Sunday, November 4, 2012
Sunday, October 28, 2012
DCU Under Thirty Writers Scheme
News
Under Thirty project for young Irish writers
The project aims to help writers to develop their skills, and make their formative first steps into the literary world. Through a blind peer-review process, the most promising submissions are selected for publication in a bi-annual journal, and all entries are given back their manuscripts with suggestions and advice from the panel. In this way, writers can be assured that their work speaks for itself, and the panel of reviewers have the freedom to truly feed back into the development of new writers, and provide them with the constructive criticism and motivation to go even further with their work.
The project creator, Dr. Stephen Doherty, a twenty-eight-year-old psychologist and writer, explained how it "has received fantastic support from many networks around the country and abroad. Schools, universities, writing groups, libraries, broadcasters, and politicians, all want to invest in the up-and-coming generation of our writers - one of our country's unique and notable values, that shines through boom and bust."
Dr. Doherty continued, "The project uses its homepage and social media channels to provide information of funding opportunities in the arts, connect writers of all experiences with one another through events and online fora, and to add to our growing pool of freely available resources for new writers."
Under Thirty has a team of over fifty, and it's growing: Markus Ahonen, Celeste Augé, Dr. Richard Barlow, Turtle Bunbury, Dr. Dermot Burns, Tom Carroll, Yvonne Cassidy, Dr. Philip Coleman, June Considine, Eoghan Corry, Dr. David Coughlan, Paddy Cummins, Theo Dorgan, Ruth Dudley Edwards, Dr. Michael Farry, Michael Freeman, Craig Gibson, Jack Harte, Gerry Hanberry, Dr. Derek Hand, Caroline Healy, Jean-Philippe Imbert, Phelim Kavanagh, Prof. Margaret Kelleher, Dr. Patricia Kennon, Brian Kirk, Dr. Brigitte Le Juez, Rozz Lewis, John MacKenna, Manchán Magan, Jessica Maybury, Dr. Áine McGillicuddy, Monica McInerney, Michéle Milan, David Mohan, Sinéad Moriarty, Dr. Christina Morin, Alan Nolan, Tim O'Brien, Billy O'Callaghan, Dr. Eithne O'Connell, Dr. Maureen O'Connor, Vanessa O'Loughlin, Paul Perry, Louise Phillips, Prof. Ian Campbell Ross, Valerie Sirr, Dr. Olga Springer, Sarah Webb, Prof. Jenny Williams.
Bursting with fresh talent, new stories, and infectious potential, the inaugural journal will be published in December as a soft-bound book and e-book at a special event at Dublin City University. Sponsored by the Centre for Next Generation Localisation - a Science Foundation Ireland funded national research centre exploring areas of language, translation, and technology - this event on the campus of Ireland's university of enterprise and innovation will host a mix of our newly published and established writers, literary scholars, and some special guests. From the contributions published in the journal, an award will be given each year to one outstanding new writer in the form of a scholarship/writing retreat so that they can truly focus on making their first publication a successful one.
The deadline for submissions for the first issue is November 7th, 2012. For more information about the project, and to make a submission: visit www.under-30.org
Friday, October 19, 2012
Blog Updated
Hi
I spent some time this morning searching for and adding links to useful sites, as well as writing competitions. Take a look and let me know of any issues such as links not working etc. The Merriman closing date is 31st October, but looks like a good one to aim for. Also, from the Irish Writers Centre (www.irishwriterscentre.ie) there is a list of competitions with closing dates over the next few months.
I spent some time this morning searching for and adding links to useful sites, as well as writing competitions. Take a look and let me know of any issues such as links not working etc. The Merriman closing date is 31st October, but looks like a good one to aim for. Also, from the Irish Writers Centre (www.irishwriterscentre.ie) there is a list of competitions with closing dates over the next few months.
Friday, June 8, 2012
Sunday, June 3, 2012
Coffee, chat and comfy sofas in a 'sober pub' via @independent_ie
Coffee, chat and comfy sofas in a 'sober pub' via @independent_ie
Might be a good place for a writers group to meet...
