Submissions are flooding in and we’re so excited to see what Melbourne emerging writers are getting up to.

In the meantime, I thought I’d do a quick update of some of the literary prizes emerging over the next month. Curtesy of  The Victorian Writer Mag, May 2013.

Writers – If you haven’t already got your pens out, now’s the time.

Alan Marshall Short Story Award 2013 – Closes May 17th

Arnold Zable will judge the competition this year, which has a first prize of $3000

Queensland Literary Awards – Closes May 24th

Nominations are open for Queensland’s most significant suite of literary prizes, the Queensland Literary Awards. There are eleven categories this year, with each awarding a prize of $5000.

Geelong Writers 2013 Writing Competition – Closes May 27th

Writers from the Geelong region are encouraged to submit. Three categories: short story (3000 words max) essay (3000 words max) and poetry (150 lines max). Entries may not have been published previously. Format using 12 point serif font with 1.5 line spacing. Refer to AGPS5/Victoria Style Guide (Harvard). Send entry with 50 word bio and $10 entry fee to PO Box 1306, Geelong, VIC 3220

The Australian / Vogue Literary Award – Closes May 31st  

For writers under the age of 35. The award provides publication by Allen & Unwin and an advance plus prize money totalling $20,000

The Best of Times Short Story Competition – Closes May 31st

Submit your humorous stories on any theme, up to 2500 words, for a chance to win a first prize of $200.

2013 Australian Book Review Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize – Closes May 31st

The 2013 Australian Book Review Elizabeth Jolley Short Story Prize is one of Australia’s most lucrative prizes for an original short story, worth $5000 (first prize). Judged by Toni Birch (author), Maria Takolander (poet, critic and past winner) and Terri-ann White (director of UWA Publishing).

The Big Issue Fiction Edition – Closes May 31st 

Submit short stories up to 2500 words on the them ‘make me smile.’ All winning stories will be published in The Big Issue Fiction Edition 2013.

Adelaide Plains Chapter and Verse Competition – Closes June 30th  

Take a fairytale and give it new life for this competition themed “Fairy Tales Twisted Sideways”. Entry $8.

Bondi Writers 2013 Short Story Competition – Closes July 26th  

Bondi writers invites entries for its 2013 short story competition. The theme is open and entries must be under 3000 words. First prize is $200.

Good Luck!

Has the apathy and dredge of a Melbourne winter begun to bleed into your daily life?

Oh the feeling of winter listlessness. If this is you it’s highly likely you need an injection of literary inspiration.

SO! What’s on this week ‘round town?

SPOKEN WORD

Dan Poets featuring Fleassy Malay
 - Saturday, May 4 @ 2pm / The Dan O’Connell Hotel, 225 CanningStreet, Carlton / Free / Open Mic

Muses, Musos & The Barleycorn featuring Ian Cameron Wood, Rochelle D’silva, Richard Clarke & Steve Smart
 - Sunday, May 5 @ 7pm / The Barley Corn Hotel, 177 Johnston Street, Collingwood / Free / Open Mic

Port Phillip Gilgamesh Modern Salon featuring Benjamin Laird, Nicholas Jones and Ken Smeaton
 - Monday, May 6 @ 7.30pm/ Claypots Evening Star, Sth. Melbourne Market, Corner Cecil & York Streets, South Melbourne / Free / Open Mic

Dog’s Tales featuring Graeme Simsion & Edwina Preston
 - Monday, May 6 @ 7.30pm / Dog’s Bar, 54 Acland Street, St Kilda / Free / Open Mic (pre-register)

Passionate Tongues featuring Jennifer Compton
 - Monday, May 6 @ 8.30pm / BrunswickHotel, 140 SydneyRoad, Brunswick / Free + Raffle / Open Mic

Hares and Hyena’s Word SLAM
 - Thursday, May 9 @ 7.30pm / Hares and Hyena’s, 63 Johnston Street, Fitzroy / $10-8 / Open Slam

(Special thanks to MelbourneSpokenWord.com - check these guys out for your one stop guide to poetry gigs around Melbourne) 

INTERVIEWS

The Wheeler Centre, featuring Anna Krien and Helen Garner: Night Games -  Tuesday, May 7 @ 6:15PM – 7:15PM - In this very special event, two generations of Australian reportage royalty come together, as the world- renowned Helen Garner interviews Anna Krien, one of the brightest writers of her generation, about her new book, Night Games: Sex, Power andSport.

