WHAT'S NOT TO LIKE ABOUT 'FLASH 500'?

http://www.flash500.com

In fact there's lots to like.

Well, firstly it does what it says on the tin – and a little bit more!

Lorraine Mace and her team run their Flash 500 competition four times in a year – a quarterly competition for pieces that clock in under 500 words (under 501 actually). The prizes are very healthy and very balanced: £300 for first place, £200 for second and £100 for third. A highly commended writer also gets a prize – non-monetary.

They also run a short story competition once a year (3000 words) and a Novel Opening competition.

But what’s to love most about Mace and her team is that they keep to a rigid timeline. Good timekeeping gathers respect. They promise to deliver the results of each of their Flash 500 competitions within six weeks of the closing deadline. That’s a pretty swift turnaround… but even more impressive when examined in detail. They produce a longlist and a shortlist in there, too – 53 on the current longlist and 25 on the shortlist. The longlist appears somewhere around the 3 or 4 week mark and the shortlist a week or so after.

The judge is different for each competition and provides a report on the best of the stories – sometimes commenting on the entire shortlist or the top ten on the list.

All of that within the promised six weeks! Wow!

It’s a lovely competition for a writer to take part in – I think. Go take a look.

ED SHEERAN AGAIN!

So, see post below about Ed Sheeran's 'Photograph'.

And in the news now he's being sued for 'Thinking Out Loud' and its relationship to Marvin Gaye's 'Let's Get it on'. 

I listened to both songs separately. I am not musical and to me they sounded so different. Then I listened to a 'mash-up' of the two songs and could sort of see (or hear). This is the link if you want to listen, too: http://me.popsugar.com/celebrity/Ed-Sheeran-Sued-Marvin-Gaye-42197474

To be honest though, I am less interested in the copyright battle here than I am in what is going on in the creative minds of the writers of 'Thinking Out Loud'. Here are two musicians who will have spent their entire lives doing music and listening with a studied intensity that is deep and absorbing. My question is: how can they not write in the 'language' they have learned? 

I think neuro-science has to work on explaining creativity and how it operates, though common sense says that we 'speak' in the langauage we are brought up with and we repeat what we have learned and the rhythms of that language are built into us… and maybe we move it on a bit, too.

Like in my post below, I cannot believe that two creative artists deliberately ripped off Marvin Gaye and then put it out there on the biggest public stage for all to see (hear) and scrutinise. That doesn't make sense. It just doesn't make sense. 

What do you think?