a soldier and a man who might turn into a milkman at any given moment. I think I may have lost the plot temporarily. I was keen, you see, to implant, somewhere, my newly over-heard dialogue. The fact that it didn’t fit in to any of the story didn’t faze me. It should have done of course as I wasted another two and half hours trying to insert a sentence into a story that had about as much right to be there as a spider in a fridge.

You can imagine how it all ended. The short story was re-written for the 110^th time and the sentence only made it as far as this blog. Well, as a fan of recycling and reusing, I can’t see any problem with that. But even so, I wish I knew what she’d been talking about…

We Did It!

September 29, 2022 ~ JacciGoodingAuthor ~ 2 Comments

We did it – our first south Warwickshire literary festival and what a brilliant turn out it was! The sun shone – which was just as well as we had to move our many authors outside to sell their books due to ticket sales.

Creating Characters with Terri and Jenefer

Our workshops were packed. Everyone seemed to have a great time and our workshop leaders delivered some fantastic content. All of them are to be commended – Hugo Kerr, Jenefer Heap and Terri Daneshyar, Cate West and last but not least Mslexia judge Audrey Niven. They were superb. From what our attendees told us it was an excellent day.

And our speakers in the main hall – well! The Young Poets certainly made an impact! We were blown away by their eloquence, observation and just damned talent! Award-winning young poet Emily Hunt drew much attention with her clever poems on nature, and Dan Wale, the Warwickshire Young Poet Laureate had us clapping almost out of our seats, and YPL runner-up Jolyon Summerfield also delighted us with his work.

‘The Fish’ author Jo Stubbs and poet Gwyneth Box

All our authors were wonderful and we owe a huge debt to them for agreeing to take part for nothing. A special thank you has to go to poet, author and translator Gwyneth Box who stepped in at the very last minute – Cinderella timing if ever there was any – when one of our speakers was unable to come – and delivered a great hour-long talk off the hoof. Superb stuff.

Oh, and cake? Did we mention that? Well, our lit fest attendees did. In droves! Apparently it was pretty good!

So – plans for next year? You bet!

Already drawing up the schedule…

Something About April

April 13, 2022 ~ JacciGoodingAuthor

There’s just something about April, dontcha think? Is it gonna be warm? Is it gonna be cold? Is the sun gonna shine? When will it be summer? As I write, despite the horror news of the world burning to a crisp by Christmas it is quite actually properly April out there. You know the kind of thing here in the northern hemisphere, first bit of sun and we all rush outside like idiots getting sunburn while complaining it’s still chuffing cold, or migrating to the pub to quaff vast amounts of ale/cider/gin/something fizzy because it is SUMMER AND THAT’S WHAT WE DO only to discover that as soon as the sun goes down we return to winter and a halter-neck and flip flops just won’t cut it.

But why this nonsense about the weather? How about this is why we should include the weather in our writing:

Thanks NOAA at Unsplash for this great picture

‘On the fifth day, which was Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.’ – Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time

‘It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.’ Charles Dickens, Great Expectations.

There was once a school of thought that suggested writing about weather in our work was dull. B Or Ing. Something we shouldn’t do if we wanted to keep our readers engaged. No one wants to read about the sunshine pouring in through the window or the rain battering the door we were told. Why ever not? I think one of the most important elements of a novel or short story or even flash, is, if applicable to the plot, the weather. It can set a mood, break a mood, and is as important a plot device as any of the others. Thrashing storms have to be thrashed out on the page to bring them to life. Simply saying there was a horrible storm at sea and the ship nearly sank doesn’t creative many waves, does it? So bring on the weather.

With climate change and the heating of the Earth many authors are turning their skills to writing cli-fi, much of it not fiction at all, so it looks like the weather in our writing is well and truly here to stay. But not in the way authors 50 years ago expected I guess.

Is cli-fi speculative? Can be. Dystopian? If you want. Utopian? Up to you. But all of it deals with the human fallout of a warming planet.

Climate Fiction: sounds like 21st century gothic horror to me.

What’s In a Name? Everything.

April 20, 2021April 22, 2021 ~ JacciGoodingAuthor

As TS Eliot correctly acknowledged, the naming of cats is a serious matter. As is your main character, or indeed a home, the place where all the action happens. Manderley for example. Serious action going on there. The House at Pooh Corner – not quite the same but still notable literary history, plus the added bonus of imparting a geographical location sans gps – just as long as you know where Pooh Corner actually is I guess.

