Linger on the past, or forge a new future
Plus all the usual good stuff!
News, events, resources and opportunities
The Skylark Soaring Stories Competition 2023 is open until 24th December. (MG or YA).
Books That Help is BACK! View the recorded webinar here. Apply here. Applications close on 31st Dec.
Hachette Children’s Novel Awards 2024 is open until 4th January, 2024, to unpublished manuscripts of middle-grade fiction by debut children’s authors based in the North.
Searchlight have opened a new Chapter Book award. Closes 1st Feb 2024.
Group Mentoring:
New PICTURE BOOK courses:
6-week WriteRhyme course with Catherine Emmett: Wednesday 3rd January – Wednesday 7th February, 8pm-9pm (GMT)
6-week Advanced Picture Book course with Clare Helen Welsh and guest agent Lorna Hemingway: Monday 15th January to 26th February (with a break on Monday 19th February), 7pm-9pm (GMT)
Success Story
Meet our 2023 Novel-in-Development Award winner Melanie Whitmarsh who describes her experience of the award, her winning book, and the mentorship prize
How did you feel when you read the winner announcement?
Incredulous. Shocked. Blood drained from my face. I couldn’t understand why Stuart White’s email was headed Congratulations. I read and reread it, searching for a catch. Then I burst into tears of happiness and ran to tell my family.
How did you celebrate?
I went to the bookshop, of course! I like to write in books, and wanted something to commemorate the manuscript’s win. I chose Javier Marías’s Written Lives as my primary prize, but also bought Eric Newby’s The Last Grain Race and Barry Lopez’s Horizon as half-prize, half-research books. I like that these copies now have a personal history. Later that night, my family and I celebrated in a local Mexican restaurant and ate Mole poblano de guajolote until we popped.
Tell us a bit about your writing journey to date.
I’m a corporate copywriter, magazine columnist, and travel writer. As a copywriter, I’m used to collaborating with teams of writers and designers on long projects. The focus is always on clarity, relevance, and brevity, and not individual egos. I think this is good preparation for any future author-editor relationship I may have.
As a travel writer, I love observing and interviewing people at work; replicating dialogue, and creating a sense of place on the page. This is all useful stuff for fiction. But can I tell a story? That’s what I’m learning now. I’ve spent the last two years studying writing craft with Golden Egg Academy, and am now finishing my manuscript with WriteMentor’s Spark Mentoring.
I was a former bookseller at Ottakar’s, studied English Literature at university, and am an utter bookworm.
Read the full story here.
WriteMentor Novel and Picture Book Awards 2024
In case you missed it last week!
"I am very excited to be teaming up with Bonnier for this year's awards. Their enthusiasm to help discover new talent, an ethos that aligns perfectly with all we are about here at WM, has been infectious and I can't wait to see what this year's award brings, not only for our respective winners, but also to all who enter and may get an opportunity to have their work read by the editors at the Bonnier presses, and our well respected literary agents. Their ethos that 'every book matters' is so pertinent and important, and is one we wholeheartedly agree with, and we hope this partnership will help bring new stories and voices to as many people as possible."
Stuart White, Founder of WriteMentor
"All of us on the children’s team are so proud to be supporting the WriteMentor Novel and Picture Book Awards – and to get a thrilling first look at the incredible emerging talent putting their stories forward. We’re excited to discover new voices, perspectives and untold adventures for young readers everywhere – and our editors are already itching to get stuck in and read the submissions!”
Helen Wicks, Managing Director of Children’s Trade at Bonnier Books UK
Sponsored by Bonnier Books UK, the WriteMentor 2024 Novel & Picture Book Award is looking for new writing talent in both children’s and young adult fiction.
Now in its sixth year, the Awards are focusing on four categories: Picture Books, Chapter Books, Middle Grade, and Young Adult.
Winners from each category will be selected by editors from Bonnier Books UK’s Children division and four leading literary agents from both the UK and the US. Each winner will receive a £250 cash prize and one-year free membership to the Hub, WriteMentor’s online membership platform.
Winners will be announced by WriteMentor and Bonnier Books UK during an online awards ceremony in 2024.
Read more information, and to enter, click here.
*Special mention to Florianne from team WM who did a POWER of work behind the scenes to get all of this set-up and ready.
EARLY BIRD TICKETS NOW ON SALE!
Saturday 16th March 2024
We will be in London for a one-day mini-conference, in person (virtual will also be offered, so it will be a hybrid event for greater accessibility).
You can book in now, for a much reduced early bird ticket price of £99 (will go up to £149 on 1st February, 2024 - if any spaces are left unsold).
