It has been a long time since my last entry in this series of articles. I have been very busy finishing off my course work for my degree. Then I had a stay in hospital followed closely by my wife having a stay in hospital too. On top of all that, I have had a very serious bout of influenza over the last three weeks with nine consecutive days in bed.

Over recent days I have managed to get back into writing my children’s novel. This will be submitted in November this year as the major part of my thesis paper. I have been getting rather stressed out by the fact that my supervising lecturer would like to see a draft copy of the manuscript by the end of July. Eeek – that’s a week away. Losing much of the last six weeks has put me way behind. I am so blessed to have a very understanding and compassionate supervisor.

Her compassion is very welcome, but the novel will not write itself. In the coming three months I will have to work very hard to get this project completed. The only way to accomplish that is to plonk myself in front of the keyboard and write, write, write. One of the additional frustrations is that I have other projects on the go. I have another two novels and four picture book texts almost ready to submit to publishers, as well as numerous short stories and poems ready to submit or enter into competitions. I need a thirty hour day and a ten day week!

One very practical solution would be to stop blogging and get back to writing the novel. It’s all a matter of application and priorities.

Good writing.

• Writing a novel – a writer’s journal – a series of articles outlining the process I went through in writing a novel.

I received the cheque in the mail today for the prize winning poem I entered in a recent competition. Nice to be acknowledged in a competition – and get paid for it. It has inspired me to write more poems and stories and send them off to publishers. It has also spurred me on to get the many manuscripts of books ready for sending off too. I have a nice little collection of texts for picture books and novels for children just waiting for a final edit and a cover letter.

In addition to the cheque I also received a lovely certificate as the winning poet. Nice.

Good writing.

I just received notification this morning that I have won first prize in a Literary Competition. It was for a suite of poems in sonnet form and was entered in the Traditional Rhyming Poetry section. The competition was conducted by Freexpression magazine here in Australia, though entries were received from a number of countries.

It was hard work – a labour of love I guess. But getting recognition like this is very encouraging, especially seeing some of the place getters are frequent competition winners.

And the cash prize is very nice.

Check out some of my poetry here.

Good writing.

]]> http://www.trevorhampel.com/prize-winning-poetry/feed/ 4 http://www.trevorhampel.com/three-day-novel-writing-race/ http://www.trevorhampel.com/three-day-novel-writing-race/#comments Wed, 06 Jun 2007 05:33:47 +0000 Trevor http://www.trevorhampel.com/three-day-novel-writing-race/ The City of Salisbury in Adelaide, South Australia, is a great supporter of the arts. Every year they sponsor a Writers’ Festival. I haven’t yet attended one of these but all reports say that it is a worthwhile event to attend.

As a part of that festival – to be held later this year – they hold a special novel writing race. Writers are asked to write a novel over this coming weekend. It is a long weekend throughout most of Australia so that gives writers 72 hours exactly to finish their masterpiece.

I am not going to enter this year because of other commitments which would cut into my writing time. Next year perhaps?

In the meantime, for more information and an entry form click here.

They also run a short story and poetry writing competition and details are also found on that web page.

This author has announced a short short short short short short story competition.

Yes – six “shorts” – meaning you have to write a story in just six words. Hemmingway did it with the deeply moving story: “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”

To read all the details of the competition and how to enter click here. The competition closes on December 31st 2006.

I haven’t tried writing stories that short though I have written many writing exercises in the form of short fiction with a maximum of 55 words, based on a competition that was run by a magazine some years ago. To read some of these stories click here.

I’m thinking of entering – how about you? Have a go.

This time the challenge is to write and post a new “How to..” article and send the link to him. I was writing an article on my birding blog and realised half way through how to turn it into a “How To” article. I wrote an article on how to deal with aggressive birds. This is timely here in Australia, with many birds in breeding mode. In particular, Australian Magpies can be very aggressive towards anyone who wanders near their nest.
An added bonus – Darren has arranged for about $1800 worth of prizes for this writing project.
Links and related articles:

• ProBlogger Group Writing Project – “How to…”

• Do Blackbirds Swoop? How to deal with aggressive bird behaviour – my contribution to the writing project.

• ProBlogger Group Writing Project – “Lists”

• Sixteen Scintillating Short Story Starters – my contribution to the “Lists” project.

The poetry judge actually made comments on every poem submitted. The only comment on one poem was “Inventive.” Mmmm, wonder what that means? Does it have some merit? Is it worth resubmitting elsewhere, or does it mean that the judge couldn’t understand it? The comment for the other two poems was “Attempt a rewrite”. Yes, I have done that over and over and over until they were both so different from the original draft that they were essentially new works.

Judging literary competitions must be a thankless task. I’ve never done it and I’m sure it is very hard. I’ll try not to be too despondent – and try again elsewhere. Trouble is, my hit rate has taken a battering in the last 2 years with far more rejections than acceptances. (My success rate is around 10%) You get that. Now on with the next project.