Three for free

Free to enter writing competitions

Thanks to the anonymous person who left a link to these two competitions, as a comment to a previous post. There's a science fiction short story competition, with a £50 prize, plus a flash fiction class. Both are to be on the theme of Peace.

The same person also supplied the link to this short story competition from Jerry Jazz. The prize is $150 plus publication.

The Happiful Poetry Prize isn't just a great name - it's a pretty good competition. They wants poems on the topic of mental health and wellbeing and offer £100 for the winner and book tokens for the runners up.

Unless you've been to the place these photos were taken, I don't think you'll guess the location, but feel free to have a go anyway - and tell me which one represents a castle!

Cows, crime, Chirk, competitions...

Womag news

This post from The People's Friend was seen on Twitter by Alison and HB - thanks both of you.

"Sep 10 We're looking for fiction submissions from mid-January onwards for the weekly, and for late February onwards for the Special. We're also starting to think about Mother's Day and Easter stories."

Free entry writing competitions

There's £2,000 on offer for the winning story in the Tom Gallon Trust award competition - plus further cash prizes. Word count is up to 5,000 words. Entrants must have been previously published and be residents of the UK, Commonwealth or Ireland.

Here's a competition for a detective novella, with a $1,000 prize. (Writing a novella is on my list of things to try.)

Photos are from our visit to Chirk Castle in Wales. We're now back in England, but I'm no better at keeping up with the photography stuff than the writing and blogging stuff! The sun is shining today, so more photos will be taken.

Thursday talk time

Hello! This is another experimental chat, just like last week's attempt, but on a different day so it doesn't conflict with the chat which has been set up on Twitter as a replacement for TPF's writing hour. There's no time limit on these chats, although you're less likely to get a response once I put up a new post.

Everyone is welcome to join in and chat about writing related subjects, including but not limited to -

 Q 1 Do you like using punctuation such as ! and ... or do you prefer to keep things simple?

Q 2 How many notebooks do you have?

As always, feel free to use the photo as a writing prompt if you like that kind of thing. And if you'd enjoy more opportunities to talk virtually with other writers, you might like Writing Chat on Facebook. It's a public group. To take part you'll need to request to join and say what you write - just a word or two to show you realise it's a writing group.

Gone adventuring

We're currently adventuring in the mobile writing retreat (campervan) so apologies if blog posts are even more sketchy and cobbled together than usual! There's also a strong possibility of LOADS of travel photos, but I'm not apologising for that.

Free entry writing competitions

Irish Country Magazine run a monthly themed competition. The prize is publication and a year's subscription. (We're not in Ireland - hopefully that will be next year's big trip.)

For those who were wondering, the weird things in the phot on my last post were the 'knees' of swamp cypress trees. They're protrusions from the roots and, as far as I can tell, nobody is exactly sure about their purpose. 

Tuesday talk time

Hi!

This blog post is an experiment to see if people would like a chance to chat about writing here. It's partly prompted by the ending of The People's Friend writing hour on twitter, but is open to other writers too.

If you're new, then welcome! I'm Patsy. If you're not new, hello again!

Those who don't know how to comment on this blog can find all the details here. Whether or not you participate in chats on this group, you may like to join the Facebook writingchat group. It's a public group. To take part you'll need to request to join and say what you write - just a word or two to show you realise it's a writing group.

Fell free to chat about writing here, ask writing related questions, share info, encourage others etc. Please also make suggestions for how you'd like these chats to work, or share any other ideas of ways this blog can be useful. I'll ask a couple of questions to maybe get you started, but as I said at the start, this is an experiment. Depending on results, I'll carry on in this vague rambling fashion, make changes, or discontinue the whole thing and pretend it never happened!

Q1 What have you written recently?

Q2 Care to guess what's in the photo - it's nothing nasty, I promise. 

Q3 Could you use the image as a story prompt?

Q4 Which is your favourite font?