Pennies for Poets

The Eric Gregory Trust Fund offers a number of substantial wards annually to encourage young poets who can show they are likely to benefit from an opportunity to give more time to writing.  An eligible candidate must be a British Subject by birth, but not a national Eire or any of the British dominions or colonies and be ordinarily resident in the UK or Northern Ireland.  They must be under thirty years of age on 31st march in the year of the award (ie following submission). You can download or send a S.A.E for an entry form and the closing date is the 31st October each year.
The award is the result of a bequest made in 1959 by Eric Craven Gregory(also known as Peter Gregory) chairman of the publishers Lund Humphries, from his estate to the Incorporated Society of Authors, Playwrights and composers.  Applications are made through the Society of Authors and wards are up to a sum value of £24,000 annually.
Contact the society to apply at info@societyofauthors.org

Creating Characters

All stories revolve around characters in scenes.  Good, well defined characters are essential for a good story.  People need to engage with your characters and care about what happens to them, whether it's a villain getting his just deserts or a golden hero rescuing a damsel in distress. You need to know your characters inside out, know what makes them tick and what is their motivating or driving force.
A good way to build on your characters is to create a character profile for each one. List their physical descriptions, dress sense/or lack of , horoscope sign, favourite food/drinks, hobbies/interests. Any past issues/baggage, work life, home life, marital status, general likes/dislikes, pet hates and idiosyncrasies. All of these things will help to define your character.
You will probably find as you begin to visualize your characters that you will draw on people that you know from real life as well. It's not wise to portray a caricature of someone you know if they are able to recognise themselves or even think it may be them as they could take offence. However without intending to you may find that your characters become an amalgamation of people that you have known, past and present.
People watching is another good way to inspire character development ideas. Keep a notebook to record observations and snippets of conversations that you overhear when out and about as they could become the inspiration for creating a character. When you have your character put him/her in different situations to see how they react. What type of temperament have they got?
List your character's traits, if they are good guys list two good traits for every one bad trait. Do the opposite for a bad guy, two bad traits for every good trait. Finally believe in your characters and if you have constructed them well, they may well write the story for you as they react true to form in the scenes that you place them in.

Retreat to The Highlands, Scotland

MONIACK MHOR, Scotland's Creative Writing Centre, Inverness


Moniack Mhor is built on the site of an ancient baron's house, surrounded by fields rich in the remains of Bronze Age Civilizations, the centre once served as a croft.  It was restored in 1992 and was supported by funds raised through a twenty-four hour poetry recital staged by twenty-four poets and one hundred and thirty-five lay reciters. In 1993, Kit and Sophia Fraser opened the doors to it's first course in partnership with Arvon.
2015 heralded the official beginning of Moniack Mhor as an independent writing centre thanks to the support of Creative Scotland. Their programme offers a range of creative writing courses aimed to support writers working at all levels, from those who have never written to those who are fine tuning. 
It provides increased support and opportunities in the form of retreats, events with industry professionals, awards and fellowships.  They continue to offer grants on their open programme.
They have a new Straw Bale Studio providing space for workshops, tutorials and quiet writing. Their developing garden offers access to the panoramic natural surroundings of the centre and include a dry stone storytelling circle, complete with fire pit for the sharing of tales under a starlit sky.
The 2017 programme is released on 21st November. To hear about 2017 courses, two weeks before everyone else, join the Literary Collective Friends Scheme, or you can sign up for the mailing list.
Prices for the three and five day courses and retreats start from £325 (single person), and rise accordingly. Grants are available to help with the fees.
The centre at Inverness is within reach of national, international air, rail and bus links.
Contact Details: TEL: 01463-741675 or e-mail moniackmhor.org.uk

Writers' & Artists Yearbook Short Story Competition

For published and aspiring writers alike, enter the free annual short story competition and be in with a chance of winning a place on our Arvon Residential Writing Course of your choice (worth £1,000) as well as seeing your story published on www.writersandartists.co.uk.  To enter all you have to do is submit a short story of no more than 2,000 words. And that is it. Unlike previous years, there's no theme for you to base your story on. All you have to do is make sure you've registered with the website and the subject line of your e-mail reads. "W & A Short Story Competition 2017" and you send it to competition@bloomsbury.com.  The closing date for entries is midnight on Monday 13th February 2017.  The winner of the competition, along with two runners up will be announced on the blog pages of the site in March 2017.
Arvon run three historic writing houses in the UK, where published writers lead week long residential courses.  Covering a diverse range of genres, from poetry and fiction to screenwriting and comedy, Arvon courses have provided inspiration to thousands of people at all stages of their writing lives.  Find out more and book a course online at www.arvon.org. Don't forget to read the full details, terms and conditions before you enter.  Please remember to register on www.writersandartists.co.uk before submitting your entry.

