Seven Essential Tips for Writing Prize-winning Short Stories

1. Get a Secretary. To win a prize, you have to enter, right?

Given that few writers can afford a secretary we creative people must learn how to hop out of our slack saggy-bottomed writer's trackies and become business-like. On a slow creative afternoon, or with rigour in a regular slot, we must change hats and sit down with resolve. We must investigate.



Draw up a calendar with deadlines for the significant short story competitions on your planet. Familiarise yourself with word counts for each. Read past winners and it doesn't hurt to read up about the judges either. Be informed, be efficient.

2. Read the instructions.

One of the favourite pastimes in my family (my Dad is an engineer so he can afford to, my bros are brainy and practical) is to open up the box and throw away the instructions. To wing it. Go blindfolded. Well, when you enter your potential prize-winner into a big competition, it will be like the first day of school. So many children, so many shining faces. DON'T TRY AND BE DIFFERENT. If they say before 12.00 on 25th August, they don't mean on the twenty-sixth with a sob story. If they say no names on the document, that means no names AT ALL. If they say 12 point Times Roman double-spaced, DO IT. Spellcheck, triple edit. Sleep with your printout under your pillow.

3. Be humble, but be great-minded.

Junot Diaz

If you read a piece by Katherine Mansfield or Grace Paley or Ernest Hemingway or Sarah Hall or Kevin Barry or Junot Diaz and you throw the book to the other side of the room and shout, It's no use, I'LL NEVER BE ABLE TO WRITE LIKE THAT, well you may be right. These authors are established, original and brilliant. BUT REMEMBER THAT THEY HAD TO START SOMEWHERE. They too started with doubts, with rejections, with silence, probably with depression or alcohol or both. But what I am certain all of these writers possess/possessed is perseverance. Not of the type, Bastards - my story shoulda won! Rather, Okay, it didn't go well, what could be imbalanced or weak or in excess?; let's revise, where else can I send it?


4. Find an idea. Ha! I hear you cackle. An idea? Why they're going 3x2 at the supermarket! What an earth is original any more? Is this some sort of joke?

Recently I read an interview between authors Alison MacLeod and Hanif Kureishi where I was thrilled to read that Mr. Kureishi and I are in agreement. Mr. Kureishi says something rather revolutionary, he says that some days HE DOESN'T WRITE AT ALL. He says that he won't sit down to write unless he has an idea. A light bulb. Illumination. Don't you agree? I DO. I don't buy the idea that you have to write in notebooks, on walls and table napkins; that every day has to yield a word count of up to a thousand words. What about honing? What about being exact? What about storing up impulses, images? What about the rush of putting the fuzzy idea in your head into sure-footed, savoured words?

WAIT FOR A SIGN

Sarah Hall

 A short story is a powerhouse, a strictly designed puzzle, a beautiful oil  painting. It is a work where you cannot ramble, explore, delve; it's wham bam thank you man. Before you even start, you have to have an itch, a burning, a trigger. And this has to convulse into words.

 5. Mindspace. To write a prize-winner your brain has to be clean,    wiped clean. You can't go to your work space with kids to collect in half an hour, a dog barking, a jack hammer in the next block; worries. What if you are on the cusp of freefall, your idea has grown wings, and your phone rings?? Nah, you can't climb back up there again. It won't come back. So turn on the red light, put out the Do Not Disturb Sign. Take yourself seriously and others will.

And Know Thyself. Find what enhances your performance at the screen or with your fancy notebook and pen. Have sex. Have coffee. Eat buns. Acquire serotonin the way only you know how. Get ready for this ride. Give this story your bestest.

6. Think of a STONKING TITLE and a SWIFT, BEAUTIFUL AND ARRESTING ENDING.

Your title while succinct, not pretentious, and soaked with the essence of your story, might do well to take into consideration the tone of the current crop of prize-winning stories. This may well sound like a cheap sell-out but you are also trying to enter a commercial market, and vying with able competitors.

And your ending must be powerful, succinct, bearing the whole purpose of the story. Don't even venture into short story territory if you can't hustle up a strong ending with a beating heart.

Super important: Edit while you go. Breathe each tick of your story, each throb of blood, each stitched word. The first draft is crucial. It must as brilliant as you can get it. If you get stuck, leave. Go running, chase the dog, buy a handbag, clean the windows. Sleep with your story at the front of your mind.

7. Read a gazillion prize-winners.

Read The New Yorker. Read Kevin Barry's story 'Fjord of Killary'. Read Granta, The White Review, Tears in the Fence. Be ashamed if you have never subscribed to a magazine and supported the people who adore this beautiful art form. Read, discern, learn and be pure about it.


Catherine McNamara has twice been long-listed in the Fish Short Story Competition, (but once had to withdraw her entry because it had been accepted somewhere else). Her collection 'Pelt' was a semi-finalist in the Hudson Prize in 2011 (she found out by chance when googling her blog!). She has been totally ignored in the EFG Private Bank Trust Short Story Award short list, and usually sees competition deadlines skate by because she is a crap secretary.

But this is going to change...

In the Running

It's been a while since I've been here. Quite some time. Now that Pelt and Other Stories is headed towards final editing it's time I started serious short story blogging again. We are working on the cover ideas, cover blurbs, and I have my wonderful cover comment from Nigerian/Belgian prize-winner Chika Unigwe, whose novel 'On Black Sister's Street' is also a New York Times Editor's Choice:

'Every story in this collection is a delightful surprise. McNamara's lucid prose shines on every page, creating stories that are both difficult to put down, and unforgettable.'

Many thanks Chika!

In the meantime I've also had more work accepted. 'Montgomery Akuofo, Father of Twins' was selected to appear in the classy litmag Short Fiction later this year. In this story, Montgomery sees a photograph at his older lover's house, and recognises his unclear sexual yearnings.

'Afterwards they came into his head, these people. The drug addict and her dog, the Brazilian man in the dress, the old embattled white men with their makeup. They touched him and he wondered what Europe would be like: the wet parks with tall trees, the never-ending buildings and shops with their scrolls and windows, the faces cowering over him, giving him food and fucking him in the mouth, and he would look down and see he was wearing women’s clothes.'

I also have pieces coming out in the distinguished Wasafiri and the very hip Kerouac's Dog this year. 'Infection' takes place in contemporary Ghana, where failed doctor Eugene returns to observe his tyrannical mother treat his dying sister with disgust. And 'Opaque' tells of one woman's moral dilemma - whether to obey her husband and harbour a kidnapped child, or act as a saviour and risk her husband's wrath.

So much excitement ahead for this little chickadee, who is currently steaming ahead with new stories, new characters, new worlds. The fields are white outside and the words are flowing. Good luck to those of you who have sure-footed projects alight!