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. 

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.