Writing Opportunity: The Tibor Jones Pageturner Prize

So, it's Friday. Thank God it's Friday. Here's some prize you may be interested in...if you have an unpublished book.

The Tibor Jones Pageturner Prize was born out of a desire to discover and promote new and exciting writers, to celebrate compelling new voices in fiction. Entrants for the prize must have completed, or be close to completing, a novel. The fiction can embrace any genre, the story and the writing should be distinctive, absorbing and, above all, Pageturning.

The winner will receive representation plus £1000, and will be announced at the 2011 London Book Fair.

All submissions must be sent via email to pageturner@tiborjones.com.

The Rules: 

1. Entries for the 2011 Tibor Jones Pageturner Prize can be submitted from Tuesday 4th January 2011 until Tuesday 8th March 2011. Any novel submitted after the deadline will not be eligible for entry.
2.  A shortlist will be released on Monday 21st March 2011.
3.  The competition is open to writers of any nationality writing in English. There is no restriction on theme or style.
4. You may enter multiple times but novels will be considered as separate entries so typically a single submission of your strongest pageturner is preferable.
5. The winning novel must not have been published previously in any form. If you enter your novel in other competitions and you win, please notify us and withdraw your submission.

Deadline: 8 March 2011

Check here for more information. All the best!

Writing Lesson: Time and Place in a Story

The plot and the characters are important; the setting equally is. There are several times when the setting itself could be as strong as a character with a personality in the text. When thinking about the setting of a work, you may ask the following questions:

• When does the story take place? What time of the year of the day is it? (If it’s night, don’t make it seem as if your character is dressed up to go for work except they are on night shift!)
• Does the weather play a meaningful role in the story? (Please do not go around writing about summers and winters when your characters are in Nigeria)
• Where does the story take place? A physical known place or does it exist only in your imagination? (If it’s the latter, the more reason you should make it so believable that the reader wants to pay a visit!)
• Does the setting have a major role to play in the story? Does a change in setting it alter a character’s life or progress action?

Now, start painting those settings!

Why Write?

It is a new week. May this week bring you good!

On Facebook last week, my friend, Adebola Rayo went down memory lane with a nursery rhyme as her status “Sandalily Sandalily…I’m a teacher in my country…I’m a lawyer…I’m a Doctor” I sang that song as a child, knapsack on my back, 50k (the grey coin with a palm tree representing the country’s buoyant agriculture) in hand and dreams of a bright future. As a child (in Nigeria), you either dreamt of being a doctor, lawyer or accountant. Nothing more. That day, I asked: what would a writer look like? She replied: "dada hair, nicotine stained fingers, dark shadows from sleeplessness, cup of coffee in your hand" (She joked) Maybe, many parents wanted to prevent their children from such dark fates. So, Sandalilly, we all sang and acted our dreams...

You are a writer in your country...everybody knows you well (No!)

Only few writers ever get popular...at least if we look at the titles that come out every year. Paupers, many writers. Yes, that’s the stereotypical image…why write? And yes, I forget to add that I fear that writing is fast becoming a “last resort.” Yes, you heard me…like teaching. Nobody wants to teach. And people just think: “Oh yes, I think that I can write…let's dust up those skills!” It's an easy thing to say rather than "I'm in the favour market." Some just need to add writer to their list of titles. It's hip, isn't it? Only that they do not have any piece of writing to their names, safe the blog posts.  I blog, therefore I am a writer! Now, I agree there are some bloggers who write very well. Time, I guess would make it known that not everyone that writes is a writer. 

Okay, now this post is just a question: why write? Out of love for writing, necessity, or it’s your job…what you do for survival. Writing is not just some divine gift…that comes on you like the coming of the Spirit on the Disciples. Neither is it only a nudge in the deep of the night of a small voice in your ears. Yes, there is the muse and all that gibberish. But it’s nothing lest you put pen to paper!

Tell us: Why write?

N.B. Read on why Chioma Iwunze Writes on her Blog

Writing Opportunity

If you are a writer in a school in Britain? This may be a chance you want to grab.

Are you a student writer? Would you like to win £1,000, a trip to the Norman Mailer Writer's Colony and the chance to have your work published in British GQ?  Announcing the British GQ Norman Mailer Student Writing Award 2011.

The Winner

The winner will recieve a £1,000 cash prize, have his or her work published in a future issue of British GQ and be invited to spend a month in the summer of 2011 at the Norman Mailer Writers Colony, a residential educational centre based at the legendary author's former home in Provincetown, Massachusetts. All travel, accommodation and expenses will be covered.

About the Norman Mailer Writers Colony

The purpose of the colony is to nurture the development of future writers by using Norman Mailer's contributions to literary culture as a guiding force. Norman Mailer (1923-2007) was a giant of American letters, the author of more than 40 books, including The Naked And The Dead; The Armies Of The Night; The Fight; Tough Guys Don't Dance and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Executioner's Song.

