work in progress

So far I've completed 539/2000 words for my entry to Company/Galaxy/LBD's short story competition. How's everyone else doing? I'm sure most have been written, edited and sent by now! I'm not leaving myself a lot of time, although I'm quite pleased with what I've written so far.

My idea's quite quirky and I do like it, although the whole short-story idea gets me so nervous! I've never written a short story, ever ever or ever. I'm hoping to get it finished and sent off by tomorrow, with only the chance of praying that it gets there on time!

How many people have entered? I don't know what's made me enter this year, I nearly wasn't going to until an idea popped into my head whilst on holiday. It gets me back into writing though, which I'm pleased about, although I'm guessing I won't have time to do much of anything after uni starts again next week.

Good luck to everyone that's entered and I hope we get more success from this fabulous magazine compared to you-know-who!

short story competition

The most fabulous glossy magazine on the planet, Company, has teamed up with Galaxy this month to host its annual short-story competition!

All you need to do is write a short story of your choice, no longer than 2,000 words, and send your entry in hard-copy format to:


Galaxy Short Story Competition
Company magazine
72 Broadwick Street
London W1F 9EP

by 16th September 2008!

How exciting for our team of short-story bloggers.
Who's planning on taking part??

daily mail

I came across this competition a few weeks before it ended, back in June. And I thought, wow, this could be a pretty nifty competition to enter. But in the end I didn't go for it, realising that printing off 300 pages of A4 and sending it off would take up both time and money, neither which I had as I had just finished uni and was about to jet off on my summer hols.

Click here

It encouraged people to send their fiction into the competition with the chance to win a £30,000 publishing deal, the novel to be published in April 2008.

I've just been having a little think about it.... As I read in Cally's blog about the Miss Write comp, they received 2,300 entries, all of which were 3,000 words each. But the Daily Mail sells 2.4m covers daily, so the entries would be well over 10,000, that being a very very minimum guess. So 10,000 entries at 80,000-150,000 words per entry..... you do the maths.

Of course the judges wouldn't read the whole novel before realising whether they like it or not. But with all that wasted paper, think of the trees!

Anyway, out of curiousity I wondered if any of you entered? And if any winners have been announced/when they are due to be?

the times & chicken house

Is anybody thinking about entering this? The last time I tried to write a children's novel was for Waterstone's WOW Factor, and after I had written it I realised I wasn't very good at writing for such a young audience!

Terms & Conditions and how to enter here

It does sound like a good comp to enter though, so I may give it a try. And you can do either end of the spectrum, what with the audience age ranging from 9-16.

The judges are Malorie Blackman, Amanda Craig, Wayne Winstone, Karen Robinson and Barry Curringham. The winner gets an offer of a worldwide publishing contract with Chicken House.

Deadline is November 17th 2007, shortlist announced Feb 08, and winner April 08.

Any thoughts?