There are only FIFTY (50) places available, so do sign up quickly to avoid disappointment.
Note that the line-up is yet to be fully confirmed, and times for specific sessions will be emailed out to ticket holders in early January, along with the 1-2-1 booking link.
But there will be workshops, panels, signings, 1-2-1s and much, much more.
We wanted to get a ticket on sale 3 months out to allow you to put it in the diary, and organise trains/accommodation/babysitters or anything else you need, well in advance.
If you have any access requirements on the day, please do email emily@write-mentor.com as soon as possible after you book your ticket.
We will also offer digital tickets closer to the time for those unable to attend in person.
Scholarship places will open for applications in January. We have several literary agencies who have generously donated spots, and we will confirm all details in the new year.
Sponsor
To book a slot on the weekly newsletter, for creatives or people in our industry, to SPONSOR the newsletter, please fill in the following form: https://t.co/jg1RpapVlJ
Hub Calendar (all times GMT/BST)
December
Tuesday 19th December All Day PITCHHERO with Megan Carroll
Wednesday 20th December 1pm Writing Funny Fiction Nathanael Lessore
Wednesday January 10th All Day PITCHHERO with Emily Talbot
January (date TBC) Blending Folkore into Stories Candy Gourlay
January (date TBC) Industry Insights Agent Q&A: Lucy Irvine
A full calendar is here: https://write-mentor.com/events/
All sessions are recorded and available to watch back, so don’t fret about being there ‘live’.
This is is just a few of the many sessions/opportunities that happen every month in the Hub and are all available on catch-up if you join now.
Also on offer
WriteMentor Spark is a monthly, online 1-2-1 mentoring service. We also have group mentoring available.
WriteMentor Magazine Issue 13 out now! Buy your copy here!
The Final Word
Linger on the past, or forge a new future
By Stuart White
Let’s be honest, so much of how we view and define ourselves is by our past.
What we have done, or achieved. What we do regularly, our habits and occupations and hobbies. Our previous actions go a LONG way to defining us as individuals in the present, both in terms of other people’s viewpoints, and, more importantly, our own!
But what if we didn’t need to live in our past and we didn’t need to be weighed down and inhibited by what we have done before.
What if we could sail forward free of the baggage which so often holds us back as we strive to make progress? What if we were unnecessarily tethering ourselves to a past version of ourselves which is no longer a reflection of who we have become?
As writers, we are often judged by the work of our past? The stories we’ve written in the last year, or even longer ago, and by the time we get an agent and publishing deal, and all the rest, it can be a 3 or 4 year old manuscript, and therefore version of our writing that is being presented to the world.
And we are judged upon this, as though we wrote it five minutes ago.
This becomes even more stark when you start taking into account backlists and old stories we wrote in the land before time.
But for those not published, or not about to be, there’s also that lingering shadow that follows us around telling us we can’t write a book in a year, or 6 months or 3 months, because we have never done that before.
It tells us we are static, a unmovable remnant of our previous days, where what we did is all we can do now.
It whispers lies and deceits, and we readily lap it up, sometimes terrified of our future selves and all that they can become.
There is, perhaps, a comfort in that because you KNOW what you have done. It’s fact. It’s past tense and therefore it’s recorded gospel.
‘Stuart writes two books a year at most.’
‘Most of Stuart’s books lack any real depth and often veer wildly from the main plot driver!’
‘Stuart is lazy, and is not able to maintain a healthy writing habit, so writes in explosive, unhealthy bursts.’
You’ll have your own variants on this. The (negative) self-talk that limits you.
But as we finish one year, and prepare to enter a new one, let me propose this, for me and you, and all the writers (and other people) out there.
View your horizon as malleable and ever-changing, able to accommodate your self-improvements and higher expectations.
Dispel the myth of your limitations and flaws and boundaries.
You are held in place by nothing. I give you permission to be untethered, to be free of the anchor that may be holding you set in one place, defined by one idea of self.
You are now free as a bird.
When given the choice between a cage or wings, you will choose the wings and you will fly high, unafraid of the new heights or the heat from the sun.
You are capable of so much more than you have ever shown before.
You are ready to forge a new future, the chains of your past sucked into the abyss beneath you as you take flight into 2024.
Happy new year everyone, when it comes, and I hope you all have a healthy and restful festive period.
See you all in 2024 (Monday 8th January).
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Writing can be lonely, but it doesn’t need to be.
May the Force be with you!
Stuart, Florianne, Melissa and Emily