I’ve been thinking about a lot of things this week, among them the idea of writing short stories to win prizes. This was prompted by some twitter feeds I read. I can only say ( and you might say it’s easy for me having won a prize ) that I think it’s a bad idea that doesn’t work.
There are no magic formulas for writing successful stories or ones that win prizes. There are things to learn and practice and great stories to read which will add greatly to our internalised sense of the form, but prizes are best entered then forgotten about. Instead, we need to keep writing and thinking about the next story. That’s what I did when I entered the Costa. I had absolutely zero expectation of winning and I didn’t follow the shortlisting etc that I know some writers followed on Twitter. It all came as a shock to me. So I would say learn from the best but write the story that you want to write, don’t try and second guess what others want. Then trust to luck because I know as well as anyone that you have to get lucky too.
Still on the subject of short stories I’m looking forward to a lightening trip to London for Thursday’s launch of The Story, Love, Loss and the Lives of Women –at Waterstones Picadilly
And then on Sunday to Venice !!! I once sailed down the Grand Canal but I’ve never stayed in Venice. I’ve wanted to go for what seems like forever and I’m very, very excited
