That's fantastic! Well done Vanessa. Bridport is huge.

I've just read the judge's short story report. Despite not having entered, I am for some reason taking all the criticism personally and feel wretched.

I think it's very hard not to read a judge's report or something else that feels vaguely authoritative and not feel self-conscious about one's own work, and if you're having a chronic or acute bout of low-writerly-self-esteem, then something like this can really activate it, even if, as you say, in material fact it's nothing to do with you.

Emma

Hello WWers

Thanks for the congrats... it's appreciated.

I have to admit to being surprised and delighted, in that order, by being placed. Somehow, one enters these things and hopes, then forgets about it... so when the phonecall came I nearly fell through the kitchen floor.

What was particularly good about the prizegiving lunch and ceremony was how normal, ordinary and grounded the whole process is, as I'm sure Emma can confirm. This year's judge, Tracy Chevalier, is a lovely, generous person. No writerly 'airs n graces'!

And what was the single most important thing for me? Finding out that the readers, without exception, are ordinary but discerning readers. No one is academic, effete, or rarified. I sat with a group of them afterwards and had a few beers.

And I asked "So what are you looking for when you read... (each person read between 400 and 600 stories this year...there were just short of 6000 short story entries, I gather.)

The answer was simple.

"We wait to read a story that makes us forget we are reading for a competition".

That was an important thing to hear. For after working like stink to learn all the technicalities of good writing, unless readers are going to enjoy reading your work, then why bother?!!


Thanks again, and happy writing to everyone.

congrats Vanessa.

i'm not very good at humour, but i get the feeling that they will be inundated with it next year.

J x

You might be right!

My story was anything but funny... and neither was the first placed story. Both dealt with the deaths of children. Hardly a belly full of laughs!

v

Yes, it's a great occasion. I found myself likening it to the Booker Prize (very well) organised by the Parish Hall committee, so a lovely villagey feel while being full of really heavyweight writing and fascinating people to talk to.

Tracey's lovely, isn't she. And 6,000's exceptionally large haul, I'd have thought, partly because she's such a big name, I guess.

"We wait to read a story that makes us forget we are reading for a competition".

And yes, I'm sure that's true. The craft in writing is about making the craft invisible so that it reads as art. I suspect it's how slushpile readers operate, and why (frustratingly, it seems to aspiring writers) you can tell pretty quickly whether a story is The One (or in the case of Bridport, One of the Fifty).

Emma

Wow, brilliant, Vannessa!

Firstly, well done Vanessa. Many congratulations.

On the subject of humour, I do tend to agree that Bridport has always been an astonishingly po-faced institution.

I'm glad that Tracy C. recognises that funny is hard to do. I recently read some research that says the average page of decent, witty prose or dialogue takes around 17 hours to produce as against an average of 4 hours for its angst-ridden equivalent.

I must be very slow as it takes me about three days to produce a page.

Anyhoo, I find that quite illuminating.

Best
Sion

I don't think it's Bridport who control what stories come in, though. Of the 25 or so I think I read for the Fish Short Histories almost all of them were about death in one way or another - even the one that was funny had a death in it. Ditto at Tales of the Decongested, where you'd have thought they were trying to make up a varied evening. My limited experience of comps is that there is very little humour in what's submitted. I do think sad is less like to go horribly wrong.

Thinking aloud here, but maybe un-sad just means the story isn't as good as it could be: you're probably not counting the tears which are, or aren't rolling down your cheeks. Whereas if un-funny means you don't laugh, then the reader's perception is that the story's failed.

Having said that, the three stories of mine which have met with success of one sort or another at Bridport didn't have a single death in them, and the one that did best is definitely warm and positive though not specially funny.

Emma

Correction - Russian Tea has a death in the past. But neither Closing Time nor Maura's Arm do.