Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2023 i Writing Magazine

For many writers, walking is an essential part of their writing routine. As science fiction writer Orson Scott Card once observed, ‘It’s worth the time to take an hour’s walk before writing. You may write a bit less for the time spent, but you may find that you write better.’ There is great wisdom in this and a Latin phrase to underline it: Solvitur Ambulando, which means, ‘It is solved by walking.’ Dickens used to walk for up to three or four hours, sometimes as much as twenty miles, keeping his eyes open for the people and parts of London who later populated his novels. Poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge found inspiration in walking in the countryside and Hemmingway solved his writing problems by taking to the streets wherever he…

You’re at one of those crossroads in life where there’s nothing in any direction. Is the universe telling you to stop looking outward and be silent for a moment? Or is it hinting that you plough your own road in a Mad Max truck fitted with paint guns and seed cannons? While creative ‘prompts’ are supposed to provide a nudge sideways into fertile realms, I have found most to be so bland, humourless and risk-averse that they, at best, form a conformity to react against. It’s like holding a shell to your ear and only hearing other people’s ideas. I wanted to make a deck of prompt cards that worked, and so put together The Trickster Brick, a block of 78 vivid interventions. In nature there’s no telling where the…

My new novel, High Time, is not a sequel to my last, House of Trelawney, but many of the characters reappear. It’s a satirical novel set against a backdrop of high finance and low morals. When we meet our heroine, Ayesha, aged twenty-five, she is the beautiful, pampered wife of a stratospherically successful short seller, Sir Thomlinson Sleet. Overnight and unexpectedly, the trappings and edifice of her world collapse: she has become just another one of her husband’s ‘dumpable’ assets. Determined to exact revenge, salvage her selfrespect and most importantly, win custody of their daughter, Ayesha fights back. Her only skill is a master’s degree in art; her only ally is an 87-year-old dowager Countess. With the crucial court case set in less than one year’s time, Ayesha must become…

Using awareness and celebration days through the year for creative inspiration means taking time to think about aspects of everyday life that we might not normally give much thought to, and Don’t Step on a Bee Day, coming up in July, is a chance to notice and treasure some wonderful creatures that are so important to the wellbeing of the planet, holding them in our imagination, emotions and ideas through different kinds of writing. You know the rule: stick to the timings! Memoir Stream of consciousness writing – sometimes called free writing – is a technique for finding ideas that you might want to work up into finished pieces. You can just start and write anything that comes, like in ‘daily pages’, or you can use a prompt, which is…

1. When and where did your journey as an author begin? I was a showbiz journalist for many years, so I have always been a writer. I moved over to TV presentation at one point in my career and genuinely missed writing, so I started to write my first novel, Trinity. It was a glam fiction novel as I have always been obsessed with Jackie Collins. I think I have read all her books. I self-published my first two books, Trinity and Addicted, and they did really well online, so I was offered a book deal and wrote a further four glam fiction books. I love a bit of drama, glamour and backstabbing! 2. What is (or has been) your proudest moment as a writer? I met Jackie Collins just…

Writers are always being advised to ‘write about what you know’, and this advice is often embraced by poets. Wherever we start the poetry journey, most of us write about our lives and experiences at some stage. Childhood yields plenty of poetry opportunities, and the big moments of life, its celebrations, triumphs and tragedies, also feature in a lot of work. There are not nearly as many poems written about our day jobs, and poets who neglect to write about these are missing a potentially rich seam of material. Whether the day job is thrilling or mundane, its highs and lows may well be worth recording, and even its tedious moments can produce poems readers will enjoy. Poet Helen Shepherd of Yarm, North Yorkshire, was inspired by her work in…

QI’d love to have some insight into the London Book Fair, the publishing trade show that I understand happens each spring. I know a number of book deals take place there and feel it might give me a better sense of the industry, the agents and how they all operate. With a little more knowledge, I’m hoping I’ll be better able to picture what the next stage would be for my manuscript. AThere was a great buzz at the fair this spring as publishers, agents and authors gathered together in March at Olympia, West London, for this fascinating annual trade event. The book fair has always been one of the highlights of the publishing year, both in the UK and abroad. Foreign rights sales comprise a large part of the…

