The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.
Anton Chekov
Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter, it absolutely must go off. If it is not going to be fired, it should not be hanging there.
The Manchester Writing Competition
The Manchester Writing Competition offers the UK’s biggest literary awards for unpublished work, offered by the country’s most successful writing school. The Competition was established by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy in 2008 and has awarded more than £155,000 to writers. Each year two £10,000* prizes are awarded: the Manchester Poetry Prize for best portfolio of poems and the Manchester Fiction Prize for best short story. Designed to encourage and celebrate new writing across the globe, the competition is open internationally to new and established writers.
https://www2.mmu.ac.uk/writingcompetition/
Ann Patchett
Humor is what happens when we’re told the truth quicker and more directly than we’re used to.
Marlon James
Write about only three things: what you love, what you hate, and what you’re deeply conflicted about.
Laura Hillenbrand
Good writing has a musical quality to it, a mathematical quality, a balance and a rhythm. You can feel that much better when it’s read aloud.
Rebecca Solnit
The process of making art is the process of becoming a person with agency, with independent thought, a producer of meaning rather than a consumer of meanings that may be at odds with your soul, your destiny, your humanity.
The Bridport Prize
Short Story Prize (5,000 words max)
1st Prize £5,000 | 2nd Prize £1,000 | 3rd Prize £50010 x £100 for Highly Commended
Novel Award (8,000 words plus synopsis)
1st Prize £1,000 + mentoring | 2nd Prize 500 + manuscript assessment | 3rd Prize 3 x £100 for shortlisted writers
Flash Fiction Award (250 words max)
1st Prize £1,000 | 2nd Prize £500 | 3rd Prize £250
10 x £100 for Highly Commended
Poetry Prize (42 lines max)
1st Prize £5,000 | 2nd Prize £1,000 | 3rd Prize £500
10 x £100 for Highly Commended
https://www.bridportprize.org.uk
Amy Hempel
Sometimes a flat-footed sentence is what serves, so you don’t get all writerly: “He opened the door.” There, it’s open.
Peter Russell
Needing to fulfil a very rigorous disciplined structure and having the personality of a rebellious miscreant who hates convention and can’t stand following the rules – those two elements are often necessary for a creator, and it’s why creators are all crazy. … Rebels and rule followers are usually at the opposite ends of the scale, so to be able to combine those two, that makes you crazy. … It’s almost required to have a kind of schizophrenia to be a successful creator.
Richard Price
You don’t write about the horrors of war. You write about the kid’s burnt socks lying in the road.
The Fiction Desk Newcomer Prize for Short Stories
The Newcomer Prize is a short story competition only open to authors who have not yet published a novel or collection of short stories.
The deadline for entries is Thursday, 31 May 2018. There’s a first prize of £500 and a second prize of £250. Entry costs £8.
http://www.thefictiondesk.com/submissions/newcomer-short-story-prize.php
Lorraine Hansberry
The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.
Alexandre Dumas
Begin with something interesting rather than something boring; begin with the action rather than the background information; speak about the characters after they have appeared rather than having them appear after having spoken about them.
Jeffrey Carver
Write from the soul, not from some notion about what you think the marketplace wants. The market is fickle; the soul is eternal.
John Updike
If you have the guts to be yourself, other people’ll pay your price.
Clapham Book Festival | The Writing Game
Sat 12 May, 11am – 12noon
Looking to find someone to publish your fiction or non-fiction writing? Leading industry experts Philip Gwyn Jones, editor-at-large at Scribe UK, and agent Lucy Luck share all the do’s and don’ts of publication and open up the writing world.
£10, £8
Robert Towne
Good dialogue illuminates what people are not saying.
Gertrude Stein
You look ridiculous if you dance. You look ridiculous if you don’t dance. So you might as well dance.
Competition: A Poem to Remember
A Poem to Remember is a new national poetry competition launched to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War, and offers a prize of £2k. In the spirit of the Great War poets, it seeks poetry that honours those affected by service and pays tribute to humankind’s capacity to overcome adversity. One entry per person, of no more than 25 lines. Deadline: 9 Apr
The Faber and Andlyn BAME (FAB) Prize
The Faber and Andlyn BAME (FAB) Prize offers £500 and mentoring for undiscovered BAME writers and illustrators residing in the UK and Ireland. Deadline: 6 Apr
The Edinburgh International Flash Fiction Award
The Edinburgh International Flash Fiction Award is a new international competition by the Scottish Arts Club, offering £500 and publication in their first anthology. Entries may be up to 250 words and are open to writers worldwide. Entry fee: £5. Deadline: 30 Apr
Competition: The Bridport Prize
Short stories, poetry, flash fiction and novel competition
Short stories: 5,000 words max / Entry fee: £10 for each short story submitted
More details at:
https://www.bridportprize.org.uk/
Annie Proulx
I never feel that it’s finished, but you have to stop somewhere.
Ann Patchett
Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which meams that to get to the art, you must master the craft. If you want to write, practice writing.
Barbara Kingsolver
Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.
Martin Amis
Because we are all poets or babies in the middle of the night, struggling with being.
Friedrich Nietzsche
We have art in order not to die from the truth.
David Bowie
Go a little out of your depth, and when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.
Doris Lessing
Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.