Might be a good place for a writers group to meet...
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Getting Published - meeting in Dun Laoghaire 9th June
From: arts@DLRCOCO.IE
To: arts@DLRCOCO.IE
Date: Tue, 29 May 2012 12:05:58 +0100
Subject: dlr Artist Network June 2012
To: arts@DLRCOCO.IE
Date: Tue, 29 May 2012 12:05:58 +0100
Subject: dlr Artist Network June 2012
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Friday, May 11, 2012
DLR Arts Bulletin 11th May 2012
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Sunday, May 6, 2012
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Monday, April 30, 2012
A Novel in a Year
A novel in a year
Louise Doughty
12:01AM GMT 06 Jan 2006
Comment
The acclaimed novelist Louise Doughty here introduces a unique new column teaching the art of fiction
Some years ago, I was sitting in a café with a writer
friend. He had just come from giving a talk to a group of sixth-formers
and one of them had asked, "Why did you become a writer?"
"You know what?" he said to me, stirring his cappuccino, "I
gave them some flannel about the joy of language, but actually, the real
reason I became a writer was so that I could move to London and sit in
cafés with other writers and talk about why I became a writer."
For those of us who come from decidedly non-literary
backgrounds, there is something wonderful about being a writer - all the
shallow stuff we are supposed to despise; the café talk, the book
launches, the scanning of literary pages feeling guiltily gratified when
a friend gets a bad review. Forget for a moment the loneliness,
paranoia and financial insecurity, Being a Writer is great fun.
But there is a catch. You have to write. This is something
that would-be writers sometimes appear not to have grasped. Like many
novelists, I often give talks at festivals and a common question is,
'How did you get your first novel published?'
It's a perfectly valid question but I often suspect the
motivation behind it. What was your trick? is what they mean. Tell me
your trick, because when I know it, I will be published too. The honest
answer, I'm afraid, is, "I wrote a good book. And if you want to be a
published writer, you will have to write one too."
Throughout 2006, I will be writing a column in this newspaper called Write a Novel in a Year. Can you write a novel in a year? Well, yes, if you don't do much else and you work hard and are talented.
But in actual fact, if you follow the column, and do the exercises I set (yes, exercises) what you will end up with will not be a novel, it won't even be the first draft of a novel, it will be a body of work, the raw material, which you may one day be able to shape and work on until it becomes a book.
How long does it take to write a novel? Well, it depends. My first, Crazy Paving, was written while I was a part-time secretary, young and single with no domestic ties. It took me 18 months.
By the time it came to writing my second, I was theatre critic for a Sunday newspaper, which meant I had all day to write before going to the theatre in the evenings: as day-jobs go, it was a corker. Dance With Me was written in seven months.
My third novel was sold on the strength of a one-page proposal when I was pregnant with my first child. I promised my publisher the book would be delivered before the baby but I was lying through my teeth. Baby arrived when I was one chapter in.
My partner worked full-time and I had no childcare, but I still had to finish the book as we had spent the advance on buying a flat to have the baby in. Honey-Dew was written in eight months while I was sick with exhaustion. There's a reason why it's my shortest book.
My fourth, Fires in the Dark, was a huge departure. The first three had all been contemporary and peopled in the main by female characters. The events in them weren't autobiographical - Honey-Dew is about a girl who murders her parents - but it's fair to say that in terms of their scope and landscape, they were within my own experience.
Fires in the Dark is set in Central Europe and is about a boy from a tribe of nomadic Kalderash Roma. Born in a barn in rural Bohemia, he grows up during the Great Depression and the rise of Nazism, is interned in a camp, and escapes to take part in the Prague Uprising of May 1945. It was three times the length of Honey-Dew and took me four and a half years to write.
So, in other words, how long is a piece of string? Your novel will take you as long as it takes you - but I'm going to stick my neck out and say that if you haven't written a book before and are really serious about it and have a job or a family or - heaven forbid - both, then you are looking at around three years from start to finish.
