Jonathan Pinnock's Write Stuff » Competitions

Bristol Short Story Prizegiving

admin — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 22:16:08 +0000

Well, that was a lot of fun. Who would have thought that going along to a prizegiving and coming away empty-handed could be such an enjoyable experience? Actually, to describe it as “empty-handed” isn’t entirely accurate, as I did at least collect a runner-up cheque for £50 and two copies of an excellent anthology with a story of mine in it, which – frankly – ain’t too bad for a night’s work.

The best thing about the whole event was the opportunity to feel like a real writer for an evening. It was really great to meet fellow shortlistees that I’d previously only encountered on Twitter, such as Claire King and Clare Wallace – to say nothing of the brilliant winner, Valerie O’Riordan, whose piece “Mum’s the Word” is a terrific demonstration of the principle that a maximum word count is just that, and not a target. And if you can tell your story in 350 words, there’s no need to write any more.

It was also fantastic to meet such exalted luminaries (and fellow twitterers) as Sarah Salway, the guest of honour, and Tania Hershman, who was one of the judges this year. And it was an unexpected pleasure to bump into Sarah Hilary, whose name I have encountered so many times on the Internet, but have never actually met in person.

And I haven’t even mentioned how great it was to finally meet Joe Melia, who must be the hardest-working literary competition organiser on the planet, as well as some of the other judges: Bertel Martin, Helen Hart and Joe Berger. I was particularly chuffed to hear from one of these that they’d been convinced that my piece had been written by someone quite young and “street”. A lot of the fun of writing is trying to find different voices, and I’m so pleased that I managed to get away with this one for at least one of the readers.

I came away thinking that it really was about time that I sat down and wrote some more stories – and as it happened as we were driving back the next day, I sorted out a long-standing problem with a story that I’ve wanted to fix for ages. Which is a good start, anyway.

In his speech, Bertel threw out a challenge to everyone to name three books of short stories that they would recommend to everyone. So here are mine:

“21 Stories” by Graham Greene. I’m recommending this simply because I think it’s the first book of stories that I ever read, and it made me realise what you could do with the form. I still love “A Little Place off the Edgware Road”, and you could make a case for saying that “Proof Positive” is an early example of flash.

“Labyrinths” by Jorge Luis Borges. Do I need to say more? If, however, you’ve already read this, you could also try “A Perfect Vacuum” by Stanislaw Lem, which out-Borges the man himself. It’s a collection of reviews of imaginary books, some of which could never actually be written. Extraordinary.

“Exotic Pleasures” by Peter Carey. One of those writers who seems to have abandoned the form altogether, Carey wrote some amazing stuff at the start of his career, including the title story of this collection, as well as “American Dreams”.

And there wasn’t even any space for David Gaffney’s “Sawn-Off Tales” or anything by Christopher Priest or Ian McEwan or … or …

In fact, when you think about, there are an astounding number of wonderful short stories out there, aren’t there?

Folded Word 3Cheers Awards Win!

admin — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 11:13:45 +0000

Following on from last month’s unexpected nomination for a Folded Word “3Cheers” award for my ultra-short PicFic piece “Not So Much a Rough Guide”, I found out this morning that I’d won. So many thanks to everyone who voted!

No money will change hands as a result of this, but I am now permitted to use the piece of “blog bling” that you see decorating this post and – more importantly – the piece appears in the amazingly cool video that you can see here:

Folded Word 3Cheers Awards Nomination

admin — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 17:37:25 +0000

Here’s a nice surprise. The lovely people at Folded Word have nominated my PicFic ultra-short “Not So Much a Rough Guide” for their Spring 2010 3Cheers awards. Obviously, having got this far, I’d really like to win, so I’d really appreciate your vote. Many thanks!

Bristol Short Story Prize Shortlist

admin — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 11:22:57 +0000

So the shortlist for this year’s Bristol Short Story Prize was announced today, and I still seem to be hanging in there. I’m really excited about this one, for several reasons. First of all, in just three years, the BSSP has emerged as one of the “biggies” (nearly 1500 entries this year, which is almost as many as the Fish). Secondly, the shortlisted stories all go into a nicely produced anthology. And thirdly, I get a cheque for £50 even if this is as far as I get!

It’s also nice to see a few Twitter chums in there as well: Claire King, Valerie O’Riordan and Clare Wallace. The prizegiving and announcement of the winners is on July 17th and I’m really looking forward to being there. The nailbiting starts now.

Bristol Short Story Prize Longlist

admin — Wed, 19 May 2010 16:31:39 +0000

As any writer will tell you, things should always happen in threes. Today has definitely followed that rule. Two of them arrived in the post this morning: my £100 prize-winner’s cheque from JBWB and a copy of Litro 95, including my story “Piss and Patchouli”. But I had to wait until this afternoon before the third one turned up, when the longlist for the Bristol Short Story Prize was announced.

Yes, that is indeed me. This is in fact the second longlist that this particular story has made it onto – the first one being the Fish earlier on this year. However, the longlist for this one is a little tighter than the Fish – only 40 entries out of nearly 1500 – and I have to say that I am seriously chuffed to be sitting there alongside the likes of Elizabeth Baines.

