HELEN KAMPFNER

Just read it – told with your usual heart-warming warmth, salted, as always with human reality. Excellent.

This is brilliant, Janette. 1st and 2nd place. Grinning from ear to ear 😀

*blushes* Sorry, I’ve only just found this link. Yes, Mandy was indeed bloody brilliant and it felt oh-so-special to be sat listening to her. It was the proverbial cherry atop the York cake that had already proved to be one-to-be-remembered.

Yes, Hel – please do post – here or in our SE Group (not sure you’ve found that?) but let us know where. I definitely want to read it.

Only just found this Janette – brilliant and well-deserved news. Keep us posted.

Taking on board the comments so far, here’s an edited version, with a title change.

The First Time
Two men wearing overcoats followed the nurse down the corridor.
“Florence has quite perked up since you arranged this visit so she should be able to answer your questions. She’ll tire quickly, though, remember she’s over ninety.”
“Thank you, we’l…[Read more]

Ding ding ding – nope, still true! Brilliant news, Janette. Well done. And yes, it sounds very unusual.

Am I putting this in the right place???
Anyhow, presuming I am, here is another with some exciting news to share. This year I decided to try my hand at external comps, but put them behind me as the lack of news seemed to confirm I was a novice at it.
… until this morning, when I received an email from Pennine Ink Writers’ Workshop, confirming I…[Read more]

Thanks Tony, good points, noted.
Thanks, Elle. I guess my spell checker doesn’t speak French! Good points. I think I have a tendency to over-explain or I would have ended it at “He was my first”. Need to trust the reader more. The telly paragraph is a bit of a cop out – I’ll need to rewrite it.

I can’t remember what the original prompt was, but I…[Read more]

Good luck for when you sub! Xx

Yes, definetly more oblique, great. I wonder if you might change the ‘I hate sharing you’ lime (which makes Ashley sounds possessive) to something like “it’s just… you know how you get.” In other words, have Ashley referring to the problem without quite naming it…

FWIW, I actually think the phonemail is a really key pivot point! I would recommend keeping this in, and building the structure of the piece as a whole around it, as Kate highlights.
Remember, even though this story is built of a series of vignettes, it still needs to have a narrative arc. The phone call gives you a useful turning point, and the…[Read more]

Hi Elle,
Sorry it’s taken me a while to get to this.

I really enjoyed this. I think it’s an incredibly realistic portrayal of depression, especially the sense of complete hopelessness and almost indifference that invades. She almost simply accepts and embraces her “fate”, to the point where (for me) suicide in the bath seemed like simply the next…[Read more]