Weeding out those writing opportunities!

Let me welcome our guest writer for November, with a blogpost about finding affordable opportunities for developing your craft. 

Written by Deborah Barry.

 The catalyst for rediscovering the craft 

2020 – lockdown year – I completed my Open University Modern Languages degree and rediscovered my love of writing along the way. Deprived of a graduation ceremony – the elation of seeing my short Spanish story entitled  Luna in print (Open University: A Multilingual Decameron) – was spine-tingling. Family and friends pestered – what was this traumatised child’s story about? So, the seeds of my debut novel Speak To Me were sewn. 

Arvon – offering equality 

 The Hurst 

A work colleague recommended the Arvon Organisation and I have nothing but praise, having  found their support invaluable as I navigated the world of writing as a fledging writer. A fully-inclusive charity that supports all writers – their only requirement is to love writing!  They offer a wealth of courses for writers at all stages of their development. There are both concession rates (around a third off the full course fee), grants (for those on low incomes) and occasionally fully-funded places for under-represented writers.  I applied and was very fortunate to secure a fully-funded place on a creative non-fiction tutored retreat at The Hurst in Shropshire.  The tutored retreat – offering a balance of structure and free time to write/rest – was ideal. Classes typically started at 10am with a coffee break and finished at 1pm.  All meals were provided, lunch is prepared by Arvon’s staff, all very healthy, using local ingredients. Supper is a team affair, with readings by one of the two tutors and a guest

speaker. Sharing our work on the last evening was daunting but so good for building your self-confidence as a writer. 

I have since returned to The Hurst for a Self-Editing course and Arvon

published my experience on their blogs: https://www.arvon.org/my-arvon-week-debi-barry/ One final point – the courses present an excellent networking opportunity – I am still in contact with a tutor who is a published author and her advice has been invaluable.  Also I’m still in touch with some of the writers I met.  It was both refreshing and soul-warming to know other writers suffer the same insecurities as you do!

 The Literary Consultancy is the main organisation behind the Free Reads scheme which is an Arts Council England funded initiative. Applications go through a regional writing partner, e.g. the National Centre for Writing, Arvon and Spread the Word. They offer a free initial manuscript appraisal they offer to talented writers from marginalised backgrounds  and under-represented groups.  If successful, an initial report on the first 15,000 words of your manuscript is provided.  They offer a 100% (and 2 at 50%) bursary on their 6-week Self Editing Fiction course, whichI found it hugely beneficial as I had my work assessed by an established crime writer who commented on all the key areas of writing a novel: theme(s), characterisation, plot (conflict, climax), voice, setting, POV (point of view) e.g. 1st, 2nd or 3rd person and dialogue.

I enjoyed working with Jon Barton, an award-winning author.  As well as 12 hours of live teaching online, I received a report ahead of my initial 1:1 session with Jon (based on a small sample of my writing). I was impressed with the level of detail Jon gave given the extract was small. His feedback was constructive and thought-provoking and will definitely help me in honing my manuscript to a submission standard.  A wealth of digital resources are available during and after the course has finished, which have proven extremely useful as I wrestle with my second draft.  The small group dynamic (maximum of 12 per course) also helped me work collaboratively with other writers which is sometimes difficult in the virtual world.  TLC offer a range of resources for writers – many of which are free to download; https://literaryconsultancy.co.uk/resources/. 

Calling female writers!

Mslexia magazine is a great resource, offering both support, courses as well as submission opportunities.  They offer bursary places on their on-line courses. I successfully applied for 

a place on an Editing Your Novel course a few years ago.  Although very intensive (9.00 – 5.00pm each day for a week) the quality of both the teaching and wealth of resources was very high. 

There is a quarterly magazine available – digital is available on a quarterly recurring subscription (£6.99) or one-year subscription (£22.99), the printed version is £32/year by DD on a recurring subscription or £42 as a one-off payment.

They offer membership to the Salon for an additional £10 which gives you free entry to specific submissions not available to ordinary members and a wealth of resources and writing tips. I’d definitely recommend subscribing!  https://mslexia.co.uk/

Be brave!

Five years on, I’m on my second draft and hope to send it out in 2026.  I have  a huge sense of accomplishment at the opportunities I’ve managed to secure over this time as well as an extensive writer’s tool-kit. 

