Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2026 i Writing Magazine

DEAR READER Everyone’s got their favourite piece of writing advice and we’re no exception. Although we’re always looking to offer you the best writing tips from the best writing people, we keep coming back to this: Write what matters to you. This month, with festive present-giving very much on everyone’s minds, that’s our gift to you – a reminder that your best writing comes when you write what’s most important to you. We’d like that to be your gift to yourself, as well – to allow yourself moments of quiet time when you curl up with your laptop, or notebook, or book, or this magazine, and give yourself the creative space you need to be a writer, and get down in words what most matters to you. Whether it’s a…

My New Year resolutions are always the same – write more, talk less, really listen, lose weight and get fit(ter). They’re the same year after year. Making a resolution is the act of making a firm decision. It’s something you are definitely going to do, meaning mine have never really been resolutions because even as I list them, I know they’re never going to happen. Possibly, there are people out there who actually do stick to their resolutions. If they exist, then I have the greatest admiration for them, but in my life firm decisions (resolutions) have been broken many times. You may have decided your resolution for 2026 is that you are going to write a novel, but what can you do when life gets in the way and…

Pulling story ideas out of thin air, developing them and then sharing them, is something that has occurred for millennia, well before the invention of paper. From verbally shared epic poems, told in communities or by travelling bards, to the sophisticated publishing process today, there’s always been a hunger for stories that will entertain or educate, filling our lives with experiences beyond our own. From the classical oral tradition through to our current network of agents, publishing houses, print and digital media today, every story begins with that first idea, the heart of the novel. This is the emotional core, its theme, or the big question that your story will explore. Sadly, not every book idea begins with a lightning bolt of inspiration. The traditional image of the tortured author…

Kemptown Bookshop Writing Competition 2025 The new contest for writing about bookshops is to celebrate Brighton’s oldest indie bookshop’s 50th anniversary. To enter, submit original, unpublished writing on the ‘bookshop’ theme. Entries may constist of flash up to 250 words, short stories no longer than 3,000 words, and poems no longer than 42 lines. Winners will be published in an anthology in Spetember 2026. The entry fee is £10. Each writer may submit one entry. The closing date is 31 December. Website: https://www.kemptownbookshop.co.uk/writing-competition…

Alternating Current Press The editorial team at this busy publisher post all the deadlines for their many imprints on the first page of their guidelines, writes PDR Lindsay-Salmon. Its anthologies are opening to submissions shortly – check the anthology section at the website. There are many ongoing one-time, single-publication themed anthologies and special projects that are open for individual submissions from all authors. Currently Alternating Current Press is open to submissions for two literary journal submissions Footnote is their literary journal of history, an annual journal dedicated to historical and contemporary views on any topic of nonscholarly and personal history. Submit nonfiction, or hybrid work which give an author’s intimate or emotional take on historical places, people, events, or ideas. Deadline 31 January. The Coil is the online literary journal…

Farnham’s First Five Pages Writing Competition 2026 Farnham Literary Festival’s competition is for novel openings by unpublished authors. To enter, send the first five pages of an original, unpublished novel manuscript in any style or form. Novels do not need to have been completed. Include a 250-word synopsis. The winner will receive the £1,000 Paris Prize for Fiction and a critique. There are second and third prizes of £300 and £200. The entry fee is £10. The closing date is 31 December. Website: https://farnhamliteraryfestival.co.uk/literary-writing-competition/ Fiction Factory First Chapter & Synopsis Competition 2026 Win £500 and an appraisal from a literary agent in the competition for writers who have completed the first draft of a novel. As well as the £500 first prize, the winning entry will be read by Joanna…

Schaffner Press Founded in 2001, Schaffner Press is a small independently owned and managed US publisher run by former literary agent Timothy Schaffner, writes Gary Dalkin. He and fellow editor Sean Murphy are looking for manuscripts between 60,000-100,000 words, in English in the following categories: Fiction: literary adult fiction, short fiction collections, historical fiction with socially relevant content, crime fiction. Non-fiction; memoir, autobiography, biography, journalistic expose or narrative, true crime, art, culture, pop culture, world history, current events, science, arts and letters, US history, military history, music. No children’s or YA or speculative fiction, political or religious screeds, erotica, poetry collections, self-help, craft, fitness or DIY. They are looking for titles which expound on the company’s mission statement to publish, ‘books of social relevance and universal concern’. Initially send an…