This first year is just the taster, the generating-material-and-having-a-go year. At the end of it, you will have a huge amount of work remaining. Still interested? Good, we'll get started in a minute.
Before we do, let's establish a few things that the column will emphatically not do. It will not - repeat, not - give advice on how to get into print. Any letters or message board posts asking me how to get an agent or publisher will be weaved into a ceremonial pyre in my back garden and torched.
Getting published may seem impossible, and often is, but if you haven't written your book yet then quite frankly it's the least of your problems. Your only concern should be to write. Write your book, write it well, then re-write it even better.
I'm afraid I also can't read any manuscripts - I have to be ruthless about that or I won't write a word myself this year. There is something I will do, 'though. The Daily Telegraph has now set up this section of its website, where you will be able to post your writing to be commented on by fellow followers of this process. This article and exercises from subsequent columns will be posted there as well. Every now and then, I'll be dropping in, just to check how you're all getting on.
A word of caution, though. I used to teach a creative writing evening class. My least talented students were invariably the ones who came with a curled lip, convinced that they were far cleverer than anyone else in the group and that the only reason they weren't a published writer like me was because of some vast conspiracy against them, of which I was naturally a part.
On the one hand, they wanted to touch the hem of my garment. On the other, they were convinced they had nothing to learn and despised themselves and their fellow students for even being there. Here is this week's apercu: we all have something to learn.
Even Ian McEwan or Margaret Atwood or Toni Morrison still have something to learn, and the reason they are great writers is because they know it and work incredibly hard on each and every book.
"Every time I am about to start a novel," says Susan Hill, "I look at it, and it is like a mountain and I say to myself, oh no, this time you have gone too far." If you simply sit back and think about the prospect of writing a book it will seem a vast and unconquerable task.
The way to make it less so is break it down into its constituent parts, which is what we will be doing over the next twelve months. "The art of writing," Kingsley Amis said, "is the art of applying the seat of one's trousers to the seat of one's chair."
So let's start. Take up a notebook and pen, and write one sentence, beginning with the words, "The day after my eighth birthday, my father told me..." Write more than a sentence if you like but just one sentence is fine.
If you feel so inclined, you can post yours on the message board, or send it to me on a postcard c/o the Daily Telegraph Books Desk. I'll be talking more about first sentences next week and printing some of your efforts the week after that.
While you are doing this exercise, you may well find a small, mocking voice whispering in your ear. It will be saying things like "Don't be stupid, you can't write a novel", or, maybe, "this is stupid, I'm too clever for this".
Both thoughts are equally destructive and both must be ignored. Everyone has to start somewhere. Lawrence Sterne, Emily Bronte, Nadine Gordimer all started somewhere. Turn off the computer and go and get a notepad and pen. Go on.
Throughout 2006, I will be writing a column in this newspaper called Write a Novel in a Year. Can you write a novel in a year? Well, yes, if you don't do much else and you work hard and are talented.
But in actual fact, if you follow the column, and do the exercises I set (yes, exercises) what you will end up with will not be a novel, it won't even be the first draft of a novel, it will be a body of work, the raw material, which you may one day be able to shape and work on until it becomes a book.
How long does it take to write a novel? Well, it depends. My first, Crazy Paving, was written while I was a part-time secretary, young and single with no domestic ties. It took me 18 months.
By the time it came to writing my second, I was theatre critic for a Sunday newspaper, which meant I had all day to write before going to the theatre in the evenings: as day-jobs go, it was a corker. Dance With Me was written in seven months.
My third novel was sold on the strength of a one-page proposal when I was pregnant with my first child. I promised my publisher the book would be delivered before the baby but I was lying through my teeth. Baby arrived when I was one chapter in.
My partner worked full-time and I had no childcare, but I still had to finish the book as we had spent the advance on buying a flat to have the baby in. Honey-Dew was written in eight months while I was sick with exhaustion. There's a reason why it's my shortest book.
