The story will also be
published in a future issue of firstwriter.magazine, and
the winner will also receive a firstwriter.com voucher worth
£20 / $30 – as will the ten Special
Commendations:
Liz Kenney, United Kingdom, "An
Inhospitable Place";
Ben Harpwood, United Kingdom,
"Raspberry Picking";
Jonathan Stone, United Kingdom,
"The Wax Crayons";
Jacqueline Winn, Australia,
"Sing With Me, Peg";
Mark Frankel, United Kingdom, "A
Bottle of Chardonnay";
Gemma Wise, United Kingdom, "It
Felt Like Waking Up";
Elisabeth Johansson, Sweden,
"The Living Room";
Bernard Bourdeau, United States,
"The Jump";
Shaun El-Ters, United States,
"Bailey in the Truck";
Andrew White, United Kingdom,
"Pirates and Mermaids".
newwritersebooks4u.com
- A new sales website created by
Jayne & Terry Mason to enable new writers
struggling to find a publisher in the present
economic climate a way to potentially bring
their work to market.
This
is not vanity publishing and we will not ask you
for money, quite the reverse in fact. Check
out our website for details.newwritersebooks4u.com
firstwriter.magazine
Issue 15: Pastures New The latest issue of firstwriter.magazine has also
just been released, featuring quality fiction and poetry
submitted from around the world, plus your first chance to see
not just the winning poems from our Seventh International
Poetry Competition, but also all ten Special Commendations.
To view the magazine click
here. To enter your work in our Eighth International
Poetry Competitionclick
here.
All those whose
work has been included in issue 15 have now been notified, so if
you submitted work for issue 15 and have not received
notification of inclusion then, regrettably, on this occasion
your submission was not successful. Please do feel free to try
again, however, through www.firstwriter.com/Magazine.
We have now begun accepting submissions for Issue 17.
Creativity is a subtle and magnificent dance between the rational and the
intuitive, between the left and right parts of the brains, between technique
and imagination. Both partners in this dance are absolutely necessary and
are needed in equal proportion, which means that imagination is not more
important than technique and visa versa.
If you only live in the imagination, you will never get
organised, you will never complete your story. However, if you start from the rational, linear,
organisational part of the process, (i.e. Gotta have the perfect opening
sentence and first paragraph… better yet, an outline…) you will never fall
into the rich, passionate cosmic landscape of the imagination where anything
is possible.
Overwhelming, the main problem I have seen in my thirty years of teaching
writing is over-dependence on the rational part of the equation. People want
to get the story written and "get it out". They want to leapfrog the
process, get the words down on the page and finish the story. Not that there
is anything wrong with finishing your story! There's not. It is a great
accomplishment, one to be celebrated, regardless of whether or not the story
or book ever gets accepted for publication! However, it is in the writing
that the writer experiences the deeper life-enhancing journey of creativity.
There are so many examples of ways we short-cut the gifts the creative
process offers. Take, for example, the adage, "Write what you
know". If you write from what you know, if you remain slavish to the facts of what
happened, you are writing out of your conscious mind and will remain stuck
in the straightjacket of your conscious perception of
"reality". This is contradictory to creativity which, by definitions, is brings into existence
that which has not been before.
That said, there is nothing wrong with using your life or any aspect of your
experiences as a jumping off point or a doorway into the unconscious. The
key is not to be slavish to the known. Rather we need to have our writer's
antenna on the lookout for the doorway into the unknown and the unseen.
Gertrude Stein put it this way: "You cannot go into the womb to form the
child... What will be best in it (your writing) is what your really do not
know now. If you knew it all it would not be creation but dictation."
About the author Emily
Hanlon has been a writing coach for over thirty years. She
demystifies the writing process with her two pronged approach of
teaching technique and unleashing creativity. In addition to
private coaching, she offers, workshops, retreats, teleseminars
and teleworkshops. Her novel, Petersburg, reached the
best sellers list in England. In addition to five other works of
fiction, she has written a book on writing, The Art of
Fiction Writing or How to Fall Down the Rabbit Hole Without
Really Trying. Her websites are: http://www.thefictionwritersjourney.com and
http://www.creativesoulworks.com.
fwn
uses English spelling conventions.
Spellings such as "realise"
"colour", "theatre",
"cancelled", etc.
differ from other spelling conventions
but are nonetheless correct.
News:
Publisher
seeks short stories for anthology Bridge House Publishing are seeking
short stories their first anthology for
charity, being launched in support of
the Born Free Foundation.
Stories
should be between 2,000 and 8,000 words,
aimed at adults, with an animal as the
central character / point of view.
The
deadline for submissions is November 30,
2009. For more details, click
here
Power
of Words Conference The Power of Words Conference has
been organised by the Transformative
Language Network, and is set to run
between September 3 and 7, 2009, in
Plainfield, VT.
The
conference seeks to explore
how we use words -- written,spoken or sung -- to make
community, deepen healing, witness one
another, wake ourselves up, and foster
empowerment and transformation.
Poetry
competition for free magazine Kudos is offering a free copy
of the magazine for the best haiku,
quatrain, or limerick incorporating the words
"Manga Jiman" submitted by
email before July 31, 2009. The best
entries may be considered for
publication in Orbis.
firstwriter.magazine
Issue 15: Pastures New