Wild about nature Original, thought provoking features are invited by the monthly BBC Wildlife, a nature magazine with advice and news which also prides itself on publishing great wildlife photography, writes Jenny Roche. Editors are particularly looking for ‘a passion for your subject and your personal experience of it or what you have gleaned from interviewing experts’. In the first instance pitch a brief synopsis of your idea for a feature. This must be a one-off idea as the magazine does not publish monthly series. When getting your pitch together consider the purpose and angle of your idea, whether it will fit the magazine and why it should be published now. As features need to be ‘interesting, informative, factually accurate, authoritative and as readable as possible’ keep all these points…

The McLellan Poetry Prize 2023 Win £1,000 and £400 first prizes in the competition from the Arran Theatre and Arts Trust. The McLellan Poetry Prize, now in its 17th year, is run by the Arran Theatre and Arts Trust as part of the annual McLellan Arts Festival. Entries are invited of original, unpublished poems up to 40 lines, in English or Scots. The winner in the English language category will receive £1,000. The second prize is £300 and third, £100. Five commendations will each receive £25. This year’s judge in the English language category is Joelle Taylor. The winner in the Scots language category will receive £400, and the runner up will get £100. The judge in the Scots language category is Hugh McMillan. The entry fee is £8 for…

In the writing world, as everywhere, things change. Coping with change punctuates our lives. I like what Gelett Burgess said: If in the last few years you haven’t discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead. Looking back past changes may surprise. My first book was written out by hand, typed by a secretary, revised and typed again. It is difficult to imagine now. My current biggest client only publishes online. I don’t get a nicely printed book with my name on the spine to display on my bookshelf, I get an email saying, ‘It’s live’. And later a payment, so that’s alright Realistically one implication of this is time. There seem regularly to be things that need some checking out, and maybe…

Lucky thirteen? Audio podcast of drama/fiction stories Every Thirteen invites submissions of feature length, ie - up to one hour, atmospheric, character driven horror and ghost stories, writes Jenny Roche. Editors say having a first person central narrator and supporting characters works best for them. No derogatory language, rape or sexual assault scenes or any plagiarised material. The ideal length for stories is 5,000 words or more. You may submit in prose or script form using an 11pt Ariel font. Transcripts are available on the website if you’d like to see the format. Stories not written in audio format may be edited for fit. Payment rates are $75 for stories over 5,000 words, $50 for stories under this length. Payment is made via Venmo, Apple Pay, Paypal or direct invoice.…

TRAVEL WRITING KNOW-HOW Any travel piece about which you have a clear idea or aacommission to write needs some planning. This involves structure and content, but here I want to dwell on the planning that is about the actual travel. You decide to go somewhere, a city say. Maybe you link your visit to seeing a specific thing or experiencing a specific event. You must decide when to go, how to get there, where to stay if the geography or logistics dictate a stay and, not least, you must decide how long will be needed there to assemble and/or create the content you have in mind. If the destination is far away this may add certain complications, but otherwise such fixing is usually a straightforward and logical process. Many a…

The big event of the London Book Fair turned out to be a survey that showed that far too many authors are having a really rubbish time of it. The Bookseller published their figures which showed a truly depressing number of debut authors (54%) said they found the experience of being published bad for their mental health. Now, I was going to write this column about the silence there tends to be from agents on this subject, but Juliet Pickering at Blake Friedman proved me wrong by writing a good piece about just how under-resourced publishers tend to be and calling on them to hire more people and err, maybe, publish fewer books. There are a few things I could unpick here, not least that the cry that we publish…

Short/under I’m an under-writer. I tend to trace a story out using the faintest of lines, leaving half of the page blank, leaving half of the words in my head. Then I have to go back and shore up what I’ve written, making sure I’m not expecting a great feat of telepathy from the reader. For me, editing is a process of filling out rather than cutting. I think that’s why I was drawn to short stories. For one – obviously – they’re short. But more importantly, you don’t need to know all those minute details: what colour a character’s underwear is, how they got that scar on their knee, why that particular building has a broken window. That kind of detail isn’t necessarily important (unless it is) and it…

