In this episode we cover: 

• What the Kindle Storyteller Competition is
• What the judges are looking for
• Storyteller success stories
• How to increase your visibility on Amazon
• Publishing mistakes to avoid

This week’s question is: Do you enter competitions?

Recommendation of the week is: The Girls I’ve Been by Tess Sharpe

Apple

Kobo

Amazon UK

Amazon USA

***This show uses affiliate links

Links and events I mentioned are:

Unstoppable Authors ep 100 – Sustaining a Writing Career with the Right Mindset

Facebook Live: 29th July 8pm BST 

Your Side Characters and You LIVES: 8pm (BST) every night from the 30th July on my instagram 

Preorder Bonus

Find out more about Kindle Storyteller here.

Rebel of the Week is: Shay Raby

If you’d like to be a Rebel of the week please do send in your story, it can be any kind of rebellion. You can email your rebel story to rebelauthorpodcast@gmail.com or instagram me @sachablackauthor

1 new patron this week, welcome and thank you to Charlotte Platt. A big thank you to my existing patrons too. If you’d like to support the show, and get early access to all the episodes as well as bonus content you can from as little as $2 a month by visiting: www.patreon.com/sachablack

The post 096 How to Win Amazon Kindle Storyteller Competition with Darren Hardy appeared first on Sacha Black.

But lately, I’ve had to weep myself to sleep over the number of writers who have told me they never enter competitions because either: they don’t know how to find them or didn’t know so many existed.

*Tut*

Seriously?! Don’t make me use Caps. The fastest way to get recognition, more often than not is through competitions. The road to traditional publishing (if that’s where you want to go) is like the final fight in Lord of The Rings – fucking endless. Don’t take for granted the ease of entering competitions. Most of you enter weekly writing challenges, like my writespiration, or Esther’s or Charli’s. So there’s actually no excuse.

If you don’t can’t think of shorts or flash for comps then there are plenty of comps for novels too.

Before I give you the list of comps, here’s my top tips for finding competitions:

12 TOP TIPS For Finding Writing Competitions

1 – Nothing like a good old google…!

2 – Keep a bookmarks folder dedicated to writing competitions so you can easily find them

3 – Keep a record of the competitions you enter, with entry date, date of results, the title of your story and the price of entry

4 – Subscribe to my newsletter as each month I will bring you a selection of writing competitions ending in the following month.

5 – Subscribe to Hope Clark Funds for Writers – I know, another newsletter, try not to grumble though this newsletter is chock full of competitions, agents and publishing houses looking for writers, retreats and much more.

6 – Subscribe to Adam Cohen – Winning Writers, because everyone likes a bargain. This website specialises in FREE writing competitions, and most of them have seriously juicy cash prizes.

7 – Follow Esther, cause every Wednesday she posts a new writers market.

8 – Follow Rachel as she does a monthly post on writing competitions.

9 – I don’t know what magazine’s you get overseas but in the UK there are a handful of writers magazines, in particular Writing Magazine, does a bumper edition in the new year with an entire extra magazine with competitions laid out for the whole year.

10 – Check writing magazines’ websites, they hold writing competitions every month and always with cash prizes, like this magazine and this one.

11 – Check womens’ weekly magazines, often they have competitions too.

12 – Google search for ‘Lists’ of writing competitions like Almond Press.

For the sake of saving my aching fingers from repeating words, format for the competitions listed below is:

Competition name and link, Deadline, Word Count, Entry Fee, Prizes in order of 1st, 2nd, 3rd

No Way Out, March 30th (hurry last call), 700 words, £3.50, Prizes 1st £500, 2nd £300, 3rd £200

Honeyed Quill, 31st March (hurry last call), 100-500 words, $15, Prizes $250, $50, $25

Tethered by Letters, 31st March (hurry last call), 750 words, $10, Prizes $300

 One of my faves:

Less Than 100 Words – Every Two Weeks, 100 words, 99p, Prize £20

Writing Magazine, 14th April, 750 words, £5, Prizes £200 £50

MASH, 15th April, 500 words with key words, FREE, Prize $100

Brentwood Writers Circle, 30th April, 75 words, £2, Prizes £40, £20, £15

Just 100 words, Daily, 100 words, $5 then $2 (after first entry), Prizes $50

National Association of Writers’ Groups, rolling comp closes and re opens every 100 entries, 100 words exactly, £3, Prizes £75, £25

Writers Bureau Flash Fiction Competition, 30th April, 500 words, £5, Prizes £300 + course, £200, £100

Writestars’ Short Story, 30th April, 250 words, £3.50, Prizes £100 plus goodies

Exeter Flash, 30th April, 250 words, £4, Prizes £150 £100 £50

The Page is Printed, 6 May, 1 Page, £5, Prizes 4x £75

Esther Newton, 31st May, 100 words,  £2 for up to two stories, Prizes 1st £25, 2nd £15, 3rd £10

Bridport Prize, 31st May, 250, £7, Prizes £1000 £500 £250 plus 3x £25 highly commended

Wow! 1000 Word, 31st May, 1000 words, £5, Prizes £200, £100, 50

1000 Word Challenge, Quarterly themed, 1000 words, £5, Prizes, £100, £50, £25

Bath Flash Fiction, 12th June, £9, Prizes, £1000 £300 £100

Brilliant Flash Fiction, 15th June, 750 words, Free, €50, €25, €15

Flash 500, 30th June, 30th Sept, 31st Dec, 500 words, £5, Prizes £300 £100 £50

Fiction Desk, 30th June, 250-1000words , £TBC, £TBC but last year £300 £100 & £50. Subscribe for updates on comp opening.