WIN! £1,975 IN CASH PRIZES & PUBLICATION www.writers-online.co.uk/writing-competitions Writing Competitions, Warners Group Publications Ltd, West Street, Bourne, Lincs PE10 9PH OPEN - 500 WORDS Writing flash fiction means making every word count! Show your skills and tell a complete story, in any style or genre, in 500 words. Both winners will be published in WM July. Prizes: £200, £50  Closing date: 15 February  Entry fee: £8.50/£7 subscribers Ref code: WRO/Jan26/500words OPEN GRAND FLASH 2025 Make every word count to win a big prize for very short fiction in WM’s popular contest for 500-word stories! Prizes: £1,000, £250, £100 Closing date: 31 December Entry fee: £18.50/£16 subscribers Ref code: WRO/Grandflash2025 STILL TIME TO ENTER OPEN - END IN STYLE Stories1,500-1,700 words Prizes: £200, £50 Closing date: 15 January Entry fee: £8.50/£7…

Do you believe in ghosts? Most people probably do not – and with good reason. But regardless of what our rational minds tell us, most of us do have relationships with the dead. Who hasn’t found themselves having an internal conversation with a friend who has died? Whose behaviour is not influenced by what their long-deceased mother might think? Writers of fiction know that the dead are never really dead, and they often exploit the emotional power of spectral relationships. I am not talking here about traditional ghost stories with clanking chains and empty coffins, but about the ghost as a narrative device. Novels of this type are fashionable What is the attraction? Is this more than a gimmick? When I set out to write my new novel The Matchbox…

A GREAT GATHERING At 7am on a sunny Saturday, I headed from my Sheffield home, up the M1, high on coffee and anticipation and bound for the inaugural Leeds Writing Festival, writes subscriber Kelly Jackson. As a proud member of Jericho Writers, I’d longed to attend their London festival, but the cost of tickets, hotel, and travel, over £700, made it impossible. So when Roger Webster floated the idea of a Leeds-based event in the Jericho forum, I didn’t hesitate. My early-bird ticket cost £100 and included eight seminars, a one-to-one book doctor session, entry to the First 500 competition, plus refreshments and lunch. By the time I walked through the doors at Leeds Trinity University, I’d already made two new writing friends. The coffee-and-pastries networking session buzzed with friendly…

Guy Jenkin is a multi-BAFTA, RTS and Emmy award-winning writer, director and producer. His television series include Outnumbered, Kate & Koji and Drop the Dead Donkey, all co-written with Andy Hamilton. Guy has also written and directed a number of TV films including A Very Open Prison and Crossing the Floor, and two feature films, The Sleeping Dictionary and, with Andy Hamilton, What We Did on Our Holiday. Guy is based between South London and Lyme Regis. As if all that is not enough, his debut novel, Murder Most Foul, was recently published by Legend. ‘I had to fit in writing the novel alongside television work,’ Guy says. ‘I took time off to write a Christmas special of Outnumbered with Andy Hamilton. In some ways that was quite useful. You…

ASKING ABOUT AI Gotham Ghostwriters, writes Gary Dalkin, has released a major survey asking 1,190 professional writers key questions about their views on AI: ‘Is AI a powerful productivity tool or an existential threat to our field? A plagiarism machine or an incredible advance in humancomputer collaboration?’ It was found that across all writing professions 61% use AI tools, of which threequarters say doing so makes them more productive, 59% saying they produce higherquality results, and 57% of the most intense AI users feeling the technology is a positive force for the writing profession. Half think it has improved their career prospects. One in four writing professionals use AI daily, with one in five fiction authors doing so. Those most likely to use AI were found to be ‘thought leadership…

The Edinburgh Short Story Award 2026 The Edinburgh Short Story Award is an international competition that is run by Scottish Arts Trust. The Short Story Award is given for original, unpublished short fiction under 2,000 words. The prizes are £3,000. £500 and £250. There are also prizes given for the Isobel Lodge Award for the best story by an unpublished writer resident in Scotland (£750), the Write Flash Mango Award for stories that are fun, amusing or bizarre (£300) and the the First Write Award for the best story by an unpublished writer (£300). The entry fee is £11 per story. The closing date is 28 February. Website: https://www.scottishartstrust.org/short-story Ironclad Creative Short Story Competition Spring 2026 The contest is inviting writing that responds to the theme of ‘Reserved’. Stories for…

Cupid’s Arrow Publishing: Dalliances Dalliances is the short fiction program for the editorial team at Cupid’s Arrow Publishing, writes PDR LIndsay-Salmon. A Dalliance can be a standalone short story or a collection of short romantic tales around a general theme. Currently submissions are opne for the following anthologies: Second Chances (second-chance romances), Good Sports (sportsrelated romances), For the Uniform (military romances) and Swashes and Buckles (romance on the seven seas.) Stories, between 5,000 words and 12,000 words, must not ‘contain erotica, or excessive violence or gore.’ Submit online a complete, edited, finished manuscript. Payment is US$0.02 per word plus five print copies and ten digital copies. Website: cupidsarrowpublishing.com Small Robin Press Small Robin Press publishes new and emerging writers, under-represented authors, and ‘folx from intersectional communities’, writes PDR Lindsay-Salmon. The…

