If you’ve not come across Undiscovered Voices and you
write for children and haven't yet been published, it’s worth checking it out as its one of the few
competitions aimed at unpublished writers and has an enviable track record of
getting its winners noticed.
Because really, writing as a hobby is kind of weird.
On the face of it, it is the simplest thing in the world. There
are almost no barriers to giving it a go. You don’t need to have taken a degree
in creative writing (although these days it probably helps), you can fit it in
around other things in life so it feels like fun rather than anything big or
serious you’re taking on.
You can potter along, not needing anything much more
complicated than a pencil and a sheet of paper to get you started. There aren’t
even any costs involved, anyone of any age can start it at any time. Who
wouldn’t want to give it a go?
It’s when you try to take things any further that you begin to realise you might have taken on something quite different to what you thought.
It’s when you start to have those random thoughts of
wondering if what you are writing is any good at all, whether anyone would
actually want to read it . . . that’s when the trouble starts.
Then, writing suddenly becomes the most difficult, the most
complicated and competitive, the most monstrously challenging interest anyone
could possibly have chosen to take up.
Perhaps aiming for that Olympic medal would have been easier?
At least then someone would probably have kindly pointed out at any early age
that you have two left feet and saved you a lot of trouble.
But as a writer it’s incredibly difficult to tell if you are
on the right track, or so off course you are now heading somewhere west of
Jupiter. Sometimes it feels like there is the narrowest of gaps between the
two, but one that seems impossible to cross.
Your crit group might say nice things (but then they are
nice, aren’t they).
But it’s real, actual readers who
count. And before you reach them you’ve
an entire industry to negotiate, of agents and publishers, and there is marketing
and sales. There are book jackets and book launches – all very well, but it all
starts with that first knock at the door and that is done by going through an
utterly weird process called submitting to agents.
This is highly likely to be a part of the
journey that involves a lot of frustrating and depressing one-way
correspondence of the ‘if we haven’t replied within eight weeks it means it’s
probably not for us’ variety.
The immediacy of epublishing means it is now even possible
to go avoid all that, to go straight from your brain, into a computer and out
to readers with unbelievable simplicity. . . If you want to do it without a
publisher.
Yet there is something about competitions that make then
seem a little like the agent’s slightly kinder younger sister, a slightly more
hopeful way of getting your work in front of someone, someone who is actively keen to
find new writers to take on and support.
I’m sure agents don’t really view the slushpile a bit like the
laundry (something that you would rather ignore, but it builds up until it’s quite unmanageable and then you end up with nothing left to wear).
But one of the great things about competitions for
unpublished writers is that they make the prospect of all that raw talent in the slushpile a
little more exciting. There is something that makes reading all those slightly
green, nervy, unpolished new writers work a bit more thrilling.
From a writer's point of view, moreover, there is a
winner. Generally, at the end of it, someone actually gets published. How great
is that?
There are two competitions open at the moment and the first
is closing for entries on August 15.
Run every two years, here, a submission of up to 4000 words
is read by a team of agents and editors and 12 of the best submissions are put
into an anthology, which is published and is then passed onto other interested
agents and publishers. The competition was first launched in 2008 and from that
anthology ten of the 12 winners have gone on to get into print.
The second competition is The Times/Chicken House Children’s
Fiction Competition.
For this one you submit a whole manuscript – and it is
read, in its entirety, and judged, and around 20 longlisted from the 1,000 or
so hopefuls. You’ve got until November 1 to enter this one. The winner gets published and a £10,000 advance. Brilliant.
I submitted to Undiscovered Voices two years ago and didn’t
get anywhere, but Sally was Highly Commended and Jo was chosen for the anthology.
I did submit to Chicken House last year and was amazed to be
longlisted. As someone who is still at the ‘if we haven’t replied within eight
weeks it means it’s probably not for us’ stage with agents, I had pictured
myself somewhere so far away from where my writing needs to be that I could hardly see the ground and was suffering
from a lack of oxygen.
So it was beyond amazing to read a judges report and read
how much someone had loved the book and wanted to champion it. It was pretty much the first bit of actual feedback I have had,
so yes, I’m a big fan of competitions.
I shall be entering Undiscovered Voices and the Chicken
House competition again this year.
I am becoming such a convert to competitions I have been scouting around for others. I also
submitted to one organised by the Winchester Writers Conference, and I even
managed to get a really nice report back from the judges even though somehow my
entry actually got put in for entirely the wrong competition. How great is that?
So yes please. Why are there not more competitions?
Good luck to everyone who decides to enter. And fingers
crossed.