Caro Giles lives in Northumberland. She is a musician, teacher and was BBC Countryfile magazine’s New Nature Writer of the Year 2021. With four daughters, when does she find time to write? ‘I have to create windows of time for writing as I almost never have childcare for all of my children,’ she says. ‘I usually get up very early and do an hour or two before the kids wake. I also work weekends when I have fewer appointments and advocating to do as part of my carer role, and the children can be less structured for a while. ‘Mornings are definitely my best time to write, before the day creeps into my head and I am submerged in reality. I also really like writing when it’s dark outside and…

Inever planned to be an author. When I was little I wanted to be a vet because I loved animals but then I realised it involved cutting them up. Then I wanted to be a journalist (tick) and a music video director – I’d subconsciously tapped into a love of storytelling. I wrote and illustrated stories as a child – mainly about meadows and wild animals, inspired by Colin Dann and fairy tales – and wrote poetry that often earned a place on the fridge. I studied English Literature at college and won a communications award, and at Bournemouth University I was editor of the music magazine. Throughout my TV/film career I kept notebooks and jotted down random thoughts, sketches and what, on rediscovering them recently, seem more like song…

The Fascination is my fifth novel in the Victorian gothic genre. Previous novels have seen stories set in the East End music halls, and haunted country houses, in London brothels, Indian temples – and in the studios creating the early moving films. It’s a time in history that’s filled with art and innovation, and new discoveries in science. It’s always fascinated me, ever since my teenage years when I read Wuthering Heights and Thomas Hardy’s tragic novels. Later, at university, the Victorian module was a favourite. It wasn’t just the human stories, though of course they are what bring these classic novels into life. It was the whole experience in which the vivid place descriptions loomed as real inside my mind, making me feel almost as if I’d travelled back…

SHARE YOUR SUCCESS To feature in subscribers’ news contact: tjackson@ warnersgroup.co.uk The Skye’s the limit! My writing career began about fifteen years ago when I first subscribed to Writing Magazine and responded to a submission call from A Cup Of Comfort For Cat Lovers, who were requesting true stories about our feline friends, writes subscriber Maria Dean. I entered a short story and had it published. At this point, I was just starting a family and my writing took a turn as I decided to try my hand at writing a novel. It was a great release from midnight feeds and nappies and after three years, I found myself with a full-length novel. I approached a few publishers and one responded advising me to self publish. This seemed like the…

SUNDAY DINNER Write about a traditional roast dinner. What are the ingredients of a perfect Sunday dinner? Does your recipe for a Sunday meal consist only of the dishes on the table, or are there other ingredients that come into play? Who will be eating the Sunday dinner in your piece of writing? What effect does a Sunday meal together have on the people around the table? Will you write about a memory of Sunday dinners in your past, or will you use a Sunday lunch as the setting for a scene or story? Write for 20 minutes. RED CURTAIN Write about the transformative nature of a performance. Decide which side of the red curtain you, or your character, will be: audience or performer? What’s the performance? Who is in…

A.I. continues to cause problems. NewsGuard is a website founded by the former publisher of The Wall Street Journal and editors from Reuters, the Associated Press, and the Chicago Tribune. Its contributors include leading journalists and editors from the US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, and Italy. It recently found, ‘49 news and information sites that appear to be almost entirely written by artificial intelligence software,’ and warned that this is only the beginning of a new wave of junk A.I. material about to flood the internet. NewsGuard’s investigation concluded that, ‘Artificial intelligence tools are now being used to populate so-called content farms … low-quality websites around the world that churn out vast amounts of clickbait articles to optimize advertising revenue.’ Some sites were publishing hundreds of articles a day. ‘[Nearly]…

