Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2025 i Writing Magazine

No matter where we’re at in our writing life, there’s always an undercurrent, isn’t there, of wanting to make a go of it? Of getting it right. Of doing it well. Of progressing. Of being, in whatever way you may define it, a success. In this issue, we’re taking a look at some of the ways writers can set themselves up for commercial success – to earn money from their words in a publishing climate which, reflecting many other aspects of our lives, is increasingly digital. Check out how to beat the bots in How to write better than AI (p4) and find new outlets for your work by making the most of a changing marketplace (p6). For all of us, being a successful writer means being open to ideas,…

Suburban streetstumble with garden Santasand coloured lights, and pleasfor someone to Stop! And leavepresents, even when there are no childrenin these sad and crumblinghouses. Strings of bulbsrelight the memories of how it used to be,of how it never was,except in movies. I love the lights though.Even so. I love that the pub on the cornerhas made a fence from abandonedbicycles and festooned themwith fairy lights I love a tree, decorated. I love an old pop song escapingfrom someone’s kitchen radioriding on the scent of something roasting.I love that memory of gravy, and bread to clean the plates. In this quiet, poignant poem, Lesley Mason paints pictures of a disappointing Christmas in the present before gently, insistently presenting the reader with the way memories can be triggered, suffusing ‘what is’ and…

DON DELIVERS HIS DEBUT Like most writers it seems that my writing career has been a convoluted one, shadowing the peaks, troughs and twists of my life, writes subscriber Don Baldwin. ‘The first thing a writer has to do is find another source of income’ (Ellen Gilchrist) is a salient lesson that I learned when the first cheque for an article came through my front door many years ago! And while many of us may not be in it for the money, per se, children must be reared and bills paid. So, like a great many writers, (some of whom were very successful), I kept the day job and chiselled away at my writing as best I could: never ditching the dream of one day becoming a successful writer and…

As we all (or as many of us) know, writing can be a very lonely occupation. We sit staring at our screens, which is precisely what I am doing right now as I write this Fiction Focus feature, and sometimes it’s ominously quiet. Obviously, a bit of peace and quiet can often be good and, provided our work is going well, it tends to be somewhat annoying when we are forced to leave our lands of make-believe to pick up our children from school or walk our dogs. Much as we love our children and our dogs. But some writers, especially those who live alone, can sometimes go for days without actually speaking to another sentient being, and surely that can’t be good for anyone’s mental health? Whatever our circumstances,…

Writing is often considered a solitary affair, but there are many ways to collaborate with others. These opportunities can exist for everyone from an emerging writer to a published one. How? Because you don’t have to just take opportunities, you can make them yourself. I’ve worked with others in various ways, such as launching the Writing Magazine Children’s Book Prize with this lovely magazine and my agent Julia Churchill, writing picture books for BBC’s The Repair Shop, and working with the custodians of Stonor Park to write children’s books around Tumblestone Hollow, their magical adventure park (www.stonor.com/tumblestone-hollow/books-and-stories/). I also work with various charities, donating a percentage of my royalties to them, and raise a minimum of £1,000 every year for Alzheimer’s Research UK (www.alzheimersresearchuk.org) through my Story Godmother Winter Writing…

It happened two weeks ago. I switched on my computer to continue working on my next novel, with a word count of over 120,000, only to find the file gone! I panicked. Had I lost everything? Would I have to start all over again? Thankfully, I made a backup on a separate disk the night before. Phew! Disaster averted. When was the last time you backed up your writing files? With so much data stored electronically, technology companies promote the importance of keeping backups on World Backup Day, which is celebrated every year on 31 March. However, writers losing vast swathes of work is not a digital phenomenon. In 1919, T.E. Lawrence left his entire Seven Pillars of Wisdom manuscript on a train at Reading Railway Station. Despite extensive searching,…

Challenging conditions In January nine members of the staff of publisher Simon & Schuster were raising money on the Just Giving website for an Arctic Challenge in support of the National Literacy Trust. They were planning a four-day endurance expedition in northern Sweden, inside the Arctic Circle, based at a camp lodge with no electricity, internet or home comforts. They intended to undertake an orienteering challenge finishing on a frozen lake, a 35km dog sledding time trial, and a 20km cross-country skiing race. At the time of writing 421 supporters had donated £17,365. All the money raised goes to expanding the NLT’s projects in disadvantaged communities, supporting families, filling libraries, training teachers and helping school leavers into their first jobs. Details at: www.justgiving.com/team/ssarcticchallange25 GD Legends retold Still almost a year…

Given the enormous success of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings film trilogy – of course based on the book by JRR Tolkien, the UK’s favourite novel, and a project which had a combined budget of $281 million over 20 years ago – it might seem strange for Warner Bros. and New Line, which produced the earlier films, to make something called The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim as an anime-style animation with a streaming-level $30 million budget then expect anyone to turn out to the cinema to see it, writes Gary Dalkin. Especially as the film tells a story no one was clamouring to be told, fleshed out to 134 minutes of moving picture time from a couple of pages in Appendix A of Tolkien’s…

When I wrote my first novel, Long Overdue (Stanhope Books), a story that concerns a missing person, I only spotted at proof stage that I had a character sending a text message before the date when such things existed. It became a telephone message. So much is written about the quality of writing, the pace, voice, characters, description and more, that the need for accuracy may be underrated. Yet it is well known that agents and publishers are unforgiving about such things. Just a tiny number of pages with typos or containing something obviously wrong, unclear, or ambiguous can be sufficient to get them putting something aside and moving on to the next offering. A manuscript, fiction or non-fiction, must be right – something I have always born in mind…

The Binsted Prize 2025 The South Downs Poetry Festival Competition is inviting entries. The annual Binstead Prize is given for original, unpublished poems on any theme. There are prizes of £250, £150 and £50. This year’s judge is Chris Hardy. The winning poem will be published in the South Downs Poetry Festival magazine Poetry & All That Jazz. Runners up will be published in the Binsted Prize Anthology for highly commended poems. Enter poems no longer than 40 lines. The entry fee is £5 for the first poem and £4 for any subsequent poems. The closing date is 31 March. Website: www.thenovium.org.uk/sdpoetry The Charm Poetry Competition 2025 The contest for witty, whimsical poems is inviting entries. The annual Charm Poetry Competition is for entertaining poems that are original, unpublished and…

Repeated advice to those wishing to write well is simple: read. Read widely, read regularly, read often and what you are exposed to will provide a useful mix of practice that will influence your own output. Another basic maxim for writers – and here especially travel writers – is to carry and use a notebook. Fine; I do not expect my mentioning that to be in any way a surprise. However, while I am a regular notebook user (and have it by my bed at night as well as with me on any travels), my view of it has changed recently. I have just read: The Notebook: A history of thinking on paper by Roland Allen (Profile), which is now out in paperback. This is a fascinating tour of how…

Helen always planned to write, and a writing competition finally got her started – in 2019, she won the Women’s Prize/Grazia Magazine First Chapter competition. She has recently completed an MA in Creative Writing with the University of Hull Online, and is now grappling with her first novel, a psychological thriller. The air ahead of Liam is dense and white, like smoke. The fog he barely noticed on the beach has taken hold of the coastal path and the distance he can see in front shrinks with every step. Liam knows this track, knows how murky it can get, but it’s still creepy. And it’s the last thing he needs today. He needs to find her, and quickly. Liam calls her name. Then he shouts it. He shouts again and…

www.writers-online.co.uk/writing-competitions Writing Competitions, Writing Magazine, Warners Group Publications Ltd, West Street, Bourne,Lincs PE10 9PH WIN! £2,175 IN CASH PRIZES & PUBLICATION OPEN LOOK BACK Look backwards in time and send us stories or creative non-fiction set any time before 1980 – nostalgia, memoir, historical fiction in any genre, we want to read it as long as it’s between 1,500 and 1,700 words! Prizes: £200, £50. The winner will be published in WM Sept and the runner up will be published online. Closing date: 15 April. Entry fee: £7.50/£6 subscribers Ref code: WRO/March25/lookback SUBSCRIBER-ONLY Confessions Send us your short stories and first-person monologues between 1,500-1,700 words where someone owns up to something that’s weighing on their conscience. Prizes: £100, £25. The winner will be published in WM Sept and the runner up…

It all started with a single word. In between lockdowns in 2020, I received a commission to write a short story for radio. I could write about anything I wanted, but my story had to somehow be connected with the word independence. We were approaching the centenary of Irish independence, and writers were asked to think about what independence meant to them, a hundred years later. This was at the height of the pandemic, with people confined to their homes, the media telling us ‘stay safe, stay home.’ I thought about the statistics I’d heard on the radio about the number of families in emergency accommodation, and reports I had read on the number of calls to Women’s Aid; most tellingly how these calls had dropped during lockdown and peaked…

In an earlier article we looked at settings and how you can use the physical environment of a scene to intensify the mood or adjust the tension or give information about the characters. The wider social and historical context is also part of settings, but with memoir in particular we may underestimate how interesting our own cultural settings are for others because for us they were just normal life. For example, class was a dominant feature of the society I grew up in – in 1950s suburbia, everyone knew their place. My family background was working class – which had different values from the professional or upper classes. Specifically, it was suburban London lower class, different again from the same social class just up the road in the East End,…

STAR LETTER NEW YEAR, NEW YOU On New Year’s Eve, I walked into my office at home with a heavy heart and stared at a pile of unread Writing Magazines sat on my desk. The end of another year and I was still no closer to my heart’s desire of becoming a published author. My motivation was at rock bottom after spending the last four years caring for my sick parents (now deceased) and having no time or headspace to write. I picked up November 2024 issue of Writing Magazine from the top of the pile and left the room, made myself a drink and sat down to start flicking through the pages. It was the Star Letter on page 28 that caught my attention and Pauline’s opening paragraph. This…

‘You mustn’t just sit her in front of the television all day’, says the speech therapist. In my hand I grip a meticulous schedule of playgroups, hours spent in frigid church halls and swelting soft play centres each week, providing openended play, interaction and new vocabulary modelling for my little girl who just doesn’t want to talk. He ignores my timetable, scowls at my daughter’s inability to produce farm animal noises on command and records his judgements on a clipboard. Rather unethically, he ends the appointment regaling me with the linguistic feats of his own daughter – of a similar age – who is ‘coming up with six and seven-word sentences by now!’ I bundle my silent daughter and her lion toy into the pushchair and cry the entire walk…

When and where did your journey as an author begin? I’ve written since childhood, and in my twenties I attempted an adventure story featuring the children I was teaching in South America. They loved it, naturally, but it didn’t get anywhere. Ten years ago, I began to write fiction with the intention of finding a publisher. What is (or has been) your proudest moment as a writer? Someone told me she enjoyed my first story so much that she wanted to be the woman it featured. I had succeeded in transporting her to the world I’d created, and made it desirable. Who or what is your greatest inspiration? All inspiration for me comes firstly from setting, and I do careful research. Researching a job might push me in a particular…

SHOULD BE SEEN ON SCREEN The Adaption List is a spin-off from the Black List, a project which for the last 20 years has provided a round-up each year of the best written, according to Hollywood insiders, unmade screenplays doing the rounds, writes Gary Dalkin. The new Adaption list compliments this by collating the opinions of 84 publishing industry editors and literary agents about the novels that they most want to see adapted into film or television. Each editor or agent who responded was asked to name ten novels published since 2005 whose acquisition or sale they were not involved in that they would like to see adapted for film or television. The 61 novels which comprise the published list were the most frequently cited titles from the 840 answers,…

Black Fox Literary Magazine Black Fox Literary Magazine is an international print and online publication seeking the best contemporary short fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and art Submit YA, romance, flash fiction, mystery, etc. tories, no more than 5,000 words, creative nonfiction, 5,000 words, and poems, no more than three. Submissions are also welcomed for the Black Fox blog on the craft of writing, book reviews, book news, and publishing news. Payment US$20. Website: https://blackfoxlitmag.com POLYMORPHIC POLYMORPHIC is an indie magazine and art collective where the editorial team, of Canadian visual artists, put short horror stories together with art from creators around the world. Submit stores, no more than 5,000 words, within the sphere of horror and weird fiction. Payment is CAD$30.00 per story. Website: https://polymorphicmagazine.com WestWord’ WestWord seeks submissions for…

Harvest the Night: An Anthology of Folk Horror C.M. Muller, editor and publisher, is seeking short stories for his next anthology: Harvest the Night: An Anthology of Folk Horror, writes PDR Lindsay-Salmon. The previous anthologies are free on Kindle Unlimited and the editor asks that writers read one before submitting. Stories, between 2,000 to 5,000 words, should be in the horror genre based around folk tales. Open to submissions during February 2025. Payment: US$10 per 1,000 words plus a copy. Details: email: nightharvest.editor@gmail.com; website: https://chthonicmatter.wordpress.com WolfSinger Publications WolfSinger Publications is a one woman spec fiction micro-press publishing company, writes PDR Lindsay-Salmon. It publishes the online magazine The Lorelei Signal and many anthologies. Currently closed to science fiction and fantasy full length books, submissions are open for short stories for the…

Tramp Press This Irish small press with a big reputation wants ‘exceptional new works of fiction and narrative non-fiction,’ writes PDR Lindsay-Salmon. It also encourages writers who identify as ‘a member of a group which is under-represented in literature.’ The team seek ‘unique voices,’ and brilliance, and is open for submissions. As a small press it prefers to deal with writers from Ireland, the UK and Commonwealth. Submit a few chapters or a few short stories, roughly 50 pages or 10,000 words, including a cover letter and a synopsis under three pages. The editors also accept suggestions of out of print, remarkable, much loved books for their Recovered Voices imprint. Rights and royalties are discussed with the contract. Website: https://tramppress.com Aunt Lute Books Aunt Lute Books is an intersectional, feminist…

BBC National Short Story Award 2025 The BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2025. It invites entries of short stories up to 8,000 words. Writers entering the competition must have a record of prior publication in creative writing in the UK. The first prize is £15,000 and four further shortlisted writers will each win £600. The five winning stories will be published in an anthology published by Comma Press and also broadcast on Radio 4 and available to listen to on BBC Sounds. This year’s chair of judges is Di Spiers and the returning judges in the 20th anniversary year are William Boyd, Lucy Caldwell, Ross Raisin and Kamila Shamsie. Each author may enter one story. Stories may be entered by authors…

Self-publishing is an exciting journey but can feel overwhelming, especially for first-time authors navigating the writing, editing, design, marketing, and distribution of their book. Each step requires careful consideration, and without the right guidance, it’s easy to feel lost. Fortunately, the right tools and resources can make all the difference in turning your ideas into a polished, professionally published book that stands out in today’s competitive market. To help, the Troubador team has compiled a list of essential resources for self-published authors, whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned writer: Writing and editing tools Polished manuscripts are key to success. Tools like Grammarly catch grammar and punctuation errors, ensuring clean, professional writing, while ProWritingAid provides in-depth analysis of readability, style, and pacing, helping you refine your manuscript further. Design and…

There have been an enormous amount of words spilled on the subject of how to get an agent. Very understandably it is a huge part of the focus of aspiring writers, but too little attention is given to what to do next – how do you maintain a healthy relationship and get the best out of your agent? What is the right sort of agent for you? Of course, for most people that’s not a choice they get to make – and on one level, if you want to be reductive, an agent is only there for one thing: to get you a deal. There are people who see it in those terms – but they are rare and for most people getting an agent, if it works, is the…

Suffering from high blood pressure? I may have found a cure. I am the only one in my family who has never had to take tablets for blood pressure and I put it down to writing. Not any type of writing. It needs to be revenge, though you can get your revenge in a short story, a novel or anything as long as it’s fiction. My revenge often takes the form of murder. For instance, I’ve just murdered a visitor who came to my home and found fault in everything from the décor to the food and drink. I should have said something to her about her behaviour but I was brought up to be polite so remained silent. After she had left, I was seething. The sort of seething…

Each month in WM, we feature creative writing by our subscribers. Selected pieces will be published in WM and we pay £50 for prose and £25 for poetry, and provide a mini-critique explaining what made the pieces stand out to us. This month’s issue has several pieces about exploring the dark side on your fiction, whether in horror, crime or dark romance, and so we’re inviting your submissions on the theme of ‘Someone in the Shadows’. Submit prose up to 500 words and poetry up to 40 lines to wmsubmissions@warnersgroup.co.uk. Include your subscriber number. The closing date is 28 February. Next month, look out for the pieces we’ve selected from the submissions call in the February issue on the theme of ‘Starting Point’. SHORTLISTED Alan Bradman; Antony Crossley; Gepi D’Adduzio;…