Authors in History, William Blake

William Blake, a poet, artist and mystic was one of England's original thinkers. His two volumes, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience contain some of the most unforgettable poems in the English language.  On the surface, as simple nursery rhymes, they offer profound insights into human nature, and the need for social justice. Blake was born in Soho in 1757, the son of a hosier. Apart from the three years residing near Bognor Regis, he would spend his life in London, as Blake himself would note in his hymn to the capital, "near where the chartered Thames does flow." As a child, Blake claimed to have seen God at his window, and Angels bespangling the treetops of Peckham Rye.  He would have visionary imagination throughout his life and many regarded him as a madman.
At the age of ten, Blake was apprenticed to an engraver, and later, studied briefly at The Royal Academy.  During his long career as an artist and engraver he created magnificent illustrations for Dante and John Milton, and all of his works were self illustrated, full of invented mythological characters and rich proverbial statements.
Blake died in poverty in 1827 and is buried alongside Daniel Defoe and john Bunyan in London's Bunhill Fields. His poem Jerusalem, written as the preface for Milton's A Poem, was set to music and has been adopted as an alternative National Anthem.  Blake's Tiger is probably the most anthologized poem in English Literature.

Love Lies Bleeding

I think poetry is an acquired taste to be honest. I'm not really into poetry in a big way as it all seems a bit flowery and pretentious to me. A bit like wine snobbery, but I am probably just talking from a biased and ignorant standpoint. I have tried writing poetry but like love it does not flow easily for me. An example of this combination is the following, my attempt at a love poem.

LOVE LIES BLEEDING

Broken hearted with no carousal

Brooding and carping


LOVE LIES BLEEDING

Decrepit and decaying

A poor heart of carmine, covered with a drooping cardigan

LOVE LIES BLEEDING

Oh to fecundate this bleeding love of mine

I fear would leave me fettered, feral and faint

LOVE LIES BLEEDING

Exacerbating, everlasting

Evermore and exacting

I think I was under the influence of a alcohol when I wrote this poem and I was picking words at random from a dictionary and weaving them into a poem as you can probably tell.

Therefore because of my lack of skill in this department I will being drawing on other authorities for the poetry spot for poetry enthusiasts in future blogs.

Book Review, IRELAND, Frank Delaney

In the winter of 1951, a storyteller arrives at the home of nine year old Ronan O'Mara in the Irish countryside. The last Practitioner of an honoured centuries-old tradition, the Senchai, enthrals his assembled audience for three evenings, telling stories of Kings, fabled Saints, of enduring accomplishments and selfless acts. Until he is banished from the O'Mara household because the woman of the house seems to believe he has blasphemed.  The Senchai moves on, but those three nights have made a huge impression on the young Ronan forever, and the experience sets him on a course he will follow for years to come. He goes in search of the elusive, itinerant storyteller with his repertoire of magical drama even in the midst of family bereavement and the subsequent family skeletons which emerge there after.
Frank Delaney was born and raised in County Tipperary, Ireland.  He spent more than twenty-five years in England before moving to the United States in 2002.  His first American book was "The New York Times" best-seller, IRELAND.
Frank Delaney has earned top prizes and best-seller status in a wide variety of formats, from prolific author, a broadcaster on both television and radio, to journalist, correspondent, screenwriter, lecturer, playwright and scholar. He has been President of the Samuel Johnson Society, President of the UK Book Trust and Literary Director of the famed Edingburgh Festival. His second book, the non-fiction, Simple Courage, was chosen as one of the top five books of the year by the American Library Association. Since 2006, he has published five novels of Ireland, all addressing, decade by decade, the 20th century history of his homeland. Delaney lives in Litchfield County Conneticut with his wife, writer and marketer, Diane Meier.

Self Publishing With The Big Boys

I have self published on both Amazon and Nook press, (which is the electronic subsidiary of Barnes & Nobel, the biggest bookseller in the US). I will discuss publishing to Kindle on Amazon first and cover Nook Press and print books at a later date.  The actual process of transferring a manuscript form your laptop/PC or memory stick file is fairly straight forward. To start with Amazon you have to set up a user account on either or both Kindle Direct (Kindle downloads only) or Create Space (for print books). You will find both of these applications at the bottom of Amazon's main page if you click Independently publish with us. I opened a Kindle account first for an illustrated young children's book that I had created in Publisher.  I seemed to run into ta few problems when I tried to upload this book onto Amazon (it was mainly illustrations on A5 size pages). In the end I took Amazon's advice and downloaded their Kids Book Creator onto my laptop. The publisher file was then converted into a Mobi file in this programme and then uploaded easily onto the Kindle site. The Kids Book Creator is a free tool, offered by Amazon, by the way and once you have installed it on your laptop/PC you can just keep using it for subsequent titles. So my first self published book was a bit of trial and error.


