The Joy of Writing (and Singing, and Campaigning)

and that will explain website oddness of last while. Apologies to everyone for inconvenience caused by as you can see by the comments it was a bit relentless.

Keep writing and keep the faith

This one via Nuala ní Conchúir – thanks Nuala!

Labello Press Gem Street Competition – upper word limit 12,000 (very high) – fee €10 – guidelines here. Closing date December so pretty far off.

One I only saw now and wish I’d seen earlier – Cavan County Council are running a competition for a 2,000 word story linked somehow to Dún na Rí Forest Park. Online entry is possible, but – argh – the deadline is next Thursday. If you’ve something you can polish up, have a look here: http://www.cavanarts.ie/Default.aspx?StructureID_str=6&guid=36 (If link doesn’t work, send a 2,000 word story to info@cavanarts.ie that should do it. Name not on story, natch.) Prize €500.

And finally – Anam Cara Retreats are running another flash fiction competition. Upper word limit 500, deadline 16 June. Prize is a ten-day residency at the centre. More details on the website.

First the competition, courtesy of the folks over at Writing4All.ie. A bit like Global Short Stories in the UK and handy in that you don’t have to wait for ages for the results:

A monthly competition for short stories (3000 words max).

Entry: €3 to enter one story, €5 to enter two stories.

Prize: €100; winning stories published in the Writing4all: Best of 2012 Anthology.

Link here

And, the event:

Saturday, 12th May at The Wexford Arts Centre at 8pm, Adm €10. For the Fly By Night Cabaret, it’s our honour to be “in cahoots” with Ireland’s premier literary journal, The Stinging Fly, as part of their national tour.

In the line-up will be Mary Costello, whose first book of stories, The China Factory, has just been published by Stinging Fly Press; Enniscorthy fiction writer Paul O’Reilly, who has a story in Stinging Fly’s Spring 2012 issue and others.

I love love love the Cáca Milis Festival and hope I’ll be able to make it down on the Saturday. For eating around Wexford I recommend the Yard restaurant…gorgeous

For those who haven’t seen my last post about mental health and the ongoing problem of encouraging openness in a closed society, do have a look and tell me your thoughts on the matter, I would be interested to hear.

At last! A flash fiction competition which is local, looks for a reasonable length story and has no connection whatsoever with Terry Sodding Prone or Anton Expletive Deleted Savage or any of their relatives, works and promises. Prizes not too bad, not massive but respectable. Entry by e-mail, thankfully!

Details on the website including link to entry form

Entries must be no longer than 500 words and the word “library” should appear somewhere in the text.

Email submissions to libraryculture@dlrcoco.ie by 23rd May 2012.

So there you go!

Dear writers, I am going to go on the assumption that for most of you writing is not a full time gig. Certainly isn’t for me, though I got some nice and quite considerable pocket money from Nature and EQMM last year. But alas work on the novel and failed shortlistings have meant that I’ve been submitting very little and earning just about zero. So, like many others out there, I have (partly by the grace of God, partly by my own training) a Day Job.

It’s odd, discussing the day job in a writer’s forum or blog; one almost feels as if they’re admitting a hidden, secret side. Steven King says that readers love reading about work. They might make an exception for mine as it’s not all that comprehensible to anyone outside the job spec and it’s hard (for me anyway) to devise plots around it – unlike law or medicine, which are very plottable professions! My Hennessy-shortlisted story is the one exception to my difficulty in that I was able to refer to some programming concepts in it. But anyway. Tell me about your day jobs, or if you’re unemployed or out of the workforce for family reasons – as I was (the former) for quite some considerable time before I trained up and found a new niche – your usual day job. Mine’s under the cut to avoid being boring.
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