Judging Writing Competitions by Helen Chambers

I've been a first (and second) round reader for three different writing competitions in the UK over the years.  In each case, it was an honour to read so much good writing. It was also time-consuming. Crucially, it was an education. Here's some of what I learnt:

1. It's difficult to place in a big competition (research the number of entries and work out your odds!). You might have more success submitting to journals.
2. A long-listed place, a short-listed piece or an honourable mention, is a win! If your piece has been selected from an entry of hundreds or even thousands for a special mention, you've done brilliantly and should congratulate yourself.
3. Furthermore, a long-listed piece can be polished/tweaked and submitted elsewhere in the knowledge it is of a good standard.
4. Many very good pieces of writing don't quite make the long-list - yours may be among them, don't despair.  Do read the winning entries, learn from them and keep on writing!
5. Likes and dislikes are highly subjective.  All the competitions I've read for have had sensible, rigorous and objective criteria, and often more than one reader for each place.  Good writing is admired and recognised, even if it's not to personal taste, but despite that, I'll say it again - writing is subjective!
6. To place in a competition, your entry needs to be unusual and eye-catching, for example, form, content, style - different from the pack.  The readers will encounter hundreds of good (and 'samey') stories. What could make yours stand apart?
7. If the competition is themed, and you haven't made the theme central to your story, that may be enough reason for it not to be placed, however good it is.
8. If you use the theme the same way as many of the other entrants, it won't stand out either. How could you approach the theme 'slant-wise'? Use varied word meanings and layers and READ, READ, READ successful fiction!
9. For many flash competitions, 'heavy' and serious themes will predominate - flash is such a good vehicle for it.  Writing humour, historical, and speculative fiction might help draw attention to your piece.
10. Check and re-check for typos, spelling and punctuation errors - never submit a lazy entry.  Only ever submit your absolute best.

I was most recently a reader for The Welkin Prize in March 2023.  Their (free) 'Mini' 100-word competition opened on 1st December 2023

Brilliant portrayal of characters by Niall Williams

I am currently revelling in the writing of Niall Williams in his novel This is Happiness. His witty and perceptive portrayal of characters does more than simply describe them. In introducing characters he conveys a sense of the context, the backward village of Faha, in the south west of Ireland in the 1970s. One example is the formidable nun, Mother Acquin, who takes the young narrator by train to stay with his grandparents, when his mother is ill.

'I was accompanied by Mother Acquin, a large black-and-white albatross who smelled of bull’s eyes. Mother Acquin was a relation on my mothers’s side. On that side there were several priests, nuns and missionaries vanished into Africa who we were to pray for, because they were all praying for us, my mother said, and, with the softness of her eyes and the lamb in her voice, the boy I was did not doubt it. 

            There was nothing of the lamb in Mother Acquin. She could have been second choice to command the Allied Forces. She was on her way to take the sea air with the Sisters of Mercy. She’d take all they had, I’d say. As though a significant peril lay ahead, she set up a prayer-shield over us in the carriage, black rosary beads harnessing the horns of her fingers. The ticket collector looked in and backed immediately out.' (p.25)

Williams skilfully combines a range of techniques even in a short passage: sharp physical description, the indirect free speech of others’ comments, snippets of the character’s own words and reflections by a knowing old narrator on his youthful experience. All this and a sense of the period and social context is conveyed in the description of the piano tuner.

'Hartigan, the bug-eyed, whey-faced and toothy piano-tuner from Limerick, who had an untrustworthy air Doady said because he could not be fattened, who was stitched into the narrowest pinstriped suit and always came through Faha after, as he put it, tuning the nuns in town. Though pianos were something grand and mostly notional in Faha, Hartigan would stop at a few houses along his way in case he could spark an interest in a second-hand one or just some sheet music that would suit the accordion too, Missus, if there was one in the house at all. He smoked while he stood in the doorways, eyeing up the sale. ‘Virginia blend,’ he’d say, looking at the cigarette burning in his fingers. ‘Smooth as cream.’