Dismantle Magazine is a U.S. online title about how understanding fashion, pop culture and social issues ‘can help us dismantle systems of oppression’, writes Gary Dalkin. It aims to feature the work of writers, scholars, activists, and artists in a supportive, collaborative environment and the editors, Sara Tatyana Bernstein and Elise Chatelain, seek to provide an ‘ad-free, completely independent space for exchanging and exploring stories’. Recent features have included ‘Why Do We Fall for Impractical Fashion Trends?’, ‘Why are the ’90s still popular?’ and ‘How Academics & Experts Can Do Public Writing without “Dumbing Down” Their Work’. Bernstein and Chatelain are especially interested in personal essays that explore larger issues related to fashion, pop culture and social change. Rather than straight cultural analysis, they prioritise work that puts story first.…

V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize 2024 Win a £1,000 prize for the best unpublished short story of the year. The V.S. Pritchett Short Story Prize was founded by the Royal Society of Literature to commemorate the centenary of the birth, in 1900, of the writer and literary critic. The annual competition awards a £1,000 prize and the winner’s story is published in Prospect magazine and the RSL Review. This year’s judges are Julia Armfield, Fred D’Aguiar and Juliet Jacques. The competition is open to writers resident in the UK, Republic of Ireland and the Commonwealth. Stories should be original, unpublished and between 2,000 and 4,000 words. The entry fee is £7.50 per story. The closing date is 1 September. Website: https://rsliterature.org/award/v-s-pritchett-short-story-prize/ The Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Competition 2023…

Atomic Carnival Anthologies The editorial team at Atomic Carnival are currently accepting submissions for the first two anthologies in their ‘Electrical Sweater’ series, Greater Than His Nature and Open All Night. Greater Than His Nature is an anthology of short stories based around the theme of ‘mad science’. Think of ‘cackling Victorian scientists, giant atomic monsters, and Cronenbergian body horror’ anything like that is fair game. The editor will even accept ‘the right piece of non-fiction.’ For Open All Night, the editor wants horror and fantasy – and all and any assorted sub and cross-genres – based around the theme of ‘open all night.’ Think retail and service industry-based stories with horrors from ‘the graveyard shifts, overnight inventories gone bad, and haunted diners.’ No non-fiction. Pulp, bizarro, and transgressive writing…

The Parliament House The Parliament House is a small press whose team curates fantasy of every scope. Be it contemporary, steampunk, paranormal, urban, or otherwise, it has to be ‘the sort of magic that captures our attention and leaves a lasting impression.’ Query initially via the QueryManager using their form. Submit adult fiction, upmarket and commercial work, 65,000 to 100,000 words in the areas of urban fantasy, supernatural thriller, paranormal romance, dark fantasy, horror. ‘Marginalised voices and unconventional narratives’ are welcomed, as are ‘character driven, atmospheric stories with poetic, voicey prose.’ The Parliament House also wants young adult fiction in the genres of urban fantasy, paranormal romance, dark fantasy and horror. The query letter should include: book title, genre/subgenre, target audience (YA/adult), word count, comps titles, short bio, publication history…

New Smut Project New Smut Project welcomes sex-positive quality erotica, wellwritten, queer, feminist erotica, any kind of ‘literary’, beautifully written erotica and is currently seeking flash fiction and prose poetry submissions for Erato ll. Submit work which ‘explores the intersections of language, literature, and lechery.’ Deadline is 31 August. Payment is US$25 for the first 500 words and 2 cents per word thereafter, up to US$45 for 1,500 words. Website: https://newsmutproject.tumblr.com Fish Magazine The Fish Magazine is a new art journal open for submissions of unpublished poetry, prose, and photography. Submit prose between 1,000 and 4,500 words and one to three poems. Photography submissions are also accepted. Website: https://thefishmagazine.com/ The Fallow House ‘The Fallow House’ is an online creative community led by Rachel Marie Kang. Editorial themes are a prompt…

