Retreat West Microfiction competition

 With full details of how to enter, competition news and more:

Gaynor here - I have just taken over all the admin for the monthly micro comps and I forgot to send a newsletter when the prompt went live - I'm sorry :( This month's prompt is "Light" - find all the details at the link below xx   Last chance to send your micros!  Sunday is deadline day for the monthly micro ! The first and second prize winners share 50% of the entry fees and the People's Prize winner gets a mystery prize (previously they've won Community Membership, feedback reports, flash festival tickets, books, notepads, and lots of lovely writerly things!). Plus everyone shortlisted gets published and wins a prize too and all will be entered into our new annual Retreat West Awards. We can't wait to read your stories inspired by this month's brilliant prompt!      See all the info and enter here     Copyright © 2022 Retreat West, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: Retreat West Apartment 3735 Chynoweth House Trevissome Park Truro, Cornwall TR4 8UN United Kingdom COMPETITION NEWS     The Pitch to Win comp is back! Send us the elevator pitch of the novel you'd like to write with us and you could win a place on our online Novel Creator Course starting September 2022. Or you could win the work alone Start Your Novel Course with a 1-hour mentoring session, or the Story Structure Surgery and Character Clinic mentoring sessions. Make sure you read the winning pitches from last year too so you can see what your pitch should be doing.     Get all the info and submit your pitch here THE FEBRUARY MONTHLY MICRO FICTION PROMPT HAS GONE LIVE TODAY!   Get all the info and submit your story here     Novelette-in-Flash Prize shortlist We're really excited to publish the winners of this second Novelette-in-Flash Prize. The shortlist is now with Mary-Jane Holmes to choose the three winners from. See the shortlist here Themed Flash comp deadline The first theme for 2022 is FOREST. The deadline is 27th March and the judge is Jeanette Shepherd. Get writing to win cash, publication and professional recording! Enter your story here     ONLINE FLASH FEST IS LESS THAN 1 MONTH AWAY!     NEW RECORDINGS ONLY TICKETS!   We know that lots of our followers and subscribers are in a different time zone to us so they can't make the live sessions without getting up in the middle of the night. We all love flash but probably not that much! So we have released new Recordings Only tickets for just £35. Shortly after the festival weekend everyone who has a Recordings Only Ticket will get sent the links to watch the sessions in a private area on our YouTube channel. If you do want to come live, there are a handful of weekend and day tickets left. Plus the deadline to submit to the advanced Micro comp has been extended to 19th Feb so you can still enter to win courses, feedback, mentoring and more!    See the fab line-up and get your tickets here     Workshops & Courses News     Join award-winning writer, Gaynor Jones, to see how she takes a flash story from first draft to final draft. Free to our community members or just £5 to non-members.     Get all the info and book here     OUR BRAND NEW NOVELLA-IN-FLASH COURSE STARTS 1ST MARCH   Join award-winning authors and publisher, Amanda Saint and Tom O'Brien, to get started with your novella-in-flash. This 6-week online course will guide you through finding your story, planning your novella, writing the flashes and creating characters that your readers never forget.    See all the info and book here     COMMUNITY NEWS   Weds 6.30pm UK Time - The Four Elements of Writing with Andrew Wille In this Zoom-workshop we’ll explore how the symbolic powers of Fire, Water, Earth and Air can bring fresh perspectives and inspiration to your craft and practice. Andrew will share ways to add new energy, feeling, substance and clarity to your writing, drawing on holistic techniques and mindfulness as well as his extensive experience in publishing. Andrew Wille is an editor, teacher and writer with a special interest in intuitive approaches to creativity. He was senior editor at Little, Brown in London, acquiring and editing fiction and nonfiction, and as a freelancer has worked for all of the major UK publishers and many independent presses too. He has an MFA in Writing and Poetics from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, the birthplace of the modern mindfulness movement in Boulder, Colorado, where he also taught. See all the fantastic webinars we have scheduled up until May here.  Recently published articles:   Creating Complex Characters - Henry in What Do You Do in San Francisco? In this series of monthly articles looking at creating characters with many dimensions, Amanda Saint looks in depth at a character from a novel or short story and sets associated writing prompts to get you creating memorable characters. One Plate at a Time - Practicing How to Write Matt Kendrick gives tips and insights on how to get all the different elements of story working together whenever we sit down to write. Learning to Read Jamie D. Stacey looks at the ways in which we can read differently in order to become better writers. Coming in February: Develop Your Novel in a Flash: How to use flash fiction techniques to develop your novel A Tale as Old as Time: Finding new angles on Folklore, Fairytales and Nursery Rhymes Creating Complex Characters: Isabel in Talking to the Dead   Join our community here - membership starts at just £25 for the year     Copyright © 2022 Retreat West, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: Retreat West Apartment 3735 Chynoweth House Trevissome Park Truro, Cornwall TR4 8UN United Kingdom   Spotlight on novels   We know a lot of our subscribers follow us for our competitions and courses, so I'm here to remind you about some of our books! This month, I'm sharing a little about our novels - click on each title below to find out more, and of course, where to buy. If you have already read and enjoyed any of our books, then reviews are always appreciated! Gaynor    Retreat West Novels     One Scheme of Happiness - A compelling tale of lust and obsession, One Scheme of Happiness tells the story of a love triangle that goes very, very wrong.  