Grants, free places,  bursaries, concessionary rates

These writing events can be expensive, but there are hundreds of opportunities to get a reduction on the full price.  The ones I’ve selected are based solely on my experience, but you may find useful: 

• Sounds obvious, but check the criteria carefully before you apply. There is nothing more frustrating than discovering you’ve spent a few hours writing a letter for a place and you’re not eligible. Some are restricted to specific under-represented groups (e.g. working-class writers, those with a disability, BAHME writers) or aimed at young people, students, for example. Be mindful of this. Self-published writers take care - some opportunities do accept submissions whilst others don’t.
• Be transparent – especially for financially-related opportunities. Increasingly, organisations want evidence of low-income especially if you have limited income but do not qualify for state benefits.  
• Treat each application with the same care and consideration you would devote to a job application. Do exactly what they ask for e.g. if they stipulate 3,000 words don’t send 4,000. Swot up on the organisation and ensure you tailor the application to align with their ethos. Make it personal, show how the opportunity would benefit you in terms of self-development and/or how it will help your writing.  Show your enthusiasm and passion but be yourself. 
• If you’re serious about getting published by whichever means and entering competitions, consider buying The Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook (published annually by Bloomsbury (https://www.writersandartists.co.uk/advice). It should be available in the Reference section of your local library or you can buy a good second-hand copy on one of the many online book providers. 
• Visit your local library – serendipity was smiling on me when I discovered a published writer Lynn Griffin was setting up a local writing group and the first meeting was on my birthday!  Two years later, our little group is still going strong, and I find a tremendous support. It has brought me both the trust and friendship of fellow writers as well as the expertise and life experience of an extremely modest writer.  Check out Lynn Griffin’s blog at https://www.wifeinthewest.com/
• Where competitions offer a response date, do check up once this has passed. I emailed about a bursary place I hadn’t heard back from. Although I wasn’t the winner, I was next in line because I’d been pro-active and chased. I was lucky enough to be offered the place when the initial winner had to withdraw due to personal circumstances.  From the course, I was able to submit a chapter of my novel which I was delighted to learn was accepted for publication in Dialect Writers’ 2022 anthology.  Dialect support writers in rural areas in particular and further details can be found at https://www.dialect.org.uk/
• 
  
• Writing Competitions

If you are an under-represented writer, some organisations offer a fixed number of free or heavily subsidised places – so do check, because the entry fees can mount up – £10 is pretty standard. The most expensive I’ve entered was Bath Novel Prize at £29.99. 

I’ve spent a lot of time and energy applying for competitions and have yet to win anything.  However, that’s not to say you won’t!  Competitions can be found either on-line or via the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook or Mslexia Indie Press Guide. 

It’s such a competitive business. It’s best to remember that even local competitions receive hundreds of entries.  A recent one I’d entered had over 2,000 entries!  It’s also highly subjective. My writing is more commercial fiction and perhaps doesn’t ‘stand out’ – yours might. 

Someone has to win!

The best of luck! 

 

My writing group buddies! 

Stories About Artists; Amazing Novels about Artists and Paintings: Steel, Chevalier, Smith and Hustvedt

What is it about visual artists that attracts those word artists...writers, I mean...to use them so often in their novels?

Stories about artists, both real and fully imagined, abound. 

We've all heard of Girl with the Pearl Earring, which features a real oil painting by Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer, but Chevalier's The Lady and the Unicorn is also a great read; about an imagined 15thC artist, Nicolas des Innocents, who created the illustration for a richly embroidered wall tapestry, based on a real tapestry, rediscovered by French historian and archeaologist Merimee, in 1841, in Boussac castle in central France.