Dominic Bell is a former oil rig worker from Hull, East Yorkshire, and multiple WM winner. He writes as a break from computer programming and attending to the needs of his teenage children. His main writing project is endlessly editing a series of First World War novels. I message Dawn. << We still going to the coast? xxx >> << Yes. You drive. x >> Less kisses than mine. And I don’t want to drive. But we’re not really like that anyway. We both still live in our own houses. I live in fear she will go into a care home first, that I will be the one having to visit, having to watch her fade. We are – Idon’t know what we are really. Allies against the dying of…

Ready to have the first 300 words of your manuscript critiqued? Contact tjackson@warnersgroup.co.uk for details Patricia Minson lives in West Cornwall. She writes in a variety of genres and is currently working on a hybrid novel incorporating tales based on her Victorian ancestors living in York, memoir and poetry. Patricia is a citizen journalist, writer on the online Medium platform and she recently became a published poet. Maria heard her mother shouting at her father1, not an uncommon happening, 2well before she saw her pa staggering down the side lane. 3She knew better than to get between her warring parents. 4John and Mary-Margaret Flannigan 5lived a cat-and-dog life. 6 John Flannigan was a man who’s catholic piety concealed a violent temper.7Maria remembered the time 8her pa set fire to her…

It was Friday and all week I’d been ignoring the item, written in block capitals, at the top of my To Do list. ‘Edit book.’ It’s not that I hadn’t been busy. I’d been very busy writing emails to friends and messing about on social media. Every morning that week I’d promised myself I’d start on the editing. I’m sure a lot of you know all about this sort of procrastination. Then Friday arrived and with it my weekly email from James Clear of Atomic Habits. Because I’d bought the book I was able to sign up for these emails. They consist of a couple of quotes, three ideas, and a question. It was the first idea that was meant for me. Teachers often turn up when you need them.…

REPEAT OFFENDERS It only seems five minutes ago that the film series ended (actually Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 came out in July 2011), and already the Harry Potter books are to be remade, this time as a multi-season streaming show for what until recently was known as HBO Max, and is now just called Max. With the approximately 500th BBC adaptation of Great Expectations just finished (well, the third one in 24 years), Writing Magazine thinks it would be nice if the same popular novels didn’t keep getting filmed over and over again, or at least, not so often. GD DEFENDING OFFENDING I don’t want to jump into the rights and wrongs of sensitivity reading per se but I object to attempts to ‘not offend’…

Newspaper reports about historical events make for interesting reading and are excellent inspiration for writing. There are many online resources available to get you started – as well as libraries and archives you can spend many a fascinating hour, or six, delving into the newspapers and stories of the past. This month your writing group will be looking back to move forward in their writing. What happened? Some news items in historical newspapers can be perplexing and offer plenty of opportunities to dig out some pretty obscure and puzzling stories. Ask the group to read out short excerpts from historical newspaper articles that have had the headlines removed and names of people removed. Can they guess which historical event they are talking about? Which key bits of information did they…

https://writ.rs/ kevinbarry TO READ THE STORY This month we’re going to look at a contemporary story, ‘The Pub With No Beer’ by Kevin Barry, which was written and set during the Covid lockdown. It has all the trademark dark humour and wry observation of a Kevin Barry story, and also accurately captures the very specific feeling of that time. As always, you’ll get the most out of this masterclass if you read the story for yourself. Let’s look first at the sheer joy of the way Kevin Barry uses language. Look out for the description of the passageway to the toilets in the thoughtful pub as being sorrowful, and the way that the bar has a quiet shine. When the publican has a visitor, notice the description of owl’s incredulous…

Bestselling novelist Sue Moorcroft says writing stories was always her favourite element of school work. As soon as she was old enough to understand that someone created what went into the pages of a book, she wanted to be that person. ‘I also told elaborate lies and got into trouble about it all the time,’ she adds. ‘But I think telling lies honed my plotting skills.’ How does Sue go about constructing a novel – is she a planner or a non-planner? ‘I refer to myself as a composter,’ she says. ‘This is because I like to amass a heap of material I can dig into as a book progresses. If we take An Italian Island Summer as an example, I had an easy starting point because the central female…

