Novelicious - Everything Chick Lit

Writing Contest - Short Story Radio Romance Award 2011

Short Story Radio are holding a romantic fiction writing competition in which the winner gets their story broadcast on short story radio, as well as receiving a cash prize.

The website says...

"Short Story Radio is excited to announce the Short Story Radio Romance Award 2011. Now in its second year, this writing competition offers romantic fiction writers the chance to have their work recorded and broadcast, as well as to receive a cash prize. We believe this is the only writing competition of its kind and offers a fantastic opportunity for romantic fiction writers and enthusiasts.

We are looking for an engaging and entertaining romance story, told in no more than 4,000 words, similar to the type of romance story you will find in a women's magazine.

The winning story will be recorded and broadcast on the Short Story Radio website and podcast. It will be recorded by a professional actor and will be a high quality production, complete with incidental music, made to the same standard as the stories already broadcast on Short Story Radio. The story will be available for broadcast for a period of 12 months. All entrants, including the winner, will retain the copyright to their story.

The winner will also receive a cash prize of £50 (approx. $78 USD or 57 EURO) and the title of winner of the Short Story Radio Romance Award 2011. We are now accepting entries for this competition. The deadline is November 15th 2010 and the winning story will be broadcast from February 14th 2011."

To enter this contest, or to download the entry instructions, you can visit the site by clicking here!

Brilliant Milly Johnson Article about Writing

I happened upon this article the other day, and if you're a writer then it's well worth a read. In an article for the Yorkshire Post, Milly Johnson talks about what it takes to become a paperback writer. The article also includes a fantastic ten tips "to coax you on the road to being an author"...

Read the full article here

Find out more about Milly here

Milly's fourth book A Summer Fling is out in May, and you can pre order it here!

Writers' Tuesday - Confessions of a Wannabe Chick Lit Author - Distractions

Welcome to another Writers' Tuesday and our regular column by Emily Tootsweet about life on the hunt for publication. I do hope you enjoy, and if you have any questions or thoughts then please do leave a comment!

 

Confessions of a Wannabe Chick Lit Author by Emily Tootsweet

 

Distractions

This is my first real confession on this column. I’ve been distracted this week. I’ve been suffering a bad cold and therefore any writing or subbing that I’d wanted to do hasn’t happened. I just haven’t felt up to sitting at a computer for any length of time - all I’ve wanted to do is watch TV. But, on the bright side, it has inspired the subject of this column.
 
Distractions. All writers have them. They can vary from writer to writer but mostly they revolve around the same general things: family, the Internet, reading, shopping, television, health, love life… The list could go on and on. And when you think about it, it’s a miracle any books get written with the amount of distractions around.
 
When I get home from work, I switch on my laptop and head straight to Facebook. I go on to check what’s happening with my friends for only two minutes and four hours later I’ve played games, checked my farm on Farmville, commented on some photos, played Virtual bowling, poked a few people - that isn’t as rude as it sounds - and became a fan of weird and wonderful groups. I then check the time and suddenly all the free time I’ve had to write has been swallowed up. And I haven’t even checked my bebo, checked my emails, checked twitter, read the mountain of blogs I’ve subscribed to or written a blog entry for my own blog.
 
I confess the internet in general is my downfall.
 
I hear you all shout, ‘Disconnect the internet then!’ Yes, it would be easy to do that and yes, I’ve done it. But it’s just too tempting to press the connect button again. Just for two minutes… just to see what’s happening… just to see who’s around… just to see if there’s any other writers moaning about Facebook being too much of a distraction. Believe me there’s a lot of us out there distracted by Facebook.

Top 5 Writing Tips from...Jessie Jones

Today we have a very amusing Top 5 writing tips from the awesome Jessie Jones, author of the funny and brilliant Rubbish Boyfriends...

Tuck in!

1. Always start your working day with a coffee and a fag. Nicotine is a very good stimulant and helps you come up with loads of good ideas.

2. Write a few paragraphs, then read it back.If it's crap, delete it all then start all over again. Repeat this process several times and if you're still not making it work on the page, give up and do something more meaning... oh, I think I may already have mentioned this one.

3. Always pretend your novel took longer to write than it really did, this will make people take you and your writing much more seriously.

4. Never admit to handing over your unfinished novel to your husband because it was giving you a headache as this will just make people think he's cleverer than you.

5. Always read back your answers when filling in questionnaires as you ay have inadvertently given away stuff you'd much rather the whole world didn't know about.

Doh!

Thanks Jessie!

