JaneShuff

crossed with you, Alan. Is failure not trying, or not winning? I’d say the former. Because if you don’t try, you might never win. And even if you don’t win because you never enter a comp, you have still succeeded in writing something.

Not sure ‘enjoyment’ comes into my reason for writing – it’s something that can feel like a chore at times! And…[Read more]

I think with anything creative, there’s the element of personal preference. You know I arrange flowers – well, I see some designs and think ‘how the heck is that flower design?’. Especially when it’s something like a single flower head and a twig. Yet others I see are amazing feats of engineering and have flow and rhythm or colour, and I’m blown…[Read more]

The not-getting-shortlisted thing is tricky. I had one story that was shortlisted in a major competition. I worked on it a bit more and submitted it to a few other places…and was met with silence.

Oh, failure is hard! And so unavoidable. It’s a bit like the ‘slushpile’ term though isn’t it? Perhaps more negative than it needs to be for some of the things we are talking about. Things like not getting short listed in major comps, or not getting a story into a popular journal … are they really failure, or are they a lack of success? Maybe…[Read more]

I’m rather good at that too. Though how would I Know? In concrete terms I haven’t actually had any writing successes.

@daedalus The law in the USA is basically the same, copyright rests with the creator as soon as the creation is in a tangible form. The difference is litigation, America’s national sport. To defend, or attack, is far less complex and expensive if you’ve registered the copyright. But, an important point, just putting the C-mark on your work,…[Read more]

You called, ma’am? Yes, no ‘c’ required for the reasons already given on this thread. It sends out a signal that you don’t really know how this stuff works, which is less-than professional.

Go to ‘Groups’

Go to ‘A Room with a View’

Go to ‘Forum’

The different topics are all in the ‘A Room with a View’ group forum. You will find ‘Chit Chat’ and explanations of what the competition is there.

A failure of mine is to take each failure to heart while not believing that successes are real or worthy

Oh goodness, yes – we are our own worst critics!!

On the cloud, we often talked about ‘failure’ and ‘success’ and how differently people perceived the definitions of them. So I completely understand that you view not being placed as failure – it was one of a whole range of responses we used to get.

Me – I enter very few comps because I hated…[Read more]

Definitely not failure if you’ve tried some comps – you had to write the bloomin’ entry first! And from experience, competitions can be a matter of luck as well as great writing – does the judge like your particular genre? Your style? I know from peer-judging comps on the cloud, my own preference for reading material comes through in the kind of…[Read more]

A New Dawn

A blood red sun rose through the smoke from a thousand cooking fires, smoke that hung like mist over distant Alexandra township. A typical African morning on the highveld, but this was not a typical day. Daniel and his mother stepped from the bus onto the dusty road and followed the other passengers. Daniel wished his father could be…[Read more]