Ink Tears, 31 July, 500, £3, Prizes £250 £50 and 4x £25

Early Works ,  31st August, 100 words,  £3, Prizes £100

ELLE Talent Contest, 14th Sept, 700 words, Free, Prizes TBC (this isn’t open yet, but will be later in the year)

Chorleywood Literary Festival, 800 words, £5, Prizes £50 £25 (use link but actual website is down at the moment)

Mere Literary Festival, 24th Sept, 350 words plus key phrase released on 16th Sept – timed competition – open for one week only, £2, Prizes £60 £30

RW Flash, 30th Sept, 500 Words, £10, Prizes £250, £100, £75, £15

RW Monthly Themed, Last Day of Each Month, £5, Prizes £50 £25

Writers Forum, Monthly – must check mag for theme details, £5, Prizes £100 plus publication

Fish – This one has closed, however it is annual so check it out next year, 300 words, £14, Prizes €1000

If you thought this post was handy, why not subscribe to my newsletter now, for more of the same?

Have you found any other flash fiction writing competitions? If so let me know in the comments. What competitions do you enter?

The post 30 Flash Fiction Writing Competitions With Cash Prizes appeared first on Sacha Black.

We constantly worry about how to write better. But actually, there’s a benefit to being able to recognise when you have written badly. And sometimes it’s fun to just reel off a load of codswallop.

This week, your challenge is to write the WORST opening line you can. Give it your best, and produce your worst!

Because this is an actual competition, The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest and I am secretly amused by all the nonsense that is to come, I am going to pick a winner… The winner will be announced in next weeks writespiration, the deadline is Sunday 31st May.

If you fancy it, why not submit to the real competition? – their deadlines the June 30th.

here’s mine, and it’s definitely bad!:

It stunk like rotten putrid gone off eggs but dear old mumsy with her tatty dirty apron thought the round pancakes were a success – I really really didn’t want to eat them – But decided not to offend her and held my bulbous nose and puckered up my reluctant lips, bottoms up, I thought.

***

Now to last weeks writespiration. First the lovely Jane who wrote a stunning poem that was originally published in the Ogham Stone Literary Journal. You can find the post on her website here.

Often at the turning of the year,

When the grass is bright and damp with autumn rain,

And last buds open with the failing sun,

I listen to the windsong in the trees.

When white-winged gulls blow in from stormy seas,

And the tang of salt hangs heavy in the air,

I hear the waves break on a lonely strand,

And taste the smoke and ash in long-dead hearths.

When only starlight guides the homing geese,

Their booming voices singing sailors’ songs,

I hear the echo from the vaulted sky,

And feel the northlands in their beating wings.

But when the blackbird sings his end of summer song,

And the white gull skims the restless ocean foam,

The whispering comes from deep in blood and bone,

The wind, the stars, the heart’s pulse call me home.

***

Ali submitted an emotional entry. It really makes you feel her longing for a sense of belonging:

Their eyes hook into my back like claws as I pass by. They keep their thoughts locked and silent in their heads, but their faces smoulder with resentment, distrust. They bite back the words but their message burns into my skin just the same, “You don’t belong here.”

And they’re right. I don’t. But I won’t go back, I can never go back, though my heart yearns for home. Those like me, well, we’re not welcome anywhere.

For me, home is not bricks and mortar. It’s not tied up in four walls, anchored in place by geography, or a slot in the vastness of time. The home I long for is family, acceptance, love. Home is not where I came from, but perhaps where I’m travelling to.

***

Geoff entered this last minute flash, and what a piece it is, he created such a disturbed character crazed by his loss in so few words.

Home Cruel Home

It’s the feeling of the bricks, sort of not quite slimy to the touch. That’s what I remember. Derby smooth stone, someone told me and they’re right. It does have that same slippery texture. But it isn’t the same, feeling an abstract. There isn’t the connection to the place and time. When I leant my face against its soothing surface after the burning; the hardness when I pressed my hands against the bricks, trying to push through the wall as Jimmy held me back; the way my tears made the slippery surface glisten. I wanted to stick to that wall, melt into it, be part of it. I’m still not sure whose screams I remember from that day but I’m sure some of mine were trapped in those bricks. Jimmy told me they demolished the cottage – ‘unsafe’ he said. I think it’s because of the ghosts. There had to be, after that fire, after those deaths. For a long time I wanted one of those bricks; it was all I asked for, for Christmas, birthdays, certain it held some part, some essence. Jimmy says it was me asking for bricks that made dad lose patience, had me committed here. I’ve plenty of time to lean again the bricks in this place, plenty of time to remember, to hear the screams. When I get out, I’ll go back, get a brick and hold it to my cheek. Then I’ll be home again.

***

The post Writespiration #42 appeared first on Sacha Black.