            Perhaps because of some primitive but profound allure attached to the tuning or because of the mysterious attractiveness of those even tangential to music, he had a long train of rumoured paramours and illicit relations, all of which were in defiance of his actual looks and testament to the unknown depths of females.' (p.40)

I'm full of admiration and more than a little envy at such a master of this style of writing.

 Clare Hawkins

 

One Year Anniversary of 'To Be Frank'

 

To celebrate the one year anniversary of To Be Frank I had an enjoyable author interview with  

 Jo at jaffareadstoo.blogspot.com/2023/06/author-in-spotlight-philippa-hawley.html . 

It was a good experience, reminding me how much I loved writing this book. 

Take a look jaffareadstoo.blogspot.com/2023/06/author-in-spotlight-philippa-hawley.html

 

Recycling

Recycling

Recycling a story is not unusual, it can be very satisfying revisiting a story written years ago, picking it apart, revamping it, even polishing it up to submit to a current writing competition. You might marvel as you go through your files and acknowledge how much you’ve actually written over the years or see how your writing has developed and changed with time.

            One story I found myself returning to was inspired by a journey I took in 2011 with three good friends. The four of us had recently retired from demanding jobs and decided to team up for an adventure. Leaving our partners at home, we flew to Los Angeles, hired an SUV, and drove up the West Coast of California, exploring as we went. We called our trip ‘On the Road’ and when we reached San Francisco, we visited the fabulous Beat Museum to learn more about Jack Kerouac and his friends.  

From San Francisco we took an Amtrak train across America to Chicago before moving on to meet a friend in New York. We were due to take the California Zephyr but as I recall this was rerouted because of floods and we ended up on the Southwest Chief to Chicago. This part of our adventure we called ‘Girl Guides on a Train’ because it felt like a camping trip at the time. On the Chicago to New York train we travelled alongside survivors and relatives affected by the awful Twin Tower attacks of Sept 2001. They were on their way to memorial events, honouring the 10 year anniversary and we stayed up all night listening to their tales, almost too harrowing to write about.

 It's the ‘On the Road’ section of our trip that's been at the heart of various pieces of writing ever since. The journey crops up in my novel ‘How They Met Themselves’ when two young men travel to California after their graduation. They take the Pacific Coast Highway and meet some extraordinary young women along the way. Both men later make appearances in ‘Lawn House Blues’ and one of them even plays a small part in ‘To Be Frank’. I became so fond of my characters I couldn’t leave them behind.

            It wasn't easy to let go of the Californian journey, so as well as a travel journal of my memories, I wrote a short story based on it for one of my writing groups. The story has been adapted and edited a number of times since and submitted to various competitions. At the fourth submission attempt, and now called ‘Crossings’, it was finally accepted for Robert Fear’s 2023 Anthology ‘15 Fascination Fictional Tales’, which is now available to purchase from Amazon. www.fd81.net. Perseverance got there in the end.  

            I suspect my memories of travelling through California have had their day now and it’s time I pull apart another old story or maybe take some new journeys.  

Clare's review of Ancestry by Simon Mawer

Simon Mawer’s Ancestry is a historical novel with a difference – a brilliant feat of writing, which combines all the characteristics of an engaging fictional re-creation of the past, alongside an account of the process of researching family history. It smoothly crosses boundaries between the genres.

Using documentary evidence of his forebears, most of which is very scanty (register entries of births, marriages and deaths), Mawer recreates the lives and experiences of some of his memorable ancestors. This task of reconstruction and of speculation about the missing elements of the characters’ stories is conveyed through authorial comment. Then he seamlessly enters the lives and inhabits the worlds of these working class people, who are so vividly portrayed. There is no shortage of tragedy, loss, hardship and poverty in those precarious 19th century lives: the hard-working, syphilitic sailor Abraham Block, Naomi his resilient wife, George Mawer the tough private infantryman who perishes in the horrors of the Crimean War and Annie his feisty and resourceful widow who resorts to whatever means she can to support herself and her many children.

This novel is a compelling read for lovers of historical fiction, a generous lesson for writers of this genre and a revelation for those engaged in researching their family’s history