Surrounded by criminal masterminds!

I'll be spending all of today amongst people who have crime on their minds, as I'm a participating author in a crime literary festival in Lee-on-the-Solent. 

Free entry writing competitions

 Thanks to Alyson for sending me the details of this playwriting competition. We've both had a good look and as far as we can tell it's free to enter. The theme is the climate change. The prize package includes £15,000 and an option to produce yor play at The Globe. You'll need to be UK based and have 'demonstrated a commitment to script-based mediums'. 

Thanks to both Fiona and Sharon B for this poetry competition with a £25 book token as the prizes in different categories.  The want funny poems, which can either be written, or performed and videod.  (Is videod a word? The red line underneath suggests not!)

Womag news

For those of us who don't use Twitter, Alyson and HB have passed on these tweets from The People's Friend - Get writing! We're looking for stories from July onwards for 'People's Friend' weekly, and from September onwards for our Specials. We're always looking for stories for our little annual! And Christmas stories can be accepted from April onwards...

Remember to put all your details on the manuscript. If it's a period story, please put the year it's set. Pay attention to word counts and don't go over.

My news

It's my birthday on Monday. I can't decide what kind of cake to have – what do you suggest?

 Free entry writing competitions

On the Premises have a new mini competition. This time they want two stories, but even if you use the maximum word count for both, it's still only 150. The first prize is $45.

Other publication opportunities

If you're a Scottish writer of romance novels, or a writer from anywhere writing romance set in or inspired by Scotland, then this might be of interest. Thanks to my friend Pauline for passing on the details. She's not a writer, yet is still looking out for interesting opportunities for us.

UPDATE - Sorry, I didn't get around to finishing off this post. There's been 'stuff' - you might know how it is. Still, my plan of adding stuff when I can and scheduling seems to be sort of working. 

Here are some tulips by way of apology.

Just a couple of things

Short post this week, as I've been busy with non writing stuff. 

Alyson Hilbourne suggested sharing this blog post from Kath McGurl on writing dual timelines as she thought it might be of interest to some of us.  I've never attempted writing anything dual timeline. I've read some good pieces written in that style and can see it's a very useful device for the right story, so I'm not ruling it out. How about you? Have you used, or considered using, dual timelines?

I wonder how many of you remember when Kath ran this blog? I don't recall how long ago that was.

Sometime ago, Fiona told us about her experiences on a Hawthornden retreat. You can read the details here, but to sum up, it's a month living in a castle for free, and with help towards transport costs, with nothing to do but write. Applications for next year can be made here.

Looking again

We're making plans for our next trip away in the van (which is why you've got pictures of a previous one). Most of the places we intend to go will be return visits. Things will look different though, as we've always gone in the second half of the year. The biggest changes will be in the gardens and landscape, but even a castle can appear very different depending on factors such as the light, weather and number of visitors.

Writing can be like that too. What we spot when editing just after we've drafted it will be different from what we notice much later - especially if it's been submitted and rejected in that time. Thinking about our intended audience or market, or expected time of publication can also make us read and edit our work differently.

What are you looking for when you read your own work?

Free entry competition news 

Thanks to Dee for telling us about this sonnet competition from New Writers. To enter, you need to sign up to their newsletter, which you can do here. 

Their site is interesting and includes details of lots of other writing competitions and opportunities. Most have fees, but there are some excellent prizes, so you might feel it's worth a try.

And thanks to Sharon Boothroyd for info on the Meetcute competition for romance novel writers from the Kate Nash agency. They want the first chapter and offer a prize of £500 plus representation. UPDATE - We've since discovered that although there's no mention of it until you get to the submissions page, there's a £12 entry fee. Sorry I didn't spot that!

Other publication opportunities

Here's a wrtiing challenge from Chris Fielden. He wants 100 words, with as many as possible being adverbs. Entries,  plus a short bio, will be published in an anthologu which will be sold for charity.

Eleventh Hour are looking for prose which has been previously rejected and since revised. We've all got some of those, haven't we? I'm not entirely sure what you get out of submitting your work there (sorry, I did look but I'm very short of time at the moment.) 

I'm mostly mentioning it because it makes the point that a rejection, or several, doesn't have to mean the end for that particular piece of writing. That was always the case, but with there now being more competition for every fiction slot, there must be loads of great womag submissions which don't get accepted.

My news

I'm taking part in a couple more promotions. This time they're both for books available through kindle unlimited (although they're also on sale). This one is for sweet romances and this one is has a mixture of genres.