Writing Magazine April 2022

Competitions everywhere! And that’s just my desk. Yes, it’s that time of year again, when you frantically turn to the centre pages of this month’s Writing Magazine for your bumper competitions listing. (And we breathe a collective sigh of relief that we’ve ticked off the biggest organisational nightmare of the year.) But don’t skip past all our other articles in your urge to start scoring some wins – you might miss some essential reads on the way. If you are in a competition mindset, you will certainly want to take in the advice from Searchlight Awards founder Kim Donovan on how to improve your chances of success, not to mention some of our featured authors whose paths to publication involved some notable prize victories along the way. • Speaking of competitions, apologies to…

WORDLE HURDLE? Writers love words, and solving a simple word puzzle seems like a great way to get the brain cells firing before settling down to work. Hence the success of internet phenomenon Wordle. Chances are you hadn’t heard of it until January, yet now creator Josh Wardle (yes, the game’s name is a pun on his name) has sold it to the New York Times for a low seven figure sum. Wordle was only launched in mid-October last year, Wardle having originally developed it as something for himself and his partner, Palak Shah, to play during lockdown – though Wardle did create a prototype of a similar game in 2013, and it must be said, Wordle has a lot in common with one of the rounds in the short lived 1988…

DEFINING SUCCESS Am I a writer? Am I a success? I’m a single mother of two. I recently left a career, working full-time (at the very least) in addition to running a household and parenting my daughters. I was a success. I had studied for three years at a good university to enter this career. I was also stressed, unhappy and run into the ground. All I thought about was writing. With my full-time job, I didn’t have the time or energy. Without my job I could not pay the bills. Rock, hard place, you know the story. My mental health was severely declining and I made the decision to leave my ‘successful career’. I got a part time job in a café, a lovely lively hub of social activity. I work…

In the February issue, was delighted to read Diana Perry’s letter of appreciation of Simon Whaley’s advice about article writing, Pitch Perfect (WM Dec 2021). Many years ago I attended a conference in Wales at which Simon was speaking. He drummed in to us the importance of pitch, targeting, matching style and tone to the publication and being aware of the readership. I came home and followed his advice. Many acceptances of articles for national and local magazines followed. They were picked up by a local editor and this resulted in several local history books. More books, features, lectures and broadcasts have followed and I am still very busy.…

Helen Corner-Bryant’s article ‘All about the edits’ (WM Feb) clarified something that had been puzzling me for some time. I knew that editing and proof reading were not the same thing and that there were layers of editing I knew nothing about but it finally dawned on me why some books, both traditionally and self published, were so unsatisfactory. We self publishers always hope that having a beta reader (or two) and a proof reader is sufficient. We expect to be able to read through our own work four or five times and find the errors, but reading about the different forms of editing made me realise we probably don’t have the level of expertise necessary. I have found both continuity errors and name change errors in books I have published…

My prized possession of January 2022 is to finally be able to hold a copy of WM, smell the pages and realise how much I’ve missed travelling the last two years! I write all the way across from Mumbai, India and can’t stop going through the three copies I ordered through a friend and the journey these (September, November & December 2021) magazines have made via the various restrictions, lockdowns and uncertainties. (The British Library in New Delhi would have had these copies but I’ve not been able to make it there either). I can’t agree more with Helen Gaen’s letter in the December edition. How I’ve longed for the human connections these two years and something so small like having my own physical copy of WM - it’s as…