JaneShuff

Interesting perspective, Andrew. It seems to me that an awful lot of ‘failure’ is not necessarily a failure in the writing, but a failure to direct the writing to the best audience – whether it be a competition, a magazine, an anthology (in short story terms), or an agent, a publisher or competition etc in novel terms. And a lot of that is down to…[Read more]

Sure! You are welcome to email the MS over to me (do you have my email?)

Let me know if you have any specific questions and / or any specific bits you are concerned about.

Thanks all.

I have since discovered that he was on police bail, having already been arrested a couple of days earlier for public order offences and assaulting a police officer. So he may be incarcerated for now. The gym will know, I expect.

Philippa – I entirely agree that he was less likely to assault a female than a male, especially since I…[Read more]

It’s so heartening that people in the industry are taking this seriously now. And good though it is that there are paid-for courses available, for someone with the knowledge and experience to offer a checking and advice service free of charge is really brilliant.

Wondering if you might be up for ploughing through a 150k m/s loaded with PTSD etc?…

‘Failure’, like ‘rejection’ is such an emotive word. Whether or not you feel you’ve failed may depend on what you set out to do. Did you set out to win? Well, I suppose in terms of entering comps, we do set out to win/be placed. But I would not say it’s a failure if that doesn’t happen. Is it failure if you’re not ‘satisfied’ with your…[Read more]

I’ve entered the Bath Novel Award four times and been longlisted twice, but no further than that. It’s a good award, and well worth entering – there’s an excellent community around it if you have the time to engage.
Alan, it is judged completely blind, so there’s no favouritism going on, but it’s unavoidable that the judges of any award will…[Read more]

Oh yeah! That looks great. I know writer and Clinical Psychologist Stephanie Hutton has also now started running some similar courses herself. Great stuff!

As Ricky Nelson sang “You can’t please everybody so you gotta please yourself”

I am so sorry to hear that, Bella. That must have been extremely disturbing and frightening.

As others have said, I think it is down to the gym to now review their safety policies and how they handled the situation. It sounds like they had done their best in previously banning him, and the fact that he burst in meant no one knew how to handle…[Read more]

Thanks for the clarity @debi and @johnalty