On my Covid roamings my ever-observant eyes have paid more attention to local house names – apple anybody? – and the history-loving part of me mourns the death of Orchard Cottage (not an apple in sight), The Oaks (treeless), The Old Post Office, The Old School, Rose/Jasmine/Lavender/Yew Cottage. Scattered across the country are countless Blacksmith’s Cottages, Station Houses, and Old Mills, all a wonderful nod to the past and how lives were lived. But that was then and this of course is now. Where are the new names? Couldn’t we do with an I.T. Terrace perhaps, or a Broadband Bungalow? Or maybe Seeseeteevee Lodge, or simply just Renewables for a new housing estate on a windy site? As if someone had been thinking along the same lines as me, I did see one modern terraced house recently with a quaint 21^stcentury millennial ring to it: it was named Tiny Box. True. The new owner was clearly being sardonic/humourous/notworriedaboutsellingit and it made me smile. Surely, as we stride ever forward, our achievements, as the industrious creative humans we are should be recognised in the naming of our homes? Holme Delivery? Still At Home With Mum & Dad House? (bit long for any on-line form, that one) or (and I promise this is the last one) Can’t Really Afford It Cottage. Where house names once reflected our jobs or the natural world perhaps in the future they’ll reflect the socio-politics of the time. Perhaps they should. Anyway, just a thought. A thought that brings me on to the importance of other names; our characters. Yes, like many a writer my path always returns to the plot, the people, and that pesky protagonist.

A question for you dear reader. What do Harry Potter (pick an installment) Hamlet, Rebecca, Matilda (know where this is going?) have in common? Exactly. Each novel is the title of the main character. Yes yes I know that in the case of Rebecca ***SPOILER ALERT!!*** she’s not exactly there, being dead an’ all, but you know what I mean. It ensures that we’re not likely to forget them in a hurry doesn’t it? Leap forward some decades and ask yourself if you can remember the name of the protagonist in a book you read three months ago. Or the book before last. But seriously – what better way to get your work into the psyche of your readers? Nail the name and the rest should come, surely?

Hunton Gurney. Top lawyer. Privately educated. 21^stCentury Guy. London apartment, cottage in Cornwall (Fisherman’s, probs), expensive car, almost married to another high-flier. Or Hunton Gurney, 18^thcentury labourer – no – let’s make him a blacksmith (and we all know where he lives), back already damaged from hard work, four living children, two others already dead from consumption, married to the exhausted but determined Rose. Or…Hunton Gurney, a small, mysterious village off the A436 somewhere between the Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire border.

You decide.

Reading Writing Reading Some More

October 12, 2020October 12, 2020 ~ JacciGoodingAuthor

A little late to the party with this one, (15 years), I picked up John Banville’s The Sea recently because I wanted to know what made a Man Booker prize winner. And I wasn’t disappointed. A phenomenal read, it is so easy to relate to, to understand, to actually read, with language that is both lyrical and straightforward at the same time. I have to confess, this is the only book that actually took my breath away as I read the last page.

Mourning the recent loss of his wife, protagonist Max Morden returns to the seaside village where he and his parents would stay during the summer holidays – in the cheaper holiday accommodation on offer – and where he met wealthier brother and sister Chloe and Miles. As we journey with Max in real time on his road of grief, we are also given retrospective insights into his growing pains as a boy, of lessons learned but not understood until many years later, of the slow yet steady crossing of the threshold from boyhood to early manhood. In The Sea Banville gives us intelligent observation, humour, grief, understanding. Oh, I realised as I finished the book, that’s what makes a Mann Booker prizewinner. Breathtaking. So if you get the chance, give it a read.

Another couple of books that have kept my sanity levels from dropping off the scale have been And Nothing Remains and Somewhere This Way, both short story collections from The Fiction Desk. Both books have a lively mix of stories, each author’s voice coming through loud and clear, but IMHO, Thirteen Wedding Dresses in And Nothing Remains is by far the quirkiest, sweetest, most unusual story, written by Scots author Douglas Bruton. As it’s a short, I won’t give too much away, other than to say a wedding dress has gone astray before the big day…

All this reading has perhaps returned to me the urge to write again. Who else out there found themselves floundering at the keyboard as every go-get ‘em idea withered and died before the end of the sentence? Who else has taken the opportunity to look through all those WIPs and bin the Doesn’t Stand A Chance & I Have NO Idea Why I Thought It Would files? Although.. maybe… they were just ideas…prompts if you will… perhaps I should retrieve them after all…

But for now, I shall take pot luck and browse the hundreds of books on the shelves of charity shops and see what else I can find. I know. A Man Booker winner ending up on a charity shop bookshelf. Kinda puts everything into perspective doesn’t it.