23 September 2013 - What's new
23 September 2013
- The Man Booker Prize's decision to accept novels from American authors, providing that they are published in the UK, has been arrived at after a series of consultations lasting over the last eighteen months. How they could have expected to keep their ruminations quiet is not clear. News Review looks at changes to what is probably the world's best-known literary fiction prize.
- Our Wriitng Opportunity this week is the Davy Byrnes Short Story Award 2014, for those writers in Ireland or northern Ireland, closing on 3 February. There's €15,000 to the winning author, and €1,000 to five runners-up.
- 'I just want to tell a good story so I always ask myself, are these people real to me? The things I write about are completely removed from my own life, but people want to know the characters better. There are schools of thought that dispense with all that now, but I think if there are strong characters, people want to know more...' Ruth Rendell in our Comment column.
- Here are links to two interesting articles on the Authors Licensing and Copying Society website: the new UK children's Laureate, Malorie Blackman, tells us about her first three months in the post and the mission she has undertaken, and The Self-publishing maze: More and more writers are now choosing to publish for themselves. But is it really as easy as all that? Caroline Sanderson finds out.
- To go alongsie our new Poetry Collection Editing service, there's Getting your Poetry published and 101 ways to make poems sell.
- Oxford Author courses are offering £10 off their next two courses to writers who use the WritersServices website. Braving the new world of publishing and How to self-publish are on the 19th and 20th October.
- 'Plotting isn't like sex, because you can go back and adjust it afterwards. Whether you plan your story beforehand or not, if the climax turns out to be the revelation that the mad professor's anti-gravity device actually works, you must go back and silently delete all those flying cars buzzing around the city on page one. Iin our Writers' Quotes.