Then there's The Goldfinch, which, when I read the book, I imagined Donna Tartt had invented this rather wonderful little oil painting for her scintilating 2014 Pulitzer Prize novel, but is in fact a painting by Reneissance artist Carole Fabritius, which   I talk about here 

I've love all of Ali Smith's novels, but How to Be Both is perhaps as challenging read as you're likely to find. Smith plays with conventional fictional form, letting the reader in on  the poignancy of the story before the characters even start to realise. Smith examines a little of the life of  the 15th-century Italian painter Francesco del Cossa. Meanwhile, George is a teenager who has lost their mother, and tries to bring her back to life by recalling how they saw this  artist's  work.   Smith seems to investigate the symbolism of frescos: many layers, simultaneously.

curtesy of The Women's Prize

Most recently, Lucy Steed has just won the Waterstones Debut Prize for her first novel. She writes about one Edouard Tartuffe, “the Master of Light” an artist who lived in the early 20th Century,  a bit of a hermit and not a very nice man, really. He loves to paint rotting food, which gives his young housekeeper, Ettie, a bit of a headache. In 1920, Joseph Adelaide, an aspiring journalist, arrives at the remote farmhouse in the Provençal village of Saint-Auguste. He takes
comfort in art after being branded by the horror of the first world war, and wants to write an article about the famed oil painter.  Slowly, the young Englishman falls for Ettie, and tries to persuade her to escape her overbearing uncle.

If you're wondering why you haven't heard of Tartuffe, it's because Steed has created him, but he could be real, a cross between many artists of this incedury time. But her depictions of his art feel sensual and authentic and I could almost smell the paint...and the rotting peaches. 

Finally, a book I read some time ago, but have never forgotten. I must read more by this American author; Siri Hustvedt, Her 2003 novel, What I Loved sparkles with intelligence. It begins in the New York art world in the 70s, with art historian Leo Hertzberg and his friend, artist Bill Wechsler, whose artwork Leo has discovered in a SoHo gallery. Hustvedt is strong on the psychological effects of love, grief and hysteria, and her narrative voice pulls you into, and through, the story.

So now I'm looking for more exciting depictions of art and artists through a novelist's eye, although, I don't think, for now, I'm going to find more emotional maturity, than Steed, more passion than Hustvedt, more tense drama than Chevalier, or more brilliant plotting than Tartt.

Discovering Great New Writers–Meet the Womens Prize "Discoveries"

 

Right now I'm furiously reading The Women's Prize 2025 shortlist; six smashing novels by women published last year.  Here is the lowdown on three of them; 

BIRDING by Rose Ruane. I genuinely could not put this down. Perhaps there was one too many points of view and the end is not fulfilling, but it did grip me.

ALL FOURS. Miranda July is a well-respected US writer. This latests from her is described by the Women's Prize website as 'Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic and domestic life of a 45-year-old female... I found the first half of the story huge fun, as the protagonist, in possession of a windfall, leaves her child and husband and drives across the USA for a jolly in New York. Only––she doesn't get further than the next town, where she sort of falls in lust with a guy working in the petrol station, holes up in a downbeat motel and blows the her money by getting the guy's wife to do an interior design job on her little room. She spends the first half of the novel having steamy, non-sex with him. She returns home in Part Two, and, honestly? I'd lost patience with her by then. If this is the New Woman, of the first quarter of the 21stC, then frankly, there's no hope for our speicies.

FUNDAMENTALLY by Nussaibah Younis. This is chuckle funny and that at first didn't sit well with me as it's about trying to help ISIS brides, but as the tension mounted, I could see that it was actually examining the issue in a deeper way. 

THE SAFEKEEP by Yoel Van der Wouden.  The worthy winner of the prize this year.   Holland in the 60's. In the family home, weighed down with duty, a youngish woman, lives alone, until her two siblings and a stranger arrives. This sexy, intensely emotion novel, suddenly reveals the darkest sides of wartime Europe.  Read more about this novel here;

The choice of prizewinner didn’t surprise me; one of aims of the prize is to chose high excellence in writing, but also readable, approachable stories. This allows it to stand apart from other prizes, where winnering novels may be dense, even arcane and seem deliberately impenetrable. I think you can be profound and sibylline without trying to drown your reader in words. 

Some of the winners remain my favourite novels.

Maggie O'Farrel won in 2020 with Hamnet,
one of my favourite winners. 

The Women’s Prize has been running since 1994, annually awarding a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English. Kate Mosse founded the prize, and has always responded to the criticism that women and men should compete directly, by saying… ‘It’s not about taking the spotlight away from the brilliant male writers, it’s about adding the women in.’ In 2023 it was announced that a sister prize, the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction, would be awarded for the first time in 2024, with a £30,000 prize.

And now, the Women’s Prize is also sponsoring new female writers with their new enterprise, ‘Discoveries’, which aims to seek out, inspire and support writers from early writing to long-term careers, with writer development programmes, toolkits, free events and online community create pathways.

