So, I am trying still to overcome an addiction I suffer from. I am trying still to refrain from entering too many competitions (I'd like to stop entering them altogether, but small steps!). I hate the sense of failure you can get even when your strike rate in competitions is a healthy 33%. I hate the way it can undermine your faith in a story, when the story is actually worth something. I hate the waiting and waiting and waiting for results.
But it seems I can't kick the habit entirely and so I have put a few things out there this year to fisticuff with other writers' work. In my defence I am putting more stuff out to magazines than before.
Anyway, here's a wee success: Fiction Attic Press took a story of mine that I thought was good enough to be read by more than just me. It's a story that was on a Bridport shortlist a while back, and then on the Lorian Hemingway commended list, and it also got the approval of a writer whose opinion I trust. But then it faltered in a few other competitions and so I put it in the proverbial bottom drawer for a time.
I am so glad that having unearthed it again Fiction Attic Press have given it the thumbs up and have published it in their most recent anthology. The story is called 'Godforsaken Stone Gilbert'. I am waiting for my copy to drop through the letter box; I am sure there will be a rich vein of fiction inside.