Little White Lies is a London-based website and a print magazine (published five times a year) which since 2005 has been covering both mainstream and independent cinema from all around the world, writes Gary Dalkin. The editors, David Jenkins and Hannah Strong, say: ‘We aren’t afraid to speak our minds on the films we love (and sometimes hate), and want to offer our readers the chance to hear from a multitude of voices from all walks of life, regardless of writing experience. We’re invested in beautiful films and the people that make them, and want to create and curate writing and illustration that reflects this.’ They are looking for material for the following columns: • Acting Up: This column focuses on an actor’s first screen performance, or leading role, and…

Aesthetica Creative Writing Award 2023 Enter poetry and short fiction in the annual £5,000 international literary prize. The annual international Aesthetica Creative Writing Award invites entries of innovative new poetry and short fiction. Aesthetica is particularly interested in works that reflect on our ever-changing world. The winner in each category will receive £2,500, a five-day Arvon course and a year’s subscription to Granta and Mslexia. The poetry winner will receive a six-week writing poetry course from Curtis Brown Creative, full membership of The Poetry Society, a course from the Poetry School and a year’s subscription to Poetry London. The fiction winner will receive a consultation with Redhammer Management and a six-week writing short\ stories course with Curtis Brown Creative. Enter short fiction up to 2,000 words and poems up to…

Start with this line ‘As soon as Harriet entered the building, she headed to the seventh floor’ is the inspiration for you to write a piece for the First Line Journal’s fall issue, writes Jenny Roche. Fiction should be 300-5,000 words long, although there is some flexibility on this. Poetry is rarely published but it will be considered and there are no line count restrictions. All fiction and poetry submissions must start with the first line mentioned and this should not be altered in any way. Non-fiction critical essays of 500-800 words on your favourite first line from a literary work will be considered. Format your piece in a Word or Word Perfect document and include your name and contact details in addition to a three-sentence biography. Payment rates are…

The Caledonia Novel Award 2024 The annual contest for unpublished novelists has a £1,500 first prize. Now in its tenth year, the Caledonia Novel Award is an international prize given for the best novel manuscript in any genre for adults and young adults. All entries must be original novel manuscripts at least 50,000 words long by unpublished or self-published writers. Enter the first 20 pages and a 200-word synopsis. Longlisted writers will be invited to submit their full manuscript by the beginning of December. The first prize is £1,500. There is a second prize of £500 and a special prize of a free place on a creative writing course at Moniack Mhor Creative Writing Centre for the best novel from the UK and Ireland. The judge is Ariella Feiner from…

Narrative Narrative publishes ‘fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, including stories, novels, novel excerpts, novellas, personal essays, humour, sketches, memoirs, literary biographies, commentary, reportage, interviews, and features of interest to readers,’ writes PDR Lindsay-Salmon. Submit short stories, 500 to 2,000 words, essays, one-act plays, and other complete short works of nonfiction, and excerpts from longer works of fiction and nonfiction, 2,000 to 15,000 words, novellas and longer works under full book length, 15,000 and 40,000 words. Book-length works may be considered for serialisation. All submissions with a reading fee, from new or emerging writers, are eligible for the $4,000 Narrative Prize, awarded annually. Payment is US$500 for a ‘Story of the Week’, US$200 for a ‘Poem of the Week’, US$250 to US$500 for 500 to 2,000 word manuscripts, US$500 to US$1,000 for…

The award-winning Finborough Theatre welcomes unsolicited original full length scripts for consideration for performance in its fifty-seat theatre in Central West London, writes Jenny Roche. ‘We are interested in playwrights and plays that present unique challenges to ideological assumptions about community, nation and world’ says artistic director Neil McPherson. Plays which are ‘ideologically brave’ and ‘artistically ambitious’ are more than welcome and the theatre aims to work closely with playwrights to see their play performed and their careers developed. Plays from around the world are welcome, so long as they’re written in English, Scots or Scots Gaelic and are specifically for theatre performance. Plays that are politically and socially engaged, artistically ambitious, thematically expansive and have large casts are of particular interest. Music theatre is also of interest. Plays for…