photo credit: sunside

I was alerted

by the Sydney Writer’s Centre via their excellent twitter account that there has been quite a large fiction competition for Australian writers announced at the University of Sydney that you can read about here:

David Harold Tribe Fiction Award

The University of Sydney is hosting the David Harold Tribe Fiction Award, made possible by a generous gift by its namesake, David Harold Tribe. The objective of this award is to promote interest in Australian fiction and to encourage the writing of fiction in Australia. The award provides writers with funds that might enable them to further their education in the field of creative writing, to continue to refine their work as writers, and to improve the general public’s appreciation of Australian fiction.

How to win: The award will be made for the best original piece of short fiction (between a minimum of 3,000 words and a maximum of 3,500 words) submitted to the Department of English, provided that the judging panel is of the opinion that the work is of sufficient merit to warrant the award being made.

Prizes:

• The award will be in the sum of $11,000.
• The winning entry will be published in Southerly, Australia’s oldest Literary Magazine.

Deadline:

4pm Friday 7th August, 2009 (Australian Eastern StandardTime)

Well, what are you waiting for? Get scribbling.

In more personal news I’ve surpassed all previous efforts at NaPoWriMo by completing my sixteenth poem early this morning. So pretty much everything from here is a bonus. I have a good feeling that with the pressure off I’ll be able to really let loose on the remaining fifteen. I also learned that at the forum I’m participating at, there have been a total of 945 poems produced in these first sixteen days. How insane is that? Being part of a productivity binge has never been so satisfying. Anyway, wish me luck, and if you missed the earlier link, they’re all located in this thread, with links in the first post for convenience.

Related posts:

1. The Die Hard Guide to Writing

photo credit: Mozambique – Moments

NaPoWriMo continues on its relentless course towards the implosion that will no doubt occur sometime around the three week mark. I’ve just about caught up after an indulgent weekend of not writing anything, and although they are of, uh, questionable quality, at least there are ideas present that I can pry out and try to polish. As long as I get some good ideas out of the exercise I’m going to take a win from it, and so far there’s been only a couple that I wouldn’t want to revisit. I’ve taken (in the absence of better prompts) to finding interesting news articles and rewriting them–with or without artistic license–in poetry form. It’s turned out some relatively good pieces, though as the month progresses I dare say that it will descend into tiny little ‘newsku’s; the haiku form being the last bastion of hope for those puffing and gasping for inspiration in the final days of April.

In exciting news, my good friend Tim has decided to host a steampunk themed party for his 21st celebrations. I found a very helpful and enthusiastic website in the form of the Steampunk Workshop, whose tutorials cater for those who are looking to get started producing their own steampunk-themed pieces. Of particular interest to me is the electrolytic etching of brass, a process which is remarkably simple for the results it achieves. My initial thought is to create some sort of face mask, that I can then adorn with various pieces of brass etched with the process. I have an idea involving jigsaw pieces, glass, the aforementioned brass, some zinc, and a willing compatriot, but we’ll see how it goes.

Nothing much else to report, I’m a bit put out about the recent Amazon move to block alternative print on demand (POD) books than those they support, but that’s been discussed more thoroughly in other places. I’m not really upset for myself personally, because I don’t yet have the confidence or the necessary thousands of words to begin thinking about self-publishing, but it’s a bit of a big blow for the thousands of people that rely on Amazon to get their books out to readers. From a business point of view it’s an understandable move, as the sale of other POD vendors’ books could be seen as a piggyback that uses Amazon’s resources without providing them with adequate recompense. However, it’s still a pretty crap situation.

Musical recommendations have ranged from Husky Rescue, to Birds of Tokyo (Perth boys represent, yo), bumping on Explosions in the Sky, before rolling over Low, through Rilo Kiley to finish up with Beirut. If there’s not enough quality in those names to satisfy you, then I guess you must be some kind of strange quality vacuum whose gaping maw devours stars with a small sigh and licking of lips.

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