Once you have created a Kindle Account with Amazon you log in and go to your book shelf and click on CREATE NEW TITLE.  There are a number of fields to complete about your book including the rights and pricing. After that you then enter the title information and upload and preview the book content.  The front cover has to be uploaded separately. You confirm publishing rights and enter pricing and royalty information and when you've entered your required information, select the check box to confirm you have all the necessary rights to publish your book and then click "SAVE AND CONTINUE".  It can take 24 to 48 hours for your book to be available in the Kindle Store. You can earn royalties of up to 70 percent and your book will be available to customers in US, Germany and many more countries.

Unleash the Writer Within

Devil's Advocate

It is said that everyone has at least one within them, to quote a cliché. I think that people probably have several. I once had a discussion with my daughter about art, ie, drawing and painting, singing and dancing, and we speculated if a person had to have a natural inborn talent for these things.  Playing Devil's Advocate I said that disciplines such as drawing and painting can't be taught as with singing, you either can or can't. Some people have natural rhythm to dance whilst some people have two left feet. On the whole those statements may appear to be true and some people find some things easier than others but it doesn't mean that they can't do it.
The same comparison can be made with writing and if you can put your own inner critic on the back burner and just write anything at all, you are in my view,
expressing yourself as a writer.

Writer's Block

I suffered from chronic writer's block for over twenty years. I desperately wanted to write and I had ideas but I never could seem to get beyond a page and a half of writing. I still have old notebooks and scribblings from years ago. I succeeded in overcoming this block last year by entering a competition in a Writing Magazine and the impetus to start and keep going was the deadline. That is how I broke the block. I also picked a genre that I had never read before and was unfamiliar with. I had to produce a Novella between 15,000 and 30,000 words long. The guidelines for the competition asked for a theme based on Sherlock Holmes Detective Stories. I had never read those before and so I started to read and take the books apart to see how they had been constructed. After that I planned the book starting with the ending and working back to the beginning. I then sat down and wrote 15,000 words in just over two weeks which surprised me. It was the most I had ever written in my life. I didn't win the competition but it broke the block. After that I went on to write my first children's novel of over 100,000 words and I also wrote and illustrated another children's book of about 6,000 words. So after years of procrastination and blocks I produced three books in twelve months, which surprised me again.  Blocks can be broken and procrastination overcome. The desire to write may just be incubating.

Useful Tips To Overcome Writer's Block

1: Have a goal (ie enter a competition or make your own deadlines and stick to them, a chapter a week or a month etc.)
2:  Plan your work. Make rough notes on beginnings, middles and endings, or use a storyboard split into sections(Boxes on one page, to see where you are going at a glance.)
3: If you are struggling to start, then start with the ending and work backwards.
4: Don't sit in front of a blank page or screen trying to force ideas.  Get up and do a boring repetitive task, clean the kitchen, or go for a walk or a run. Employing the body in this way sometimes unleashes the imagination.
5: You can try writing first thing in the morning as soon as you wake up. Keep a journal and a pen next to your bed and record your dreams.
6: Try writing last thing at night before you go to sleep. Recap on the day even if you just list the reasons why you did not write that day.
7: Research. Researching a subject or a location that is associated with your topic of writing will sometimes act as a spur, and can take you in a different direction and actually break the block or take you around it.
8: Don't worry about what you are writing, just write. If it's rubbish at least it's rubbish on a page and you can do something with it. If it's rubbish in your head, there it stays.
9: Never give up if you want to write. Never become disheartened.

Why a Blog about Writing?

I believe everyone can write. Procrastination and a lack of self confidence are perhaps the biggest obstacles which hinder people from attempting to express themselves through the written word and any other art form in fact. The art of writing is taking a pen and paper or sitting at a keyboard and exposing your innermost thoughts, laying them bare in concrete form to be criticised by others.
This can make us cringe inwardly and become a major stumbling block if you lack self confidence and/or think that you have nothing worthwhile to say. Writing Inc Blog is all about expressing yourself through the written word in it's many forms and genres.
Each week there will be literary reviews, featured authors, past and present, technical tips and know how, a poetry page, a competition page and information on courses, workshops and writing holidays.
All in all a useful and comprehensive blog for all would be writers or published writers.