Bridport Prize 2017

I received some great news in September, but was sworn to silence!

However... the Bridport Prize shortlists are now out, so I'm allowed to say I managed to sneak onto the Poetry shortlist this year!

And I also managed to get not one but TWO flash fiction pieces onto the Flash fiction shortlist!

Naturally it's a bit disappointing that my work didn't get picked for one of the prizes, but it's great to be on the shortlists alongside some excellent writing talent. Fingers crossed for next year!

[The rest of this post involves maths, so you'd be advised to stop reading now!]

The Bridport Prize is one of those competitions that has a "sifting" stage... in that a first set of judges create the shortlist, and then there's a further judging process to pick the winners. When the "congrats, you're on the shortlist!" email arrives, it also tells you how many entries there were this year... and I couldn't resist playing around with the numbers!

This year there were 4,258 poetry entries and 1,343 flash fic entries. (This was possibly a quieter year for the Bridport, because I've heard the usual number of entries is closer to 7,000 for poetry and 2,500 for flash fic.) And from what I've heard (e.g. anthology comments from past judges), the poetry and flash fic shortlists are 200 and 50 respectively.

The poetry shortlist consists of 200 pieces, which means that 4.7% of the entries made it through the sifting stage (200/4258 = 0.04697 = 4.7%).

The flash fiction shortlist is 50 pieces, which means that 3.7% of the entries made it through the sifting stage (50/1343 = 0.03723 = 3.7%).

Obviously there's a quality aspect to getting picked, but I still find it interesting to see how tricky it is for a piece to sneak through that first stage of judging. I have no idea how many sifting stages there are, or if any of these numbers help us, but when I enter a competition, my twitchy little brain quite likes knowing the odds!

Best of luck to everyone for next year! The Bridport is a tough competition but definitely worth it :-)

Bridport Prize - Flash Fiction 2016

In January 2015, I enrolled on a writing class with the awesome Hilda Sheehan. She spotted I was someone who lacked confidence and so she encouraged me (okay, pretty much ordered me) to start sending off pieces for publication. She was so right. Sending stuff to publishers changes everything about being a writer. It's exposing, it's terrifying, it's exhilarating... and then you realise it's not as scary as you were expecting.

And on those rare days when someone says, "yes" to a piece, it's the biggest boost of confidence in the world.

So here's one of the "yeses"! Sorry if it's crass to toot my own trumpet but here goes anyway :-)

A flash fiction piece of mine was lucky enough to be commended in this year's Bridport Prize. Woohoo! The piece was originally called The Angel in the Bathroom but it had a redraft before submitting and is now called Cure. Big thanks to the Bridport Prize, and the flash fiction judge, Tim Stevenson!

The lovely thing about this is that they put me on the Bridport website! Hopefully this is something I can wave in front of agents when trying to get Crimble's autobiography published.

My friend Stephen was kind enough to keep me company on the day and help me feel a little less nervous around all the proper writers! He took most of the pics as well! Here's a facebook post he put up. I love how much support everyone showed. I'm all smiles :-)

And here's a big pile of pictures from the prize-giving event:

The book! I'm in it! Page 148! :-)

Arrived at the Arts Centre to find my name and pic on
the wall. Exciting! :-)

Welcome drinks upstairs in the gallery 

Stephen looks out over the writers, trying to spot the poets

The prize ceremony. I think the people on the stage are the brave
souls who deal with the enormous bags of post

Sneaky pic of some of our table-mates. I was worried we'd not
have much to talk about but of course we had plenty in
common - we're all daft enough to spend our free time
frantically scribbling!

The ceremony begins

Poetry judge, Patience Agbabi

Short story judge, Tessa Hadley 

Flash Fiction judge, Tim Stevenson

Trying to find my way through the tables!

Going up on stage. In front of people! Scary!

Getting a prize. Yay! :-)

Lots of goodies!

EDIT: And just to top everything off wonderfully, I was complimented not once but twice by the queen of Bridport flash fiction, Kit de Waal! :-) *dramatic fan-boy swoon*

Astounded at The Cure, flash fiction in The Bridport Anthology. So very very good. Congratulations @mumbletoes

— Kit de Waal (@KitdeWaal) November 13, 2016

Really, very very good. Left me speechless. Jealous, impressed, fascinated at the angle it came from. Great stuff :) https://t.co/6UUcUuwXWY

— Kit de Waal (@KitdeWaal) November 13, 2016

Five minutes until 'I do'

I'm a big fan of the 50-Word Stories site. Trying to squeeze a good tale into just 50 words is one hell of a challenge!

My latest story is Five minutes until 'I do'. I had some great news today... it's been named Story of the Month :-)

This is especially lovely because this is a prize I've been trying for all year long! The last time I managed this was "Head Case" in June last year!

Now the story will go forward (along with all the other 2016 "Story of the Month" winners) to compete for Story of the Year. And the winner of that is given a place in the Hall of Fame. Exciting! :-)

The Daily Check on His Enchanted Girlfriend

Very excited today! My latest 50-word story ("The Daily Check on His Enchanted Girlfriend") was awarded "story of the week" on the 50-word stories site! And the piece has been ranked alongside the awesome Bob Thurber (read his stuff - it's brilliant!), so I'm feeling kinda good about myself right now :-)

Grans & Ammo gets longlisted for an award!

Here's a lovely surprise. "Grans & Ammo" was longlisted for the Saboteur Awards 2016! :-)

I've no idea how many novellas they reviewed, but it's nice to be in the top 15!

Improvising (Twitter Fiction!)

Twitter fiction is fun! It's quite a challenge to squash a story into 140 characters. I've been creating stories on my "Very Short Story" twitter feed and one of them won a competition to be made into a video. There's even an interview too!

"Head Case" wins a prize!

Happy news! "Head Case" was chosen as "Story of the Month" on fiftywordstories.com!

And there was a prize too! My first ever payment for a piece of writing! :-)

Head Case

More exciting news! Today I had a new piece appear on the 50-Word stories site. It's called Head Case and it's weird in all the ways I think a story should be!

I'm really enjoying learning how to submit pieces for publication. So far I've managed to get nine acceptances which has really helped boost my confidence. Three of those pieces are already live (the rest are due out later this year).

[EDIT: Woohoo! "Head Case" was named Story of the Week!]

[EDIT: Woohoo again! The story also got named Story of the Month!]

Headless Skeleton by Lisa Zador

Smaller than you: a 50-word story

I rewrote Flying Ants for Tim Sevenhuysen's 50-Word Stories site and it was accepted!

It's been tagged as "artistic" and "metaphor" which makes me feel quite posh!

Random info: the name of the story had to change because I'd removed the description of the ant swarm in order to achieve the 50-word target. I think this shorter version has a very different feel to the original story... the playful "friend" character has transformed into quite a menacing figure.

Here's the text, just in case the link isn't working.

#

My friend is a foot taller than me. That makes him the leader.

"They taste like butter," he says, showing me ants emerging from their nest. "Try one."

I grasp an ant as it takes its first view of daylight. I watch it struggle, small, helpless and lost in indecision.

#

EDIT: I'm even happier now! The story got named "story of the week"! :-)