FESTIVALS

Now-ish: Melbourne Human Rights Arts & Film Festival, 9 – 23 May @ selected venues. 

This young festival is reframing how you see human rights on screen. Featuring remarkable people, places and stories use your best Google skills to find the full festival guide and enjoythe debut work of many emerging filmmakers.

WORKSHOPS

Free Poetry Workshop, 9 May 1 – 3pm @ Phoenix Park Neighbourhood House, East Malvern. Run by poetry and non-fiction author Kristin Henry. Bookings ph. 95304397

GET INTO IT.

Use the theme broadly folks, be inventive!

We want your short stories, flash fiction, extracts and narrative pieces of all kinds, creative non-fiction, poetry, photography, original artwork, comics, graphic fiction, illustrations and anything else you can think of…

What we love: ‘A wariness of tidy endings, and a gleeful appetite for the strange and beautifully unexpected.’

All submissions for the 25th edition of visible ink must be received by Sunday 7th July, 2013.

All selected contributors will receive a free copy of visible ink 2013, to be launched in early November.

http://visibleink.submishmash.com/submit

The usual $6 submission fee applies.

SEE SUBMISSIONS PAGE FOR MORE INFORMATION.

The filthy-good team for 2013 is finally here!! This year we have an ambitious journey ahead of us and the troops are uniting to bring it for the 25^th anniversary edition of Visible Ink. Writers and readers alike, we are off to a thunderous start with grant applications and things are slowly falling into place. We are so excited to take the reigns and we’d love y’all to meet the team. Stay posted for our beautiful pictures and bios so we can all get nicely acquainted.

Oh yes. Things are movin’ and a shakin’…

Please shoot an email to visibleinkmag@gmail.com or comment on the blog to introduce your fine self.

Much Love,

Visible Ink Team 2013.

The 24th edition of Visible Ink: Fleshy husks and brittle bones is an exploration of the human condition. Our writers and artists examine life, death and the beautiful tragedy that is simply existing. Loved ones are lost, politics is subverted and putting the bins out at night becomes a matter of the boldest philosophical examination since Toy Story. There is a life in this book; it may bear a resemblance to your own.

Fleshy husks and brittle bones is available for online purchase  here  for $20 or out in the real world from
Brunswick Street Book Store, Readings Carlton and St Kilda stores, Hares and Hyenas, RMIT Book Shop, Collected Works Bookshop, Brunswick Bound

Fleshy husks and brittle bones features:

LAUNCH!

and available for purchase RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW

Friday 2 November, 6.oo pm- 8.30 pm

Bella Union at the Trades Hall (54 Victoria Street, Carlton)
enter via Lygon Street

Join us in celebrating emerging writers, editors and publishers as we launch the 24th edition of Visible Ink: Fleshy husks and brittle bones.

It’s finally here.

After countless (eight?) months, Visible Ink will soon arrive complete with literary wholesomeness altogether unmatched.

See the Facebook event for updates and more information.

An RMIT Link Arts & Culture supported event.

Visible Ink 24 features:

1. Know what you’re writing.

Pooh says ‘think’, and that all of your stories should be about friendship or honey.

This informs the next two thoughts but bares singling out. You need to know exactly what you’re writing and how to best present that. While drafting, immerse yourself in the writing but at some point you’ve got to look at your story and be able to clearly state: this is what I want to accomplish. Then, work to that. If not for you or for the story, then for your audience.

The moment you decide to submit a story to a journal, you’re no longer writing for yourself. You’re writing for the world. And what a world it is, full of intelligent, thoughtful people. But you’re up to the task because you’re a thoughtful individual. Ask yourself: how will a person in my target audience respond to this? How can I make them feel what I want them to feel? What themes am I trying to express? Am I expressing them in believable, compelling way? Interrogate your story, and yourself.

Pretty much every idea you have can be seen through to be a great story. An integral part of that is figuring out just what that story is.

2. Cull. Cull hard.

Kill your darlings. And read Kill Your Darlings. It’s good.

So. You’ve got your draft and golly what a draft. Close that Word file and pat yourself on the back. Have a biscuit and then get back to work: it’s time to delete words.