Over 80% of entrants to the Discoveries development programme said they felt inspired to take steps towards achieving their writing goals and had gained more knowledge on the publishing industry.

This year, alongside those shortlisted for the main prize, six new writers have been chosen as Discoveries, having finished their novels. They are…

Shaiyra Devi, The Persistence of Gravity

Jac Felipez, A Long Ways from Home

Rosie Rowell, Down by the Stryth

Lauren Van Schaik, Seven Sweet Nothings

Muti’ah Badruddeen, A Bowl of River Water

Sophie Black, The Pass

The Women's Prize interviewed each one and I found so much to honour and to concur with each new writer. A lot of them started, as I did, very young. 

Shaiyra Devi says...I began writing fiction as soon I learned to write, filling a notepad with 1-page stories from the age of 5. At 10, I promised myself I’d write a book, and finished Diamonds & Daggers, an adventure fantasy novel, before 13…
Jac Felipez says...I

have been writing, in different ways, my whole life. From the first story my English teacher praised in front of the class to the novel-in progress..

.          Rosie Rowell says...I fell in love with writing from the moment I learned how to read. 

Lauren Van Schaik says...before I could hold a pen I tyrannically dictated stories to my parents.

And their responses to finding out they were shortlisted were amazing;

Muti'ah Badruddeen was...Breathless. I mean that literally. I screamed so much, I became breathless. I have a weak heart, and I don’t think it has stopped racing since I opened the email. I’m usually more on the self contained end of expression but Discoveries has unleashed the inner screamer I never knew...

Shaiyra Devi was...beyond ecstatic, totally over the moon! 

Lauren Van Schaik was...really honoured that the judges see the promise in this project. I’ve had so much fun writing it and can’t wait to share it even more widely.

Can they offer advice? Sophie Black suggests...To not get bogged down in details and research when you really need to just write – you can look at specifics when you’re editing. It worked like a charm because I’m not even 100% decided on my characters’ names – I only know how they feel and how they’d behave. 

What inspired them? For Jac Felipez...visiting the Lubaina Himid retrospective at Tate Modern in 2022...The exhibition prompted me to revisit the 1980s, a decade characterised by uprisings, radical activism, and vibrant artistic expression. Felipez is writing a contemporary story that connects to the 1980s...

For Saiyra Devi it was... The seed for my current novel sprouted in a fiction writing workshop in my final year of college, and it has consumed me ever since...

Rosie Rowell's idea came from TikTok, admitting...doomscrolling finally pays off!... 

  Muti'ah Badruddeen started A Bowl of River Water by writing about her grandmother's life.

...She was an incredible woman...But the more I wrote, the bigger it got away from the details of her life; coming to encompass, instead, the idea of women who, despite dominant narratives about the period and cultural context, fought in their own way to subvert societal norms that infringed on their autonomy and personhood.  

Lauren Van Schaik's story Seven Sweet Nothings was inspired by a true story... polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs taking his favourite wives to Disney...while he was a federal fugitive. What happens when sheltered wives are removed from the compound and dropped into our world — or rather, the sanitised, perpetually happy theme park pastiche of it?

Reading about their committments to their writing, their love of fiction, and the inspirations behind the stories was very reassuring. You can find more about them at https://womensprize.com/meet-the-2025-discoveries-shortlistees/

Core Emotional Truth: A Craft of Creative Writing

 

…Emotional truth is elusive and difficult to capture. No standard definition exists. Here’s my crack at it: Emotional truth allows readers to feel a certain way about the experiences of people who may live different lives from them. It’s the lens that allows us to see ourselves in a story that results in a heartfelt connection in a fictional narrative. Emotional truth transcends facts...Writer's Digest. 

Writing fiction? Have you ever pulled back from what you are writing and asked, what does this…my writing…mean? It it making sense to me? Will it make sense to a reader? 

To answer that question, I’d like you to think about the Core Emotional Truth of your writing. This is something that grows with the creation of a story. In other words, you might not recognise such a truth when you start writing––in fact such a truth might not be present when you start writing––but as the story comes into itself (often around the point you might finish a first rough draft), it is something you should think about. 

This core emotional truth (CET for short), is like a golden thread running all the way through a piece of fabric, and like beautiful embroidery it is usually bound up with the passion behind it.