My fourth, Fires in the Dark, was a huge departure. The first three had all been contemporary and peopled in the main by female characters. The events in them weren't autobiographical - Honey-Dew is about a girl who murders her parents - but it's fair to say that in terms of their scope and landscape, they were within my own experience.
Fires in the Dark is set in Central Europe and is about a boy from a tribe of nomadic Kalderash Roma. Born in a barn in rural Bohemia, he grows up during the Great Depression and the rise of Nazism, is interned in a camp, and escapes to take part in the Prague Uprising of May 1945. It was three times the length of Honey-Dew and took me four and a half years to write.
So, in other words, how long is a piece of string? Your novel will take you as long as it takes you - but I'm going to stick my neck out and say that if you haven't written a book before and are really serious about it and have a job or a family or - heaven forbid - both, then you are looking at around three years from start to finish.
This first year is just the taster, the generating-material-and-having-a-go year. At the end of it, you will have a huge amount of work remaining. Still interested? Good, we'll get started in a minute.
Before we do, let's establish a few things that the column will emphatically not do. It will not - repeat, not - give advice on how to get into print. Any letters or message board posts asking me how to get an agent or publisher will be weaved into a ceremonial pyre in my back garden and torched.
Getting published may seem impossible, and often is, but if you haven't written your book yet then quite frankly it's the least of your problems. Your only concern should be to write. Write your book, write it well, then re-write it even better.
I'm afraid I also can't read any manuscripts - I have to be ruthless about that or I won't write a word myself this year. There is something I will do, 'though. The Daily Telegraph has now set up this section of its website, where you will be able to post your writing to be commented on by fellow followers of this process. This article and exercises from subsequent columns will be posted there as well. Every now and then, I'll be dropping in, just to check how you're all getting on.
A word of caution, though. I used to teach a creative writing evening class. My least talented students were invariably the ones who came with a curled lip, convinced that they were far cleverer than anyone else in the group and that the only reason they weren't a published writer like me was because of some vast conspiracy against them, of which I was naturally a part.
On the one hand, they wanted to touch the hem of my garment. On the other, they were convinced they had nothing to learn and despised themselves and their fellow students for even being there. Here is this week's apercu: we all have something to learn.
Even Ian McEwan or Margaret Atwood or Toni Morrison still have something to learn, and the reason they are great writers is because they know it and work incredibly hard on each and every book.
"Every time I am about to start a novel," says Susan Hill, "I look at it, and it is like a mountain and I say to myself, oh no, this time you have gone too far." If you simply sit back and think about the prospect of writing a book it will seem a vast and unconquerable task.
The way to make it less so is break it down into its constituent parts, which is what we will be doing over the next twelve months. "The art of writing," Kingsley Amis said, "is the art of applying the seat of one's trousers to the seat of one's chair."
So let's start. Take up a notebook and pen, and write one sentence, beginning with the words, "The day after my eighth birthday, my father told me..." Write more than a sentence if you like but just one sentence is fine.
If you feel so inclined, you can post yours on the message board, or send it to me on a postcard c/o the Daily Telegraph Books Desk. I'll be talking more about first sentences next week and printing some of your efforts the week after that.
While you are doing this exercise, you may well find a small, mocking voice whispering in your ear. It will be saying things like "Don't be stupid, you can't write a novel", or, maybe, "this is stupid, I'm too clever for this".
Both thoughts are equally destructive and both must be ignored. Everyone has to start somewhere. Lawrence Sterne, Emily Bronte, Nadine Gordimer all started somewhere. Turn off the computer and go and get a notepad and pen. Go on.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Thursday, April 26, 2012
This week on writing.ie
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Find out what the story is, starting right here..... |
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Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
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This week on writing.ie
| The Home of Irish Writing Online! The Irish are renowned for being a nation of story tellers. Find out what the story is, starting right here..... |
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| Contact us at contact@writing.ie We welcome your thoughts and ideas! |
Writing.ie, The Old Post Office, Kilmacanogue, Co. Wicklow, IRELAND
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