The shortlist is announced on June 7th, so I may be a little twitchy around then. The longlist was in fact as far as I got in the Fish, although I have tweaked the ending a bit since then (which was always the weakest part of the story). The question is: have I tweaked it enough? Watch this space …

[EDIT: Just realised that it was in fact the Fish shortlist that the story got onto, not the longlist. Although, weirdly, that shortlist was around three times the size of the Bristol longlist, for roughly the same number of original entries. *scratches head*]

JBWB Spring Competition

admin — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:41:31 +0000

My name is Jonathan Pinnock and I am a poet. There, I’ve said it. Anyone who has a problem with this can leave the room now (apart from my family, who I’ll make an exception for – even though they do indeed find it acutely embarrassing). I’ve been struggling against this for a while, ever since I stumbled into writing poetry again a couple of years or so ago, partly because it’s not the kind of thing that a grown-up bloke does and partly because my complete lack of training makes me feel like a complete amateur. (If any of this sounds familiar, you’ve obviously been reading Stephen Fry’s “The Ode Less Travelled”, where he makes the exact same points, albeit far more eloquently than me.)

However, I don’t feel that I can keep up the pretence of being a non-poet any longer, now that I have apparently won first prize in the JBWB Spring competition with my piece “Moving On”. I originally wrote this for the final round of last year’s Whittaker competition in a kind of elegaic mood and I think it’s one of my favourite poems – even though the Whittaker judges didn’t care for it that much (along with the judges for a couple of other competitions, in fact). See what you think, anyway. Here it is.

As it happens, I also clocked up a shortlisting in the short story section of the same competition. This was for a piece that used to be called “A New Man”, which I originally wrote for a VWC internal competition and then adapted for one of the rounds of the last Eurofiction but two. Since then I’ve sent it all over the place and hardly got a sniff, apart from a near-miss at Liars’ League. But before I sent it off to JBWB I had an inspiration, and I decided to make the title a bit more interesting. So that’s how it came to be called “How I Became a New Man and What Good It Did Me”. Never underestimate the power of a title, eh? Here it is. (Incidentally, I think that means that I’ve now placed nine out of the ten piece that I did for my first-ever Eurofiction competition.)

One final thought about poetry. One of the many things I saw whilst I was in India that made me fall in love with the place was an advert for the Commonwealth Games to be held there later on this year. What I loved was that one of the celebs who was giving his endorsement was described as a screenwriter, lyricist and poet. Can you imagine that ever happening in the UK? What was it Mahatma Gandhi said when asked what he thought about Western culture? That it would be a good idea?

Whittaker Prize 2010 Progress Report

admin — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 22:00:41 +0000

So we’ve reached Round Three and something unexpected just happened – I won the round, with my poem “I Suppose We All Thought That, One Way or Another”. The eagle-eyed amongst you will instantly spot this as part of Robert Oppenheimer’s famous quote about the Trinity nuclear test, and there are other parts of the quote interspersed throughout the poem. It was partly inspired by our recent trip to India, where we actually passed through Pokhran, where the 1974 and 1998 Indian nuclear tests were carried out, although you’d never tell if you didn’t know.

To be honest, I didn’t think the piece would score that well, because I wasn’t really sure if I’d managed to say anything new. But what do I know? Anyway, that means that another of my poems has booked its place in this year’s anthology, which is cool. And I’ve just snuck into third place overall, too. Six more rounds to go, though, and there’s no way that I can keep up this level of consistency.

Oh, and if you’re feeling in need of some amusement, trot over to If Shakespeare …, where I blogged yesterday about some truly extraordinary film criticism.

Ink, Sweat and Tears … and more

admin — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 21:34:15 +0000

So the results are now in for Round Two of the Whittaker Prize and I seem to be in 4th place in the poetry section, surrounded on all sides by real poets. There is of course only one way to go from here on in, but I’m determined to hang on as long as I can (last year it was Round Four that did for me). Anyway, I had an idea that Charles Christian at Ink, Sweat and Tears might like my Round Two piece, “Rock Bottom”, and it turned out that my hunch was correct and it will appear there very soon. Apparently, it’s a concrete poem, and despite the fact that in my ignorance I’ve never come across the term before, the description is spot on.

What I didn’t expect was that when I mentioned the acceptance on the TWI forum, Donna Gagnon, who runs the Whittaker Prize, said that she was very keen to put the poem in this year’s Whittaker Anthology as one of her editor’s picks, and would I check that this wasn’t going to be compromised by its appearance in IS&T! I duly checked and there was no problem at all. So I think this counts as two hits for the price of one

The New Writer Prose and Poetry Prizes

admin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 20:45:07 +0000

I had an interesting little double whammy in this competition this year, managing to be a finalist (but no further) in both the poetry collection and single poem categories. If I were perfectly honest, I’d probably be quite happy to trade one of them for something a bit closer to a prize, but I’m still quite chuffed – especially about the collection, because I’ve never tried putting together anything like that before (even if it was only ten poems). Oddly, I have no idea which poem it was that made the final, because I entered two, and they don’t identify the poems by name. However, I do know that the collection was called “Love and Loss and Other Important Stuff”.

Meanwhile, the third annual Whittaker Prize has just started: nine gruelling rounds over eighteen weeks, although this year I’m only entering for the poetry. I might have gone in for the fiction as well, having somehow managed to be runner-up last year, but the first round coincided exactly with my holiday. I reckoned that I might just get away with writing a quick poem, but that Mrs P would probably have objected if I’d spent my time away writing stories …

The Fish Prize Shortlist

admin — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 14:12:25 +0000

Just in case you thought I’d given up on short stories to concentrate on Regency alien spoofs, I’d like to reassure you that I haven’t. And just to prove it, here’s the Fish shortlist, announced today. I seem to be on it. No idea how that happened.