It woiuld appear that the R&J Pan-Macmillan £50,000 publishing Competition is all but over.

I understand that the final count of entries topped 40,000! However the last five (the shortlisted) are going through a final selection basis.

The Winner is to be announced towards the end of next week. The interesting question is to guess what type of book it may be. My own guess will be one that is 'politically correct' and will concern the lives of a family from Overseas and the trials and tribulations that they have and are facing in this Country.

However I HOPE it's a sloppy love story or a rip-roaring adventure, or a monster from the deep, or an attack by Aliens, or a fast-moving detective story with a murder on each page.

Has any other member a suggestion as to genre or type of story it will be?

Len

hasn't it got to be completed by April. In that case, something along the lines of "The Very Hungry Catarpillar"

What a shambles that competition has been. I was going to write a piece about it, but the whole thing has become so ridiculous that I don't want to now.

Orignally a shortlist of ten was going to be announced "before Christmas": then a fortnight ago they finally mentioned it on the show, and promised to announce the shortlist the following week. It was also said that due to the high standard of the entries, there was going to be more than one winner. There has still been no formal announcement. From what I can gather by reading various forums (and what excitement that has been...!) they had a shortlist of 26, and have now got a shortlist of 5. I suspect that all five will be given some sort of contract.

The posts on the R&J forum have been quite astonishing. Common thought is that all those mss which were submitted are going to be kept and distributed to Other Writers, and all the ideas stolen; and that it's the idea that is important, and that the writing is the easy part as you have editors (plural!), proof-readers and agents at your disposal. So it has been decided on the forum that the deadline won't have to be moved, despite the delay in announcing the shortlist. Bless their cotton socks.

I despair, I really do. Not about the competition which has been pretty badly-handled, but about the general opinion of what writing is.

I posted on the R&J forum at one point, but withdrew quietly after a week or two. Several people posted their work there (despite the forum rules stating that copyright in all posts belonged instantly to Channel 4) and it was all full of errors in spelling, punctuation and grammar. When I suggested that perhaps those things should be taken care of before any more submissions were made, there was uproar. I was told by several disgruntled posters that I was being too hard on everybody, and that those corrections would be taken care of by editors. Those magical beings.

Ah, well. I could rant on all evening about how non-writers think that writing is easy, and underestimate the work involved in writing, but we are all on the same side here, and you know it all already. I had better stop before someone takes me to one side and tells me to shut up!

hey,

jane - i wasn't going to tell you to shut up! i agree with you.

i looked at the forumn your talking about and for polished pieces of work people thought were ready for submission, really needed alot more work.

i really hope a horror novel gets though! but i wouldn't bet any money on it.

they are probably looking at what would be the most commercial - so i guese a thriller might win!

jewels

<Added>

your - you're (i do know the difference, honestly)

<Added>

your - you're (i do know the difference, honestly)

Well whatever they choose will be a blockbuster anyway, so here's an opportunity to choose something that isn't the Big Mac and Fries of literature.

Colin

Jim Crace in The Guardian the other week quoted (or paraphrased?) Thomas Mann, something like, 'good writers are those for whom writing is more difficult than other people'. Still, it's the idea that's the thing. I've got this story about a mummy's boy, he's Danish, who kills his girlfriend's uncle (see, it's not Hamlet at all!) after a seance.

Must get writing - or better still find an editor to do it for me. Please don't steal my idea!

Joe

Some of us belong to many forums.

I've been a quiet member here these past eight months. Including being a member of the aforementioned channel 4 site;-)

So lets not be bitchy folks!

Some of us are writers of many years experience, just not yet inside 'published' novel form.

As an entrant in the competition mentioned, I received a return letter of good luck, thanking me for entering.

Seemingly, most people didn't.

Not sure if that moved me along for a while. Be interested to know how many people here had the same feedback at the outset?

As I understood the competition, ten finalists would be contracted to finish. By end of April.

Supposedly that was to increase due to massive entry number. Then it dropped right down to five. This beggers a question on that increase and the quality of entries.

Now a winner will be announced on Tuesday next, the 22nd. Yet no finished novels? Talk about moving the goal posts!

No feedback for the viewers, or updates for the entrants until now.

Nor a chance to back a winner, or wet our whistles on their style, before selection?

I'm really rooting for the winner to be a nitty gritty novelist, but, I must admit, I also think it will be a foreign novelist who beat the odds to escape oppression and make a life in Britain, but what do I know?

I have the greatest admiration for such works, but think there are many unsung heros of our own.

How very much alike we all seem to think, whichever set of rules and web sites that we use.

Good luck to all five of them I say.

Jeanie, I agree--best of luck to them all. What I suspect will happen, follwoing Richard's announcement that more than one prize would be given, is that all five of those shortlisted will be given some sort of contract. I hope that they will be solid, literary novels but I suspect that the judges will have gone for the more commercial end.

And as for bitchiness--well, I can't speak for the others (despite my natural inclination!) but I didn't intend to sound that way. I do sometimes find it difficult to judge how others will read my comments, so if you thought I was being nasty, then sorry--it wasn't intended.

Hey, Len, did you have inside knowledge on this about all five getting deals? The winning book sounds interesting - the American empire has ended. What would our own dear Messrs Silverelli and Skyflyer make of this, I wonder?

Adele.

Jane you are very dismissive about writers who are worried about having their ideas stole, but is it such a strange concept? Publishing is a business like any other, and I can't imagine that all its practioners are squeaky clean. Why not take the idea of an unknown writer and give it to someone established who has run out of ideas? If the unknown ever finds out, which is unlikely, who would listen to them anyway?

