I’m hoping everyone out there is coping during these strange times, and I hope you’re all doing what you can to help other people through. We’ve never, collectively, had to deal with anything quite like this so know, if you’re finding things weird or hard to cope with that you’re absolutely not on your own. What I do know is that we’ll get through it. It’ll just take a little more patience and some adapting.
If you’re stuck for things to do I’ve been working hard with some genuinely brilliant organisations to give you something. There’s plenty on offer. Competitions and online workshops included. They are…
There’s Hive South Yorkshire’s writing competition for 18-30s who live in Yorkshire and its surrounding areas. Cool prizes, cool judges, and there are some photo prompts to get you started. See all the info, including tips, here.
If you’re in Sheffield, I’d love you to enter the Love Sheffield, Luv competition as part of library service’s Year of Reading (which I’m Writer in Residence for). There are three categories: children, young people, and fully-grown humans – all the details and prizes are here.
I’m delighted to be returning as a judge for Streetcake Magazine’s Experimental Writing Prize – 18-30 yrs. I’ll be mentoring one of the winners from the short story/flash fiction category. Click here for the details on that.
Stepping away from competitions (sort of) for a minute…
I’ll be running two online workshops for Sheffield’s Year of Reading – there’s a Writing Masterclass next Tuesday (14th April) and Writing For Comps For Beginners the following week (April 21st). Places are limited and these are only open to Sheffield folk.
(pauses for breath.)
And, finally, I’d love as many young people to get involved with this as possible – a reminder I teamed up with Never Such Innocence to bring you fun and exciting online poetry and speech-writing sessions for all young people aged 9-18 (there’s a competition here too…). Click here for PUSH PLAY POETRY!