Culling is both fun and harrowing. How do you know just what words to keep? Oh, you know what your story is all about? Awesome. You’re pretty much genius. What you remove will be dependant on a lot of things: what your story’s about, its themes, your style and your voice. But even if you’re trying to create something a bit flowery there are still things to keep an eye out for: overwrought expression, needless action or movement and repeated information, to name a few. Ask yourself: what’s the least amount of information a reader needs to get what I want them to get, to feel what I want them to feel. Provide them with that and nothing more.

Until your story is finished, it isn’t a story. It’s a piece of malformed stone. Your job is to chip away at it until you’ve created the literary version of David.

One small second point: a great short story has a better chance of getting published than a great long story. As someone who favours long-form essays, I feel the pain of people who write stories to the upper-limits of word count restrictions. If a journal has two short stories at 1000 words and a longer one at 2000, and they’re all of comparable quality, the shorter two being chosen is a safe bet. It’s sad in a way: there aren’t many options for long-form storytelling in the journal world at the moment. Consider it a niche to fill and go forth.

3. Proofread.

Proofreading: get it on.

Please don’t have any typos in your opening paragraph, and especially not your opening line. Pretty please? I know it’s not entirely fair, but having them will immediately cast your story in a negative light. The rest of the piece could be pure Crime and punishment level gold, but chances are your reader is already against it. Mistakes later on in the piece are a little bit more forgivable but run the risk of knocking the reader out of the flow. Here’s a tip: imagine that your story will be the last to be read. Someone has just spend the last five hours reading stories—they’re tired, grumpy, disenchanted and hopped up on coffee. They’ll do their best to approach your story with an open and optimistic mind, but man, they’ve just fought through some dreadful erotica involving cupcakes and Nancy Drew. You want to give that person every chance at loving your story. Using the wrong ‘there’ by accident isn’t going to do that, and it just may elicit a blood-frenzy.

Protip: consider contacting the journal you’re submitting to and asking if they have a ‘style sheet’ you can look at. If they do, follow that when proofing your manuscript. It’ll make the journal’s life a lot easier down the road, and may cast you in a positive light. If they say ‘no’, hey, at least you tried.

4. Know the journal you’re submitting to.

Ideally, read it in front of an audience. And definitely read Voiceworks. It’s great.

This tip doesn’t apply to Visible Ink as much as other journals since we change crew every year but it’s something to keep in mind. Read the journal you’re submitting to, know what they publish, judge whether or not your work fits. Sometime you’ll get a ‘rejection letter’ simply because it doesn’t play with the vision the publisher has for their journal—quality won’t even enter the equation. Besides, there’s little pleasure to be had in being published somewhere you don’t like (which is why I never update my personal blog).

5. Contact the journal.

The Visible Ink ‘banana phone’ is constantly ringing off the bunch.

Say hi. If you’re unsure about something, ask. If you want to submit to a student press with a committee that changes regularly, ask what they’re about this year. Maybe ask if you can help out in any way if you’re into that kind of thing. Meet new people in the lit community. They may be able to offer advice, or other places to submit to or read that may be up your alley. Who knows! The possibilities are endless.

A sneaky sixth: Keep submitting.

Poodles are known for their ability to totally humble quitters.

Seriously. Submit. Write more, edit, refine, submit. Repeat until you’re famous and/or satisfied emotionally. Remember: there is a place for your work in the world. Look around, click links, investigate! There are so many websites and journals dedicated to posting writing available, and so many of them are doing great and interesting things. Get among it!

If nowhere seems to fit, start your own journal. Spend as much time as possible being a revolutionary.

What do you think? Have any tricks or thoughts on submitting to journals? Things you keep in mind?

Or do you run a journal and have some ‘other side of the fence’ things to add? Let me know in the comments!

Come and visit us at RMIT’s Open Day today— Sunday August 12. We will be in Building 94 (Cardigan St) in the Professional Writing and Editing room, trying to convince young and innocent prospective students to come over to the dark side and be part of the team next year.

We’ll also be selling past editions of visible ink for $5 each or 3 for $10, and $20 fundraiser movie tickets for our upcoming ‘Wuthering Heights’ movie event at Nova Cinema on Tuesday August 28.