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

The NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge (part 2)

I'm signed up on the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge this year. It's a nightmare! They give you just 48 hours to write a 1,000 word story... and that's far less time than my brain needs to polish something to perfection! People who can write that fast, I salute you!

The results for last time came out and I didn't do too badly. My story was given 9 points out of 15, which means I ranked 7th in my group of 35. That sounds okay, but only the top 5 go through to the next round... so it was far from good enough!

One of the best parts of this competition is that it provides feedback! From the comments I received, it seems the judges liked my writing but I lost points because I didn't root my story properly in time. Historical Fiction was the genre - and I suppose I should have realised that my story needed to mention a date, at the very least, if not a country as well!

Ah well, we live and learn!

Almost as soon as the feedback arrived, we were all allocated a new genre, location and object. This time my group was given:

• Genre: Thriller
• Location: A wildlife refuge
• Object: A silver spoon

Last time, I wrote myself a method of how to tackle this competition. Because there's only one weekend to write the story, one of the main things I noted was that it was essential to come up with a good idea on the Saturday... because that means you can have a sleep before the editing and polishing. (I find that a break is really important between the first draft and the edit.)

Anyway, things went a bit wrong this time around. I couldn't come up with a good idea on Saturday, and so I panicked and just rushed out an action scene between a few characters. It was pretty bad, if I'm honest. I went to bed on Saturday with a wonderful case of the grumpy writer blues.

Humph :-(

On Sunday I decided to try a different story altogether. I managed to write a couple more stories but then I had three different stories and only a few hours left to choose which one to edit into something worth reading. 

I'd completely run out of time but I polished one of the stories as best I could, then sent it off with only minutes to spare. The next day, I read the story and hated it! But I guess that's just part of the job of being a creative writer. Sometimes you produce rubbish, and sometimes you produce a story that you love.

Never mind - at least now I won't have high expectations when the results come out in November! :-)

The NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge (part 1)

I've signed up to the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge. It's a writing competition that runs all the way until December (well, it does if you're lucky enough to get through all the rounds to the final!)

There are so many people doing this competition! I'm in group number 48. The group contains 35 writers, and there are 60 groups, so that's 2100 writers altogether! Yikes. Scary odds. But hey, even if I don't get anywhere, it'll be nice to get a few stories out of it.

How does it work? Well, you get assigned a genre, a location, and an object... then have to produce up to 1,000 words of quality flash fic in just one weekend. The story has to be written according to the given genre, and must take place at the given location. The object, luckily, only needs to be mentioned in the story rather than play an important part... which is good because some of the objects are kinda random! (Imagine trying to write a 1,000-word story set in a casino that somehow features a toothbrush.)

So you only get 48 hours to write a story! The problem with such a short deadline is that you pretty much have to write and shape the story on Saturday, in order to leave time to sleep on it before some hard-core editing and polishing on the Sunday.

Assignment examples:

• Genre: Thriller, Location: A blood bank, Object: A poker chip.
• Genre: Romantic Comedy, Location: A jewellery shop, Object: A slice of lemon.
• Genre: Historical Fiction, Location: A castle, Object: A thimble.

That third example above is actually the assignment I was given. So I had to write a historical fiction story set in a castle, and I needed to mention a thimble at some point. My mind immediately went blank. Thanks, Brain.

It took me ages to come up with an idea - nearly the whole of the Saturday! - but I got there in the end by finding what I think is a method that will work for next time. Here's what I did:

Mark's dodgy method for writing fast flash fiction for the NYC competition:

1. Eliminate the object. The object only needs to be mentioned, so forget about it for now (especially if your object is something like a thimble, which sounds incredibly dull and makes my mind go completely blank!)
2. Read about your genre. They have a page of genre definitions on their site which is pretty darn useful because it basically tells you exactly how to write your story.
3. Brainstorm the genre and the location to find the story. In a way, I think I was lucky here. If you write an oldie-worldy sort of story set in a castle then it should sound at least vaguely historical. (And, seeing as there are only 48 hours of playtime, you have to look for shortcuts!)
4. Write the story. Here's where you do the usual thing for first drafts. Freewrite the tale as fast as possible! Splurge, splurge, splurge! Don't let that pen (or those typing fingers) stop moving! Aim for more than 1,000 words, so you have plenty to trim and tighten.
5. Add the object. If you haven't managed to mention the object in your story then find a place to cram it in. Although when you were splurging, the object was in the back of your mind so maybe you'll be lucky and find your brain's magically found a place for it already.
6. Check the genre and location. The idea here is to double check that the story you've just splurged into the page hasn't gone off in a weird direction. Does it actually match the brief? For example, here I'm writing historical fiction and therefore a dragon is probably not a good character (because the judges would say, "No, that's fantasy - disqualified!")  
7. Research. (This is an extra step just for historical fiction.) Check all your details! Yes, I know, normally for historical fiction you'd do all the research first but there's simply no time for such shenanigans if you only have 48 hours. Writers love to procrastinate, and research is the perfect procrastination tool (because it feels like you're doing something constructive right up until 5 minutes before the deadline, whereupon you suddenly panic because you've not even written the title yet). So write the story first - get the essence of it down - and then fix the inaccuracies.
8. Polish. Trim, trim, trim! Make those words pop!
9. Submit. Don't leave it until the last minute because, well... come here... bit closer... *whispers* don't tell my laptop I said this, but computers love to try and screw you over when you're pushed for time.

So I have a method, but the big problem, as always, is finding a good story. The tight deadline results in a massive amount of pressure. Each passing hour really does count! And it's scary to settle on an idea because of course you never really find out if a story is good or not until you finish the thing and read it after a break.

I had an idea but Brain was silent and refused to help. I gave up and went out to have a swim, feeling that I'd failed already! Luckily, Brain was kind enough to write the first and last lines for me while I was in the water... and after that I just needed to splurge out the middle bit!

So the story's submitted and apparently the judges will provide feedback. And, hopefully, some points! The scoring system is a bit complicated but basically you write two stories in Round 1. And the total score for BOTH stories needs to be ranked in the top 5 (out of the 35 in your group) for you to progress to Round 2.

The next bit of the competition happens in September. The July story and the September story are counted together as the entry for Round 1. If those two stories together get me ranked in the top 5 (of the 35 in my group) then I go on to Round 2 in November.

I think the timing is the scariest bit of this competition... it's spread throughout the year and, on the competition weekends, I have to be completely sure of a good internet connection and lots of peace and quiet to think. I'm currently moving around a lot so 2016 may not have been the best year to participate! :-/

Flash Fiction - a guide to submissions

I've just discovered this blog post and it has all the info on flash fiction that you ever need to know!

An Extremely Helpful, Incredibly Comprehensive Guide to Flash Fiction Submissions

It explains all the weird terminology!

Ever heard of hint fiction? Or an American sentence?

And do you know your simultaneous submissions from your multiple submissions?

There's also an explanation of the Submittable site and, as a bonus, the article also lists a ton of markets and competitions :-)

Spirit of the Beanstalk

Illustration by Michael Ilkiw

Story Shack Magazine have published "Spirit of the Beanstalk". It's a fun little piece that came about from an exercise in a writing class. The idea was to pick a well-known fairy tale and write it from the point of view of a different character. I choose Jack and the Beanstalk, and decided to write it from the beanstalk's point of view.

The fun thing with Story Shack Magazine is that they put you in touch with an illustrator. This was a new experience for me and it was great fun seeing what Michael came up with for the story.

Etiquette on the Modern Dance Floor

Another 50-word story is out. I borrowed this one from the best man's speech at a wedding! It's called "Etiquette on the Modern Dance Floor".

"May I Have This Dance?" by SarcasticLeaves

One Last Tale

"One Last Tale" is the third piece I've had accepted on fiftywordstories.com. Please let me know if you enjoy it!