Angry Gable Press Angry Gable Press publishes niche speculative fiction and poetry, writes PDR Lindsay-Salmon. It welcomes ‘experimentation in technique, form, perspective, and subject matter at the boundaries of the speculative.’ Currently submissions are open for an anthology edited by Chun Hyon Lee and Naomi Simone Borwein. Cozy in the Apocalypse needs speculative fiction and poetry that capture the interplay of two specific different themes: cosy and apocalypse. r post-apocalypse, a major event that changes the norms of a society. Stories, 500 to 8,000 words, should be without sexual violence, or unnecessarily graphic violence. Submit one story or one or two flash fiction pieces, or one to three poems, 25 lines to 100 lines, in one Word document. No reprints, AI-written work or multiple submissions. Payment is US$20 per poem…

Whatever one earns from one’s writing, I believe most people who write enjoy the process. Of course, it can be frustrating sometimes, but both doing it and having done it, having something finished and ultimately published and having received a payment of some sort is very satisfying. And this can make for a problem. I enjoy writing this column, more so because it appears in this magazine, which is uniquely valued by so many. Like other individual writing assignments, this involves a deadline, and it must be done by a particular date. But, like many writers, I write speculatively too and currently I am writing what I intend to be my seventh novel. So, I have to pause from that for other work. At the same time, as I write…

Liz lives in Dorset with her four Dalmatians. She has had several stories published in magazines and has won and been shortlisted in competitions including Yeovil literary festival competition and Flash 500. This is her first winning story for Writing Magazine and it has given her the confidence to finally start writing her novel. I trudge through the dank December drizzle, which is falling from the steel sky. My bones are damp. My feet slip on dead leaves, frozen in layers to the mud beneath. Bare tree branches reach upwards with little hope, their despair matching mine. Everything around me is dying, life seems to have little joy or meaning for me now. A frozen mist hangs over the river, which is swollen with flood water. A small trickle in…

With the Frankfurt Bookfair last month – and the Bookseller’s Children’s Conference the month before, it’s a good moment to reflect on the long-term health and viability of the book trade. Newly reported statistics from America do not make for encouraging reading. Whereas forty years ago just 8% of thirteen year olds reported never or hardly ever reading a book, that number is now a scary 31%. At the other end of the spectrum where, back then a healthy 35% of thirteen year olds reported reading almost every day, that number has now dropped to 13%. It is an alarming reversal and what is particularly distressing about it is that the biggest change has happened in the last ten years. Now it is obvious that there are a host of…

The American poet Robert Frost famously said, ‘No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.’ It takes courage to tell our real-life stories well, because we can only do it if we are willing to feel the feelings again, in all their original intensity, and that can take us by surprise. My agent’s reaction to the first version of my autofiction young adult novel, Drift, was that it felt curiously unaffecting, given that the story describes the death of a sibling by suicide. I explained I had done that deliberately – the protagonist was coping with the situation by numbing out her emotions. But in rewriting, I realised that in my real life the numbing out was a…

My writing life began on 17 July 2014, when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine and all passengers and crew were killed. As the flight had departed from Amsterdam and nearly two hundred people from the Netherlands had been on board, the incident and its devastating aftermath dominated the Dutch news. Over the next month, I wrote the first draft of a novel, exploring the grief of a young woman who lost her father, mother and brother in a plane crash. Throughout that month I forced myself to write at least two thousand words each day, for thirty days straight. While that first draft left much to be desired, setting such a strict quota helped me to jump a big hurdle: of daring to write at all.…

STAR LETTER FINDING MY FOCUS For most of my life, I thought my writing habits were simply disorganised. I would jump from one idea to the next, forget plotlines halfway through, and get lost in small details. I often blamed myself for lacking discipline and wondered writing felt harder for me than it seemed for others. Recently I was diagnosed with ADHD and autism, everything began to make sense. I discovered that my mind works differently, and that is not a weakness. It means I patterns, emotions, and details others might miss. Once I accepted that, my approach to writing changed completely. Now I plan my stories using colour-coded notes, write shorter bursts, and use reminders to help me stay on track. My characters feel more authentic because I understand…

In the world before generative Artificial Intelligence (gen AI), the value of an author’s words was measured in sales figures and book reviews. Today, the publishing industry is grappling with a whole new method of weighing words. As a career, writing may be perceived as well-paid, but over the last two decades, there has been a sustained fall in authors’ incomes from writing. Back in 2022, the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society author earnings’ survey UK Authors’ Earnings and Contracts 2022, showed a decline of around 60%, which pushed median earnings down to around £7K per year, which is substantially below minimum wage. Steep discounting of books has had a huge impact on authors. A new book on release might be discounted by up to 70% by online retailers and…