 

Novelicious Undiscovered - It's Not My Thighs, It's Just Bad Lighting by Vicki Wilson

Our Novelicious Undiscovered feature is picking up where it left off and will be running until the summer when will be awarding the most commented/talked about excerpt an award and a lovely trophy!

If you would like to have an excerpt of your unpublished Chick Lit novel published on the site, then please email kirsty@novelicious.com  for more details. There is a waiting list so please be aware that you may have to wait before your excerpt is featured!

You can read our previous Undiscovered entries here.

Our excerpt this week comes from Vicki Wilson, a freelance and fiction writer who lives in New York. You can visit her website here!

Enjoy! Any constructive criticism or thoughts are welcome in the comments section.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Alice Nelson is a single, 28-year-old, 27-pounds-overweight, drug rep. For Erecticil. The erectile dysfunction drug. So when she's not enduring smirks from secretaries in the doctors' offices where she peddles her wares, she's killing herself at the gym to lose those 27 pounds that she thinks are the root of everything drab in her life.
 
Some might call Alice cynical; others with a kinder, gentler tongue — like her soon-to-be-divorced best friend Kath, who's sleeping with the mailman — would say Alice just needs a confidence boost. Either way, Alice's life is screaming for an overhaul. When she’s faced with losing her job because of a terrible mistake, she realizes she needs to get her priorities straight. A beautiful, sad young widow Alice befriends at the gym and the mailman's brother, a pediatrician, might just be the right people to help her see that it’s not the size of her thighs, but her heart, that matters.

EXCERPT OF IT'S NOT MY THIGHS, IT'S JUST BAD LIGHTING BY VICKI WILSON

  

There it is: full frontal nudity in my hotel bathroom. I stand in the tub, shower door open, and, across from me, a mirror the size of a Jackson Pollock mural doesn’t steam up; it’s some sort of fancy heated model that prevents fogging. So, I see myself, my whole self (except for my shins and my feet), in a way that I haven’t in probably 10 years. Oh boy. This is bad.
    What makes me decide to turn around to check out my ass is still a mystery. But it’s definitely worse.
    “Shit.” It’s all I can think of to say.
    Luckily, I am on my way home from this hellish hotel, from this pointless pharmaceutical conference where you had to eat every meal standing up, which means you hardly eat anything at all. And then, you order room service when you get back to your room (alone) and there’s no one there to see that you’ve eaten your entire cheeseburger, fries, and even the coleslaw, which no one ever eats.
    What is cellulite?
    So, yeah, I’m going home today after three days of conferencing (“conferencing” now a real word because so many people host these things).
    I need a new job.
    I need a new life.
    I wrap myself in an oversized hotel towel. It dwarfs me. I look much better. There should be a warning in the shower: Apply Large Towel Before Exiting Bath.
    But I don’t blame the lack of warning signs or even the non-fogging mirror. I blame the lighting. It’s that yellow unnatural overhead light. Who wouldn’t have cellulite in shoddy conditions like this?
    I step onto the fancy heated stone floor and turn the brass knob of one of the faucets over the double sink.
    It’s not my thighs, I say to my reflection. It’s just bad lighting.
    That’s it.
    My whole life is just poorly lit.

Writers' Tuesday - Confessions of a Wannabe Chick Lit Author

Welcome to another Writers' Tuesday and our regular column by Emily Tootsweet about life on the hunt for publication. I do hope you enjoy, and if you have any questions or thoughts then please do leave a comment!

Confessions of a Wannabe Chick Lit Author by Emily Tootsweet

That ‘Certain Something Special’
 
Over the past few days I’ve been thinking a lot about my first novel. From where I’m sitting now I can see the black A5 folder holding the first printed out rough draft. It’s gathering dust on my bookcase, probably never to see the light of day again. Of course it’s not the FINAL draft - that draft hasn’t been printed out. Yet. I’m waiting for that magical phone call from an agent who has fallen in love with the first three chapters and the synopsis that I’ve sent them and wants to read the full thing.
 
But back to that black A5 folder. I was so proud to have finished that very rough first draft. At that point I had no desire to send it out to agents - I was just pleased to have written a novel - all 85,000 words of it. I gave it a few colleagues at work to read, unaware that it was full of spelling mistakes, grammar problems and as many holes in the plot as a badly knitted jumper. But despite all that, I got positive feedback. And that gave me the ‘oomph’ to take the next step. To tidy up the novel and submit it to agents. I suddenly wanted to be published. Badly.