Being passionate about your work will help tighten and bind it. But to create a narrative that really pulls the reader into the text and along the entirety of it, you have to believe yourself in its need to be released out there into the world; to be appealing to readers. Searching for the ‘point’ of what you are writing, so that the reader can understand why they should continue to read, suggests working towards fully understanding what has developed in your story (be it a short story or a longer novel). . You can, if you like, call it your  'Vision', 'Thesis' or 'The Premise'  (and even, perhaps wrongly 'your Theme')…the CET is a central, single concept that sums up your work; your ‘Core Emotional Truth’.

Don't get confused by my used of the word 'truth' here. Novels are inventions, made up in the writer's head, at least in part an invented narrative...a lie. Finding a core truth in such a fabrication is an emotional experience, not rooted in facts––for readers and their writers alike. To gain the readers empathy, there must be some sort of true thing that you are attempting to commnunicate, and that emotional truth will engender empathy and help hook the reader into the story. Most great classics of literature do this perfectly, and it is what they are loved for. 

Most of those great classics can have their core emotion truth summed up in a phrase––at most a couple of objective sentences, preferably in an abstract style, such as an aphorism. This phrase won't necessarily tell us about the contents of the story, or its subject, but about some fundamental truth of life, something that makes us all human. It doesn’t have to be a statement that everyone would agree with, but it must make sense to anyone reading it. Here' we're thinking about a summary of what a story is truly about – the deep core of what it is saying to its readers.

As an example let us think about a book we all probably know in some way; A Christmas Carol. The CET of this Dickens' small masterpiece would not be, for instance,

…Scrooge learns to be a better person when he’s visited by the ghost of his partner…

That’s more of a ‘blurb’ really.  What about...

Financial wealth never makes you happy?

This is separate and slightly different from any themes you've been thinking belong to your work. The themes that run through a short story or novel can be reflected in symbolism within the story. They can usually be summed up in a word or phrase. In A Christmas Carol, the themes might be; ghosts, meanness, poverty––poverty of emotion…These probably will  link with the CET, but can be thought of as far more observable, something that the reader will ‘see’ as they read, and be able to isolate after reader, so, easier to explain to friends or use in a review. The CET is often ‘felt’ rather than discerned. 

I can recall the first CET I 'got' after reading a book. I was hanging out some washing and why ever the book came into my mind at that point, I dont know––hanging out washing is a pretty mindless task, after all. I'd just finished The Inheritors by William Golding, and though I'd enjoyed it and understood its themes of a doomed species, of violence and pacifity, I'd not thought further. Suddenly, as I pulled a peg out of the bag to pin up a sock, I realised how the entire story was explaining to me how people are; how humanity always behaves. In the book, Neanderthals are portrayed in the novel as peaceful, in contrast to the more aggressive Homo sapiens and are at the point of dying out. Now I could see how true that was; over and over, we've killed each other just as the new speces kills out the old. 

Exercise; Find your CET.

What do you believe your own CET might be? Remeber, the truth will grow with the writing of the story, so if you are still planning it out, don’t allow any attempt to be written in stone–– the time to finalize what your story is deeply about is when you have finished at least a single draft. But you can still have a go at developing something, because sometimes, isolating the emotional truth in your story can make the writing of it really zing; once you know what this story means to the world, you can drive towards a satisfying conclusion.

You can bear your themes, characters and plot structure in mind when you to sum up your novel, but be sure the CET is an entirely abstract sentence stating the core values of the book – something objective, not personal – it shouldn’t talk about characters or plot or be at all subjective. 

Writing your CET is amazingly revealing and can help whittle all those disparate thoughts down to a single essence. If often helps open and lift your narrative, so you can write from your heart. This is bound up with the ‘passion’ I spoke about above. Being passionate about your work will help tighten and bind it. But to create a narrative that really pulls the reader into the text and along the entirety of it, you need to let them see the ‘point’ of what you are writing, so that they understand why they should continue to read.

You can also read about the symbols that help form your themes in Kitchen Table Writers click on the links; 

Symbolism in Writing - The Tree

Symbolism in Writing - The Snake

Symbolism in Writing - The Chair

Symbolism in Writing - The Sea

Symbolism in Writing – The Sun