The site is full of (yep, you guessed it) stories that are exactly 50 words long. It's a real challenge to write them. And it's fun!

'Bedtime Stories' by Richard S. Johnson

Added bonus: Here's an interesting article by Bob Thurber (master of the art) about how to write a compelling piece of flash fiction.

Thrown

The 101words.org site has published one of my flash fictions! It's called Thrown and it's my second attempt at playing with the idea of a "melting angel" theme. (The first attempt is currently sitting hopefully in the submission queue for the Bridport prize!) I'm not sure what it is about melting angels, but for some reason the image seems to have stuck with me. Maybe that's something I should mention at my next therapy session?!

Mourning After

A happy discovery this morning -- Unbroken Journal have published "Mourning After"! It's a flash fiction piece about a man regretting his one-night stand.

This was actually published a couple of weeks ago, but I only found out today via a flash fiction mailing list.

And look at this cracking review that a nice lady wrote about it! :-)

Flash Fiction chosen by Grace Black.

"Mourning After" by Mark Farley via Unbroken Journal

This is the exact form of micro flash I consume for breakfast. Screw the food pyramid, this is flash built from the ground, layer by layer. Great read.

First Assignment

Saturday Night Reader magazine have published my "First Assignment" story! It's about a woefully underqualified hitman who's waiting to perform his first job.

This is my second paid piece... and it's also the second acceptance I've had for something I wrote back when I was a mere teenager! That's two confidence boosters in one! :-)

"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! :-)

The Artist

Self-Portrait by Élisabeth Louise Vigée-LeBrun

"The Artist" has been published -- thank you The Vignette Review! I'm really pleased with this piece because it:

1. ... was written when I was just 15 (that's about three hundred years ago).
2. ... has taught me what the word vignette means.
3. ... appears in their DEBUT ISSUE! That's history, that is :-)

The second issue will have an autumn theme. Bring on the mists and mellow fruitfulness!

Knight of the Rocks

The perfect bait to catch a bigger rock

"Knight of the Rocks" has been published by Postcard Shorts! It's a short story about the start and end of a long-term relationship. If you're a soppy sod like me then it might tug at your heart-strings!

[EDIT: This story has now been recorded as audio release, here: Old Words Home]

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"! :-)

Flying ants

This is a short story that came from an exercise on a course I'm doing at New College, Swindon, taught by the talented Hilda Sheehan.

The first part of the exercise was to write down ten memories from your childhood. Five of the ten had to be true memories and five had to be completely made up.

I'd really recommend trying to write that list of memories - it sparked several handfuls of story ideas.

Once we had our list of ten memories, we had to pick one of them and expand it into a story. We only had ten minutes to do this, so I was quite pleased when my story managed to come out with a proper beginning, middle and end.

The memory I chose was: Sitting with a friend at school being taught how to catch and eat flying ants as they emerged from their nest hole in the dirt.

Flying ants

They painted the sky with smoke-black clouds. Delighted birds swooped in the billowing swarm, beaks gaping wide.

"It'll be like this for at least a week," my friend told me. His name was Tendai and he was a foot taller than me which made him the leader. Together we found one of the ant nests. There was no anthill -- just a hole in the ground, barely a fingernail in width. Ants surfaced one by one, shaking their new-grown wings in the African sun.

"They're called butter bums," Tendai told me with authority. "They taste like butter."

"You can't eat that," I said, full of uncertainty. And so the lesson began.

"Catch them as they come out," Tendai said, as he seized the next one to emerge. Holding the struggling creature by its wings, he showed me how to tear off the bulbous posterior. Into his mouth it went and was polished off by a speedy double-chew. He opened his mouth as proof, showing me the pinkness of his tongue.

"Tastes like butter," he affirmed, grabbing another. "Try it."

I reached out to pluck up an ant as it took its first view of daylight. I watched it struggle; small, helpless and lost in indecision.

[EDIT: I sent the story off for publication and it was accepted! The story appears in Vol. 8 No. 1 of Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine]