The British Broadcasting Corporation

BBCWell, then. Towards the end of October last year, I sent the BBC my story “The Amazing Arnolfini and His Wife” for their annual “Opening Lines’ competition – which is essentially their route into broadcast for new short story writers. I’d chosen that one because (a) there weren’t any bad words in it and (b) I thought it might work well on the radio.

In March, I received a letter telling me that I was on the longlist of 65 out of over 600 stories received.

Towards the end of May, I received another letter telling me I was on the shortlist, from which three would be chosen for broadcast.

And today I received an e-mail telling me that my story is one of the ones that has been chosen! I am quite unbelievably excited about this. The broadcast date is some time in August, but you can be sure that I will be telling you all about it nearer the time. You may well get very bored with me.

Quick word about the story’s genesis. I wrote it for Round Two of my very first Eurofiction competition (run by Slingink) in response to a prompt to “write a story about trust”. Hence the subject matter: a husband-and-wife tightrope-walking duo (plenty of trust issues there, I think).ย As it happens, the story bombed completely in Eurofiction, but I kept faith in it and submitted it to the City of Derby competition in 2008, where Alex Keegan awarded it joint second place. It’s really nice to see the BBC giving it their seal of approval too.

12 thoughts on “The British Broadcasting Corporation

  1. Well worth a Woooooo! Hooooooo! to boot. Congratulations, Jon. Shows how important it is not to give up, on writing in general of course, but on work in which you believe in particular. (Sorry, beginning to sound a bit Kiplingesque, there ‘If’ you see what I mean).

    Well done our Jon.

    ๐Ÿ™‚ scar

  2. Thanks, Oscar! (And I believe you were there when I first read it out at The Goat, were you not?)

  3. I do believe I was, young sir. Seems like a lifetime ago, but quality will out. What’s that lovely old saying: ‘Cream will always find its way to the top.’?

    ๐Ÿ˜‰ scar

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.