Keep writing and keep the faith

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.

On Saturday morning I will arise and go to the Phoenix Park at ridiculous o’clock along with friends and many hundreds of others to take part in the Pieta House Darkness Into Light 5k walk/run/whatever you are having yourself.

For anyone who wishes to give to this excellent cause there is an option here called “Wish I Could Make It” where a person who is not walking can donate.

Pieta House i s a dedicated suicide and self-harm prevention organisation which organises free counselling sessions and has centres in Dublin and Limerick. I had the pleasure of fundraising for them before in 2008. They really are wonderful people.

I have recently stated that in order for people to have enough hope to stay resilient through challenges to their mental health, it is important that those who penalise or behave cruelly towards such people, in work or life, be shamed by our leaders and by society for their actions. I continue to maintain that belief. Ours is a nation with too much inherited shame and darkness. I hope this symbolic walk into light will soon become a real one.

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.

Details here.

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!

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.

My professional day-job blog / aide-memoire is here and I will quote a little from it:

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Well I failed to win anything AGAIN. I think I will just keep coming back until I embarrass them into giving me keep-away money

However I had the pleasure of meeting Barbara Tarrant, who won in the First Fiction category with her story “Baby”, which was read out by an actress and sounded like a cracking good read. The story was about the unspoken conflicts caused by a girl being forced to give up her child for adoption 26 years ago. Which sounded grim, but the dialogue was spot-on. The Emerging Fiction was won by Viv McDade, who wrote a dialogue-style story about jobs and emigration called “Waiting for Chile”, while the Poetry and Overall winner was Niamh Boyce for her poem “Kitty”, about the attempt to capture the memory of an aunt who had died. Congratulations to all concerned and enjoy spending the money

I also met Elizabeth Brennan, Mick Ransford Doyle, Máire T. Robinson and Monica with her husband Tom whose last name has flown out of my head, apologies. Then we had some pink drinks. Pleasure meeting you all! Before going out I got a lovely message from Rita Jacob wishing me good luck – she competed in a previous year. Thank you Rita!

My companion for the evening took beautiful photos of the interior of the French embassy/residence, which is what one can call VERY “well-appointed” indeed. Vast bay windows, fireplaces, mantelpieces with massive clocks, candles in jars on granite steps outside and a huge back garden. The above picture is one of hers.

I would have liked to have won something but am pleased with my work and that’s the main thing. I thanked the judges – Giles Foden, Deirdre Purcell and Ciaran Carty – for their kind consideration and they were very pleasant to me. I smiled when Deirdre Purcell summed up my story (she did a summary for all six in my category) and said, “This story is open-ended…” and I was thinking: Go on, say it, say the H word, you know you want to”

(blame Derek Flynn. He does it all the time, albeit somewhat better than me!)

A week ago I composed a song called “Because I Am a Girl”. I set it down using homegrown Audacity software, a piano, and some overlaid vocals in 3-part harmony. I make no claims, whatsoever, for my singing abilities. God gave me my voice to add volume to a group, not to feature in any solo and I apologise in advance for that. But I am pleased enough with the song itself.

Subject matter should be clear enough from context. I’m a bit nervous of category tagging it lest They should be hovering. ETA. Ah, to hell with it.

Because I Am a Girl by Susan Lanigan

If you are based somewhere near the Pale and can get to Dublin on the evening of Wednesday 16 May, The Big Smoke Writing Factory co-operative are holding a Flash Fiction Reading Event in The Back Loft Studio. They are selecting stories sent in by emerging writers (published eligible too!) of up to 500 words. No money for it, but sounds like a fun event and chance to network a little and meet the Big Smoke folks. I haven’t met them but it seems like a very good outfit.

Berlin, Berlin

Also this one via Máire T. Robinson’s blog – am looking forward to meeting Máire herself on Tuesday at the Hennessy drinky thing – a short story competition based around a bookshop in Berlin. 5,000-word limit, closing date 1 May. I’d love to enter – any excuse to go to Berlin, even though there’s no money involved, though some other good prizes – but I have a self-imposed deadline to finish Draft 2 of this flippin’ novel by the first week in May so will be up to my tonsils in that.