I recently gave a hard copy of my novel to someone extremely honourable. He told me that the cover page with my name on should go and also the date, which was alongside my name and the book's title on the header. I said I would email him a new version, but a couple of weeks later I realised that I'd sent a version which had no front page and no header at all - i.e. my name was no where in the document. Now, as I said, I trust him implicitly, but I don't imagine he put the document in a safe, so who knows where it could end up.

Just a thought.

Adele.

<Added>

make that stolen - nasty word, nasty concept.

Phew, I've just remembered that my lawyer has a copy of my book since she was one of my test readers. I was getting worried for a moment!

Hi Jane,

I'm quite concerned about your comments:

"The posts on the R&J forum have been quite astonishing. Common thought is that all those mss which were submitted are going to be kept and distributed to Other Writers, and all the ideas stolen; and that it's the idea that is important, and that the writing is the easy part as you have editors (plural!), proof-readers and agents at your disposal. So it has been decided on the forum that the deadline won't have to be moved, despite the delay in announcing the shortlist. Bless their cotton socks."

I did send in an entry (Bellus Locus, available to read on this site), but obviously wasn't chosen. I know that the concept is a brilliant one and the idea and plot lines are equally good. Fair do's if my writing wasn't up to scratch, but I sincerely hope the idea isn't taken out of my hands!!!!!

Unlike another person on this forum here, I did not receive any card telling me my entry had been received.

Kaye

I understand your concern over the issue of plagiarism but having worked in many different roles within publishing (writing, editing, research, ghost-writing, journalism, teaching, production), I am satisfied that it is very, very rare. The only examples I have ever come across have only involved non-fiction. Not fiction. And all but one of those have involved pieces of journailsm, rather than books.

If plagiarism were to arise with the R&J/PM competition, then an editor within PM would have to suggest a stolen story to a writer of theirs, or write the story themselves. I don't know a single writer who would respond well to the suggestion that they write someone else's story; and I don't know any editors with literary aspirations who are not keen or able to work on their own story.

Editors don't really have the time to hoard away submissions and redistribute them to appropriate, extablished writers. They are too busy for that sort of thing. Editing is a 12-hour-a-day, six or seven-day-a-week job as it is, without having to resort to subterfuges such as that.

Further, it would be so very risky. This competition has attracted so much publicity that if anything were to be published by PM in the future which was substantially similar to an entry in the competition, then PM would be on thin ice.

Writers are full of their own ideas. My problem, and I am not alone in this, is that I don't have time to write up a tenth of the ideas that I have. And all the fiction writers that I know who are worth the paper that they write on are the same. Why plagiarise others' ideas when you have an endless source of your own?

One person's excellent idea is another's piece of tripe, as so much depends on the interpretation. So many ideas which seem good just get too complex when written up, and often, the best books come out of simple ideas, well-written. It's the quality of the writing that counts the most at the end of it all.

So, I would suggest to you all not to worry. Plagiarism is not going to happen unless you are very, very unlucky. And even if you do suspect that it has happened to you chances are it is just a cooincidence. With so few basic plots in the world (I think it is acknowledged to be six, seven or ten, depending on which of the text books you read) there is bound to be some considerable overlap from time to time.

There are similar concerns expressed in a thread on WW about the BBC sitcom "The World According To Bex", which might be worth a look. Others have explained all this there far better than I can.

Jane, you defend your position admirably. However, I think it would be unfair to underestimate the anxiety of unpublished authors about the possibility of this happening, even if, as you say the chances are very slim. Imagine if you'd slogged long and hard in an attempt to launch yourself as a writer, did actually have the requisite ability and ideas, and yet had that possibility snatched away from you. The thought makes me feel queasy.

As we all know, there are immoral opportunists everywhere who will exploit those weaker than themselves at the drop of a hat (or should that be at the thrust of a knife). Unpublished novelist are, by definition, in a position of weakness in relation to industry insiders and therefore understandably fearful.

Adele.

Adele, I have seen so many new writers get jittery about plagiarism that I have lost count. But I have never seen anyone have their worst fears realised. I think it is one of those things that writers just have to get over (whilst still, of course, taking reasonable precautions to protect their work), just like they have to get used to criticism of their work. Hard to get used to, but essential if they are to continue as writers.

Sorry if that sounds harsh. It's just that these worries--relating to plagiarism, criticism and so on--really hold writers back. If someone is worried that their work will be stolen then at their most paranoid they don't send it out at all. And where does that leave them? Unpublished and frustrated. I recently read a post on another forum from a woman who had been writing for thirty years and had never, not once, sent any of her work out to anywhere, nor had she ever allowed anyone else to read any of it. She explained all this by saying that she would find any criticism of her work far too painful to bear. So as a consequence, she had cut herself off from all possibilities of publication (which she yearned for), and from all forms of help and advice about her work.

I find that story incredibly sad. As writers we have to grow and develop, and one of the best ways that we can do that is to get our work read by others, and get some sort of feedback. If we are too worried to submit our work anywhere, we stand no chance of publication, or feedback: and no chance at all of improvement.

Having said all that, it seems to me that people posting their work on this forum are probably far more likely to have their work plagiarised than people who submit their work to reputable publishers. I am sure that there are far more unscrupulous people lurking on the internet than there are working as editors as Pan Macmillan.