How it works

Entries, which must be no longer than 3,000 words, will be accepted by email only to gqmaileraward@condenast.co.uk before 31 March 2011. All entrants must be current students at British educational establishments. All entries must be original nonfiction. Students may submit work in any of the many sub-genres of creative non-fiction: memoir or autobiography, essay, literary journalism, profiles of people and places, and so on. Whatever its subject, the best work will be true material presented with compelling literary merit. Entries must be submitted as MS Word documents and should be double-spaced. All entries must include name, home address, name of college/university, e-mail address and phone number, including mobile phone.

More info here. Read last year's winning article here. Norman Mailer's Writing Tips

It's February Baby!

First we peeped at 2011. Wake up, January, 2011 is over...February has come. Maybe you have broken many of your promises, strayed off many of your resolution...don't beat yourself for too long. Bookaholic Blog says try again, re-write that story, read that book, adhere to that deadline. Start on time. There is still time. 


May February bring you love ;) Bookaholic Blog brings you writing news :-)


World Bank 2011 Essay Competition 

Young people are on the move. Improvements in transportation, technology development and increased international trade, as well as issues such as unemployment, war, health and economic hardship have prompted more young people to migrate within and across national borders in search of work, education and a better quality of life. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) estimates that young people between 15 and 30 years of age account for about one-third of all migrants

Nearly all young people are affected by migration in some way. Some are migrants themselves or are considering migrating abroad or within their home country. Others experience migration through the departure of friends or family members, and still others, in receiving countries, encounter the political debate on immigration and integration policies in their country and may experience cohabitation with new immigrants. Young people are major stakeholders in migration and yet youth are largely absent in the debate on international migration policies and the effects of migration on development.

Deadline: March 17, 2011. More info here.

You Tell Me: War of Forms

This post is based on observations. Observations only! And yes, I hate categorisations...there are many of them in the post...for the purpose of the post ;)

Plato would not welcome poets in his Republic "Having defined justice and established it as the greatest good, he banishes poets from his city. Poets, he claims, appeal to the basest part of the soul by imitating unjust inclinations. By encouraging us to indulge ignoble emotions in sympathy with the characters we hear about, poetry encourages us to indulge these emotions in life. Poetry, in sum, makes us unjust." 

Thus began the war between genres: poetry vs drama, prose vs poetry; Literature with the Big L (what some call literary literature) vs Literature with the small l (pulp literature, city lit, chick lit; whatever you call it!)

It is important to know that these genres are unique in themselves. The writer of the small L also is not lesser in value to the writer of the Big L...they are writing stories, maybe stories of the same people in different ways. All writing does not have to be about social issues like corruption, neo-colonialism, war, HIV/AIDS and all the deep dark things...I wonder if there is any such thing as lesser writing or higher writing? I wonder how those who make those generalisations arrive at their standards for what is high and what is low? Pray tell...

I also wonder why poets think that novelists are failed poets. Really? Have you read Toni Morrison and realise the sweet poetry than that which laces her words? Have you watched Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman and noticed the ]brilliant use of poetry? Don't you think that these genres intersect at different points? That many writers set out writing poetry and end up with fiction does not mean they are failed poets...it could only mean they are found a better love through a first love?

The truth is each writing is a different form with different requirements. Forget all the categorisations, I think the only one that exists is between good and bad writing.

And maybe Richard Rhodes puts it best in his book "How To Write": "Civilisation won't collapse if people write differently...many critics who disdain forms of writing they consider vulgar are simply intellectually provincial. Others cling to a romantic belief that writing is a kind of secular revelation. It may be, but the oracle speaks through many forms."

That seems to capture it! 

What say you?

iRead

How is the weekend going? Here is a list of links you can go for interesting reads. Have a great week ahead!

Brittle Paper: a bi-weekly blog that features writings inspired by literature and philosophy. Brittle Paper is what happens when a nibble of philosophy here and a crumb of literary theory there unite in the crucible of the author’s creative mind.

WritersAfrika: For the latest opportunities in writing and the academia. Really, we still don't know how they get their info...sure they'd be good literary FBI. They gather information, very well. 

Ikhide Ikheloa's Latest Blogpost on Next:  Read, read and read some more. That's Ikhide's advice to budding writers. This is a very well-written one. Plus you have a link to the hottest literary websites around. All in one article.

Daily News and Analysis' Interview with Orhan Pamuk: "When I write about love, the critics in the US and Britain say that this Turkish writer writes very interesting things about Turkish love. Why can't love be general? I am always resentful and angry of this attempt to narrow me and my capacity to experience this humanity. When non-Western authors express this humanity through their work their humanity is reduced to their nation's humanity," Another article about the same event here.

How Novels Came to terms with the Internet, Guardian UK Article: "The further literature is driven to the outskirts of the culture, the more it is cherished as a sanctuary from everything coarse, shallow and meretricious in that culture. It is the chapel of profundity, and about as lively and well visited as a bricks-and-mortar chapel to boot. Literature is where you retreat when you're sick of celebrity divorces, political mudslinging, office intrigues, trials of the century, new Apple products, internet flame wars, sexting and X Factor contestants – in short, everything that everybody else spends most of their time thinking and talking about. "