HELEN KAMPFNER

‘Specific questions’? – yes indeed, particularly in the light of the current one – Raine’s saying “It’ll be judged purely on ‘how much do I want to read on’” (which strikes me as a genius note to strike when setting a competition.) Of those posted so far I would say there are those which I am unlikely to pursue, simply because they are not the g…[Read more]

Entirely agree with Knicks and Jane. If critique is wanted it should be specifically asked for; where someone believes it would be helpful, a pm is the best place to start. For myself, comp entries are often little more than the flexing of writing muscles.

Compliments are what comes to mind when I consider the definition of positive commentary. Stating what you liked about a piece to encourage its writer. If someone specifically wants a critique they can ask for it plainly when posting their entry. But I think the general consensus is that this won’t really be the forum in which to offer…[Read more]

Thanks Squidge and Woolleybeans – really interesting.

What would be ideal is an option to indent and insert replies following an entry so that they were clustered after the entry to which they refer. I haven’t seen enough of WordPress or BBpress etc. to be certain, but I think that reply threading only introduces indentation to nest replies, in the same way that replies are handled for “updates”. All…[Read more]

I think you have to activate reply threading, but I don’t know for sure.

Unfortunately, AFAIK (which may be completely wrong) WordPress and its plug-ins only allow a single chain of posts, the idea being that you have a Topic followed by Replies to it. So the thread might go something like ENTRY1 – Comment on ENTRY1 – Comment on ENTRY1 – ENTRY2 – Comment on ENTRY1 – ENTRY3 – Comment on ENTRY2 etc. which is likely to be…[Read more]

I think it feels sometimes as though it’s trying too hard… The kinds of words used, particularly. I know there’s a place for fabulous language – certain Denizens often take my breath away when I read what they’ve written, for eg! – but sometimes it feels laboured. As if the author thought ‘I must describe this thing beautifully to get across how…[Read more]

“Some of the stuff I see posted is very…not pretentious, exactly, but it is fairly obvious that for some on the courses, they are still at the experimental and learning stage which means they are sticking to tried and tested formulae in order to ‘make their way’ in the world.”

This is really interesting, @squidge. Can you describe more what you m…[Read more]

Guidelines suggest not posting on the thread with the entries, until after judging is complete, but you can make a general discussion comment tagging the appropriate person. I think I have that correct.

Glad you asked that Jane, I was also wondering.

Yes, Squidge – soon as I pressed ‘go’ I thought that myself!

I think some ARE young, Sandra, but what I’ve seen of the Masters, it tends towards a fairly older crowd, often folks who’ve been doing other things in life first.

At the risk of sounding ageist, is it not the case that a high(ish) percentage of those doing degrees/Masters are quite young, and are unlikely to yet have the confidence/experience to ignore publishers et al?

I think there is a different approach to writing if you do a degree/Masters in it. It’s almost as though, at the point of graduation, most folk have a perceived idea of what writing should be. Qualifying this because I know a creative writing lecturer, and am in a facebook group for one of the CW courses at a local uni. Some of the stuff I see…[Read more]

To some extent (not that I’ve done any really full-on writing courses, just SE, some reading and building on experience) I do notice that my very early writing has a freshness of approach that more recent, more self-conscious writing does not.

And I do cheer when I come across writers such as Eimear McBride and Eley Williams (both James Tait…[Read more]