 
But it’s not that easy. I found out some horrible, scary things from other writers that I knew. At the time, it never occurred to me that the chick lit genre is saturated with writers. Nor did it occur to me that agents might not be looking for new writers - they’re just concentrating on the writers they already represent. It didn’t occur to me that you needed to have that certain something special to get chosen by an agent - unless you were the new Sophie Kinsella with that certain something special - you had no chance whatsoever of getting an agent. Fantastic, huh?

Writers' Tuesday - Confessions of a Wannabe Chick Lit Author

Okay, so we've gotten today's competition going, now it's back to business and Writers' Tuesday. I would like to introduce to you the first weekly column by our secret Wannabe Chick Lit Author - Emily Tootsweet. You can read more about Emily here, follow her on twitter or read her blog.

I do hope you enjoy, and please feel free to leave any comments - I'm sure Emily would love to read them!

Confessions of a Wannabe Chick Lit Author by Emily Tootsweet.

It All Starts Somewhere
 
Welcome to my first column here on Novelicious! I just want to say a quick thank you to Kirsty for giving me this opportunity to bore you all senseless with my weekly moaning about how tough it is to write a novel, find a literary agent, find a publisher and become a best-selling chick-lit author overnight. Nah, I hope I don’t bore you. I will try to keep you amused with the details of my journey into the scary writing world.
 
So. It all starts somewhere…
 
I started writing chick lit novels way back in 2005. It was after a trip into town to buy a book and I couldn’t find one I wanted to read, none seemed to catch my eye - which is weird as I love buying books! Anyway, I walked out of WH Smiths empty handed and disappointed, then it suddenly hit me - I SHOULD WRITE MY OWN NOVEL! I couldn’t wait to get home to start writing, the buzz was amazing. The journey home took forever but when I did eventually get in, I sat down and went through the ideas that had been revolving around my head. I didn’t have a computer back then and the thought of writing a 100,000 word novel by hand gave me heebie-jeebies! I dusted off my dad’s old palm top and started typing - which I have to say was very difficult and I don‘t recommend using one. After about 150 words, I completely dried up. I couldn’t write anymore - for some strange reason I was plagued by the dreaded writer’s block 150 words into my first ever novel! I thought that was it. I gave up - I deleted the words. I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it.
 
Then I read ‘Can you keep a secret?’ by Sophie Kinsella and something clicked inside. I suddenly knew where I wanted my story to go and I started typing again on that dreaded palmtop. I kept typing. I typed some more and before I knew it I was sitting on 10,000 words of my first novel. It was then, I realised, I should get a computer because I *was* actually serious about writing a novel.

Fantastic Chick Lit Writer Interviews

Reading about the writing journeys of other authors is possibly my favourite tool of procrastination (after Twitter and googling Hugh Laurie). But by reading author interviews it's possible to pick up some fabulous tips on writing a novel and getting published.    

We have a growing collection of great author interviews (see navigation bar at the top of the page) that you can have a look at, but one of the best collections I've seen in the chick lit genre is the author interview section of chicklitbooks.com .

Do pop over and have a look. It may take a while to get through them, but I promise there are some fantastic bits of advice in there!  

Alexandra Potter's Top 5 Writing Tips

Wahoo! Another set of writing tips today, courtesy of the fabulous Alexandra Potter. Cheers Alexandra!

 

 1  Be determined.

2  Don’t listen to anyone who is negative. Surround yourself with positive people who will give you encouragement.

3  Write, write, and write some more. Think of it as exercise. The more you do, the better you will get.

4  Stop procrastinating! Inspiration does not strike in the changing rooms at Zara (which is something I have learned!). Put your bottom on a chair, turn off your mobile phone, get off the internet, and start writing…

5  Believe in yourself. If you want this badly enough, you can do it. 

 

 

 

Little Black Dress/La Senza Short Story Competition

Little Black Dress Books and La Senza are looking for budding writers, to send in romantic comedy stories of no more than 2000 words. The prize is brilliant. I may just enter this one myself!

The Website says:

Write your own Bedtime story for you chance to WIN one of five luxury sleepovers, £100 worth of La Senza nightwear and £75 worth of Little Black Dress books.

To enter simply visit your nearest La Senza store for an entry form and write a short story of your choice of no more than 2,000 words or you can visit www.lasenza.co.uk and enter online. (Terms and conditions apply please visit www.lasenza.co.uk or read to the entry form available in store).

The winners will be chosen by La Senza and the LBD team and those 5 lucky winners will receive a fantastic weekend sleepover with Malmaison. The winning authors will also receive £75 worth of Little Black Dress books and £100 worth of fabulous La Senza nightwear.

For more info visit the Little Black Dress website by clicking here!