These last few weeks I’ve been thinking about and preparing for Room To Write’s short story competition and it’s reminded me of when I began writing short stories and of my first successes. My very first success was in a relatively unknown competition run by Fine Line Editorial Consultancy and I’m pleased to see they’re still out there and have just closed their latest competition.
It mattered nothing to me that they were not a big name in the short story world, to be honest at that time I had little idea about big names or otherwise, I just spotted the competition and decided to enter. When a month or two later I received an email telling me I was on the shortlist I was little short of ecstatic. I seem to remember jumping about the house a lot, shouting out the good news! (Even though I think I was the only person in at the time) It was thrilling and exciting to have my writing acknowledged by a complete stranger and even more thrilling later to see it in the competition publication Even Birds Are Chained to the Sky.
I didn’t win that competition. I didn’t win the next competition I entered which was for an International Chapbook with the lovely Doire Press but I did get another shortlisting and I look back on both these experiences as some of the happiest of my writing life so far.
First times are special, as special as bigger things that may come along later. Because they are the first it’s sometimes tempting to put them to one side and think one has to go bigger and better. Of course it’s important to have ambition, to want to progress our writing. Have ambition by all means, but remember there’s nothing wrong with starting small, acorns and trees and all of that….and as far as our Room To Write’s competition is concerned, it’s small because it’s inaugural but it has some BIG names – how exciting can it be to have your work read by Pat Barker and David Almond? It doesn’t get much bigger than that now does it?
Listen to myself and Wendy talking about the short story
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