If you have a query for Lisa, send it by email to lisacuttsenquiries@gmail.com Q In conversations in lots of TV programmes, police officers are often referred to as ‘detective’. Is this right or an Americanisation? And characters such as Bergerac, Lynley, Vera and Morse use their own cars. Do they get allowances, expenses and so on or are police officers like these provided with cars? Peter Corbett via email A Police officers don’t refer to another police officer as ‘Detective Smith’, or similar, when in conversation. When introducing themselves to members of the public or during interviews, it would be common to refer to themselves as ‘Detective Constable Smith’, or ‘DC Smith’, but not when talking to each other. Ranks are the same whether the officer is in uniform or…

World Fantasy winners The winners of both the World Fantasy Awards (voted on by a panel of judges at the World Fantasy Convention) and the British Fantasy Awards (given by the British Fantasy Society) were announced at the World Fantasycon in Brighton in November, writes Gary Dalkin. The winners of the World Fantasy Awards were: Best Novel, The Tainted Cup, Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape); Best Novella, Yoke of Stars, R.B. Lemberg (Tachyon); Best Short Fiction, ‘Raptor’, Maura McHugh (Heartwood: A Mythago Wood Anthology); Best Anthology, Heartwood, Dan Coxon, ed. (Drugstore Indian); Best Collection, A Sunny Place for Shady People, Mariana Enríquez, translated by Megan McDowell (Hogarth US; Granta); Special Award, Steve J Shaw, for Black Shuck Books. Winners of the British Fantasy Awards were: Best Fantasy Novel (the…

The Future Worlds Prize for Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Colour 2026 The Future Worlds Prize for Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Colour 2026 is now open for entries, writes Gary Dalkin. The judges are on the lookout for great works of science fiction and fantasy in any subgenre by new writers, and are passionate about the development of writers from ethnic minorities. To be eligible for the prize you must; self-identify as a person of colour; be based in the UK or Ireland; not have been published traditionally or be under contract for a traditionally published book; be over 18. To enter you need to submit 5,000-10,000 of either a short story or opening chapters of a novel, a covering letter and a short summary of your…

Seedlings Magazine Seedlings Magazine publishes accepted work as a handmade book, writes PDR Lindsay-Salmon. It’s open to submissions year round and publish when they have sufficient work for an issue. Seedpod, is its new mini zine of nature art and writing, open to submissions year round and publishing when they have sufficient work for an issue. Artists note the colour limits in the guidelines. Submit spersonal writing about what ‘natural’ means to you. The team are particularly interested ‘in nature writing, queer pieces, microfiction and interesting use of form.’ For poetry submit one to five poems under 22 lines, including line breaks. For prose, fiction send stories under 1,000 words. Non-fiction as essays and journalism should be brief and closely associated with the team’s ethos and values, ‘with a touch…

The Fish Poetry Prize 2026 The Fish Poetry Prize is inviting entries of original, unpublished poems on any theme and in any style, up to 60 lines. There is a first prize of €1,000. The second prize is a Fish Writing Course and €300, and a third prize of €300. The top ten poems will be published in the Fish Anthology 2026 and the writers will be invited to read at the launch during the West Cork Literary Festival in July 2026. The judge is Billy Collins. The entry fee is €16 for the first poem and €11 for any subsequent entries. The closing date is 31 March. Website: https://www.fishpublishing.com/competition/poetry-contest/ The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society Open Poetry Competition 2026 The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society is inviting entries of…

The word ‘writing’ is very often used in conjunction with the word ‘creative’. What’s more, writers spend a lot of time thinking about what to write. Idea generation is commonly regarded as a mysterious process with many people saying they do not really know where ideas come from. This is much commented on, for example legionary entertainer Joyce Grenville famously said: If I knew where my inspiration came from, I would go there again. Creativity is obviously needed in fiction, but non-fiction also needs some too, and thus travel writing is a creative process. And a part of that is thinking of topics to write about. Sometimes new things suggest themselves because, well, they are just new. New visa regulations are announced, a new hotel opens, a new route is…

Cherry formerly ran her own business in Human Resources and started writing seriously after her children left home. Cherry has a first degree in Psychology and lives in Wiltshire with her two cats. She is currently studying for an MA in Creative Writing at Hull University. She writes short pieces of fiction and is working on a speculative fiction novel. When she is not writing, she is usually working on a DIY project or planning a travel trip. “Are you there?” I hear the uncertainty in my voice. “I’m okay.” It doesn’t sound like him at all. His usually warm tones are tinged with a tinny percussion. Sounds must amplify in the darkness. I run my hands against the black fabric: the blindfold is absolute. It had been my idea…