I can't quite believe that This Itch of Writing has being going for 500 posts - and five and a half years, come to that - but it's true. To celebrate, I thought it would be fun to have a competition, and some of my favourite writerly places have kindly offered prizes.
TO ENTER: Please write a blog post, 500 words at most, which is helpful, interesting or illuminating for other writers. Of course yours will stem from your own experience of writing, but the focus of This Itch of Writing is outwards, towards other writers, not inwards towards yourself. If you're new to This Itch of Writing, have a look here, to get an idea of the range of topics across the whole blog. If you want to include links or images that add real value to your post then please do, bearing in mind that This Itch is all about the words on the page. And you're welcome to enter more than once though, to be fair, I won't give the same person more than one prize!
THE PRIZES: In the spirit of This Itch that every writer is different and so wants and needs different things, the first prize is to be able to choose whichever of these three will be most useful and pleasurable for you:
- A two-night Writers Retreat at Retreats for You in Sheepwash, North Devon, where full board and friendly writerly company come as standard, and total silence and lunch-on-a-tray are offered with equal generosity.
- One year's Full Membership of WriteWords, which apart from anything else in the way of Groups, Jobs&Opps, Directory and so on, is the place that about 50% of all my posts here started out, as thinking-aloud-in-the-forum.
- A free Quick Review of your covering letter, synopsis and up to 5,000 words, by the expert folk at Writer's Workshop, onlie begetters of the York Festival of Writing and other energetic boosts up the ladder towards publication.
The second prize is to choose from the remaining two prizes; the third prize is - well - you do the math.
All winning and any highly commended posts will be posted on This Itch of Writing at suitable intervals, and at that point I'll ask you for a couple of lines of biography, and, if you like, a link back to your own blog, website, Facebook page or any other web presence.
THE CLOSING DATE is the end of Friday 31st May (BST, if we're being precise), and I'll post the result as soon as I can after that, although, the writing life being the unpredictable thing that it is, I make no promises about when.
THE HOUSEKEEPING
To enter, email your post to me at thisitchofwriting [insert the usual email symbol here] gmail dot com. Please make sure you give your full name as well as the text of your post, and put "competition" in the subject so I can keep things tidy!
By entering, you confirm that the post is your original work, and not published anywhere else.
You keep the copyright in your post, but copyright on This Itch of Writing operates under a Creative Commons Licence, (see the left-hand sidebar for the details) so you must be happy with those principles. The winning posts will stay in the archive of This Itch of Writing while it exists: all other posts will be deleted, so do make sure you've got a copy of the file.
My decision about the winners is final, and I don't promise to enter into discussions of the whys and wherefores of my decision.
There's no cash alternative to the prizes, but they are transferable to someone else, or postponable if (for example) you're already a member of WriteWords, by arrangement between you and the donor of the prize.
The Retreats for You prize includes full board for two nights, but transport there is your responsibility. Retreats for You can arrange transfers to and from Exeter St Davids station for an extra fee.