City of O - A unique dystopia, a remarkable psychological fantasy, an absurdist satire. "Deadly serious, and yet amusing and playful at the same time" - British Science Fiction Association review. Remember Tomorrow - A beautifully written, dark and deeply moving portrait of an all-too-possible world, with a chilling warning at its heart. As If I Were A River - The interconnected stories of three women - the lies they tell, the secrets they keep, the love they feel. "A juicy Pandora's fox of mysteries and revelations" - Alison Moore. Light -  Beautifully written, touching, irreverent and surprising, Light is a compelling exploration of the tangled lives of a group of young artists and their friends in the 1990s. Unprotected - A raw and punchy story of love, family and accepting yourself for who you really are. We are very proud that Unprotected is a recommended book by the Miscarriage Association.    Did you know? All of our books can be ordered in by your local independent bookstore using the ISBN.   Browse all of our books     Interested in writing your own book? Check out our creative writing courses      We have a range of fiction courses that are perfect for people at all levels of writing ability - from beginners looking for inspiration through to practising writers looking to generate lots of new work and discover new ways to find stories.   Join one of our creative writing courses     Join our writing community   Copyright © 2022 Retreat West, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: Retreat West Apartment 3735 Chynoweth House Trevissome Park Truro, Cornwall TR4 8UN United Kingdom View this email in your browser   Hi it's Gaynor, here with your writing newsletter. As usual, you'll find a mix of inspiration, quick prompts, news and opportunities. I chose the above image as I wanted something crisp and clean and hopeful. I don't really ascribe to 'new year, new you' but I know lots of people do (my old career was in education so September always feel like 'new' to me) and I do like to take stock and make fresh plans. I've already chatted with some of our community members about their aims for the coming year and in among the hoped-for book sales, or projects to be completed, several people talked about re-finding the joy in writing and getting back to just having fun with it. Sounds good to me.      Flash Fiction: This month I have chosen Behind Every Sign is a Story by James Burt. This is free to read online here - scroll about halfway down. Some of you who have attended my workshops and talks might be familiar with this because it is my all time favourite micro. I think it's so clever - simple and creepy and full of questions. It's also an interesting piece of writing because it breaks a lot of rules - there are no senses, minimal description, a little bit of dialogue (which often gets missed out in flash fiction, in my opinion!) but there's a definite shift in tone which leaves the reader nicely unsettled at the end.  Short Story: This month I have chosen Eggs by Alice Ash. Tread carefully - this is a story about a fire in a block of flats that does not shy away from detail. It's a raw story, that in simple terms focuses on a young girl but becomes increasingly surreal, sinister and discombobulating throughout. I am definitely a fan of surreal contemporary fiction, and I love the juxtapositions Ash gives us here - from the grounded reality of a girl listening to Robbie Williams on her cassette player, to the same girl trying to dig a tree out of herself later on (at least, I think that's what's happening). The oddness is never really explained and I think this piece is a great example of leaving readers to fill in the gaps.      Write a story that features a lighthouse. Write a story that takes place in an escape room. Write a story that features the sound of an out of tune instrument. Write a story about someone who has never seen the sun.        If you subscribe to our newsletter , belong to our community, or follow us on social media, and have some writing news to share, then please let me know on gaynor@retreatwest.co.uk and I'll try to include it Electra (E.E.) Rhodes has won the page 100 competition run by Louise Walters books James Montgomery has had a micro published in Janus Literary  (Coughs awkwardly) My novella-in-flash, Among These Animals, is available in ebook form for just £1 for a limited time  And Amanda Saint has got a new hat. I don't know if she believed me when I said I would include that. Please, do send on your news before I have to tell you about the rest of the Retreat West Team's headwear!        Nora Nadjarian is running a zoom workshop on 'the experimental self portrait' Dozens of new pieces have now entered the public domain, including books by A A Milne, Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner.  The Fiction Desk is seeking ghost stories - closes end of the month  The Molotov Cocktail (one of my person favourites!) is seeking 'Folked-Up Flash' - closes mid February  The Phare is running a poetry, flash fiction and short story competition - closes March  Ellipsis Zine is opening soon (but not quite yet) for a historical fiction anthology  Happy writing!  Gaynor    Copyright © 2022 Retreat West, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: Retreat West Apartment 3735 Chynoweth House Trevissome Park Truro, Cornwall TR4 8UN United Kingdom