Every poet who is serious about their craft appreciates the value of revision. This process takes the rough notes and scribbles of a first draft and transforms them, bit by bit, into a cohesive poem. Over a period of time, anything ranging from a few days to several years, more polished work emerges until finally its author decides it is ready to meet its public. That is the pivotal moment, and brings a new question to be answered. Is the piece now fixed permanently, never to be altered, or could it still be adjusted? Is anyone else’s suggestion to make adjustments to the writing still worthy of consideration? We have to remember that if there are two different versions of a poem in print, future readers will never know which…

Q My question relates to a character who has recently been arrested for a terrorist offence. Would they have to be held in custody – without bail – until the trial? Mary Crick via email If someone is arrested on suspicion of terrorism offences, the police Acan hold them for longer than usual. They can be held for up to seven days before release, however, their detention still has to be justified while they are at the police station. They can only be held until trial if they are then charged, and as bail is very unlikely, they would be on remand in prison until they face trial. Q A wealthy man invites his family to stay at his house for the weekend to celebrate his 80th birthday. One of…

Endings are often the most discussed part of a novel; they’re what the reader will remember most. Here, we have the culmination of the story’s arc and, ideally, this is where all the tension, conflict, and character development meet their resolution. A powerful ending can elevate a good novel to a great one, leaving readers pondering long after they’ve turned the final page. But not all endings are created equal – some offer traditional closure but others open possibilities with a cliffhanger, twist, or even a hammer blow. Like many, I found the ending of David Nicholl’s One Day somewhat bleak with the (spoiler alert) death of a central character, and I was reminded of this with the recent Netflix adaptation that brought the book to a wider audience. The…

Wildfire Words FF150 Competition 2025 The latest contest from wildfire words is for very short pieces of 150 words, written in either prose poetry or fiction. All entries must be original and unpublished. There are two prizes of £150 (one each for best text and best audio) four runners up prizes of £15. Winners will be published online by wildfire words and in Flash Fiction 150 Anthlology 2025. The judges are Abigail Ottley, Marilyn Timms and Katherine Parsons. There is £3 entry fee per flash fiction, or three for £7. The closing date is 31 March. Website: https://wildfire-words.com/ff150-2025/ The Oxford/42 New Writing Prize 2025 The winner will receive £1,500 and professional representation by 42. The competition for unagented UK novelists, playwrights and screenwriters who have not previously had a publishing…

The Bombay Literary Magazine The Bombay Literary Magazine is a free online English-language magazine with its editorial team mostly based in India which publishes literary fiction, graphic fiction, poetry, as well as translated fiction and poetry, writes Gary Dalkin. The magazine is edited by an extensive team led by editor in chief Anil Menon, author of The Coincidence Plot (Simon & Schuster, 2023), and founder and editor Tanuj Solanki, whose novel The Machine is Learning was longlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature 2020. The BLM, now up to its 60th issue, is published each April, August and December, with submissions open for a month at a time, or when 400 submissions per category have been received. Check the website for the next open period. Read some of the work…

The Globe and Mail Founded in 1844, The Globe and Mail describes itself as Canada’s foremost news media company. Mark Ledley, editor of the Saturday Opinion section, is always open to pitches for both 750-word op-eds and reported essays up to 7,000 words. Rates begin at $300 Canadian. Read at www.theglobeandmail.com then pitch by sending an email to mmedley@globeandmail.com GD Salon Salon describes itself as a trusted destination for progressive journalism since 1995, and one of the first entirely digital major media outlets which is still going today, writes Gary Dalkin. Now celebrating 30 years online, the platform has a new senior editor for culture, Kelly McClure. She is heading up coverage of TV, film and cultural trends and is accepting pitches by email at kmcclure@salon.com Rates are between $150-$300…

The 2025 Rhys Davies Short Story Competition The national writing contest is for short stories by writers born or living in Wales. The Rhys Davies Short Story Competition is run in honour of Welsh author Rhys Davies by Swansea University in association with the Rhys Davies Trust and Parthian Books. The winner will receive £1,000. Eleven runners-up will each receive £100. Stories by the winner and finalists will all be included in a short story anthology published by Parthian Books. Enter original, unpublished short stories up to 5,000 words. All entrants must have been born in Wales, have lived in Wales for two years or more, or be currently living in Wales. The entry fee is £8 per story. The closing date is 15 February. Website: www.swansea.ac.uk/cultural-institute/rhys-davies-short-story-competition/ Writers’ & Artists’…