Archive for the 'Competitions' Category

Three day novel writing race

The City of Salisbury in Adelaide, South Australia, is a great supporter of the arts. Every year they sponsor a Writers’ Festival. I haven’t yet attended one of these but all reports say that it is a worthwhile event to attend.

As a part of that festival – to be held later this year – they hold a special novel writing race. Writers are asked to write a novel over this coming weekend. It is a long weekend throughout most of Australia so that gives writers 72 hours exactly to finish their masterpiece.

I am not going to enter this year because of other commitments which would cut into my writing time. Next year perhaps?

In the meantime, for more information [sorry – this link no longer works].

They also run a short story and poetry writing competition and details are also found on that web page.

A very short writing competition

A while back I wrote about author DBA Lehane who publishes a short story on his blog called Short Short Fiction every day.

This author has announced a short short short short short short story competition.

Yes – six “shorts” – meaning you have to write a story in just six words. Hemmingway did it with the deeply moving story: “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”

To read all the details of the competition and how to enter click here. The competition closes on December 31st 2006.

I haven’t tried writing stories that short though I have written many writing exercises in the form of short fiction with a maximum of 55 words, based on a competition that was run by a magazine some years ago. To read some of these stories click here.

I’m thinking of entering – how about you? Have a go.

New Writing Project

Darren Rowse on ProBlogger has done it again. He has challenged readers to a new Group Writing Project.

This time the challenge is to write and post a new “How to..” article and send the link to him. I was writing an article on my birding blog and realised half way through how to turn it into a “How To” article. I wrote an article on how to deal with aggressive birds. This is timely here in Australia, with many birds in breeding mode. In particular, Australian Magpies can be very aggressive towards anyone who wanders near their nest.
An added bonus – Darren has arranged for about $1800 worth of prizes for this writing project.
Links and related articles:

Writing Competition

Had some bad news in the mail yesterday. I received the results of a literary competition run by an Australian magazine. I had submitted three poems and three short stories. None was successful. [Update: That last sentence should read: “None were successful.” See comments for an explanation.] Same result as last year, but with a different set of poems and stories. Oh well, all it means is that the judges didn’t like what I wrote. Print them out and resubmit elsewhere is the usual advice at writers’ seminars and workshops.

The poetry judge actually made comments on every poem submitted. The only comment on one poem was “Inventive.” Mmmm, wonder what that means? Does it have some merit? Is it worth resubmitting elsewhere, or does it mean that the judge couldn’t understand it? The comment for the other two poems was “Attempt a rewrite”. Yes, I have done that over and over and over until they were both so different from the original draft that they were essentially new works.

Judging literary competitions must be a thankless task. I’ve never done it and I’m sure it is very hard. I’ll try not to be too despondent – and try again elsewhere. Trouble is, my hit rate has taken a battering in the last 2 years with far more rejections than acceptances. (My success rate is around 10%) You get that. Now on with the next project.