Where's this short story I was promised then, Paul?
Trust me, I'm as frustrated about this as you are. I know
you’re used to me letting you guys down but usually it's because projects
overun and I'm incompetent at meeting deadlines. The difference this time is
that the story is finished, I'm now waiting to hear if I can post it.
Last month I talked about starting being the hardest part
for some writers. A while ago I was searching for a short story competition
that would fit my recently completed draft for another story I wrote, when I
stumbled across a competition that provided the first paragraph of a story the
entrant had to continue. Having read the paragraph out of curiosity I left it
alone, put off by the fairly steep (in comparison to other competitions I was
looking at) submission fee. Sure enough, the ideas started to trickle through a
few hours later when my brain was idle and I quickly found myself putting pen
to paper and making notes for my entry. I felt my idea was too good to throw
away and it wouldn’t work elsewhere because of the exclusive nature of the
competition, so I committed to writing it. That same principal of difficulty
getting started actually suckered me in.
I’d been looking forward to the results for months, eager
to see how my first competitive entry would fare. Then, the night before the
results, things changed.
Building up to this point I’d been doing a lot more
online reading around writing than is normal for me. I had so much initial content
for the story that I’d been looking into releasing a “full” version of the
story as an Ebook and was researching self publishing, formatting etc. I had so
many tabs open from link after link of useful information I’d found but so far
I’d resisted the short story tip links, thinking (foolishly) there couldn’t
really be much to gain. I mean, you find a competition, submit your entry and
wait to hear back about your glorious victory right?
Wrong. It was literally the last tab I had open, and I’d
clicked it by mistake. The advice was generally about being wary about who
you’re dealing with; vanity publishing winners (and anthologies that aren’t
distributed beyond the website and with such poor quality that it comes as no surprise),
extra critique services and or contact from an “agent” (claiming to see
potential in and asking to sign you up for a small fee, regardless of the fact
you’d sent in the first error-riddled copy by mistake that also contained
sudden bouts of a Mandarin you’d had no conscious memory of learning), retaining
rights and such. One thing it suggested was to research the company providing
the competition before you enter it, which to most conscientious people would
be a natural first step but one that I’d completely overlooked. So I did. On
the eve of the results, into my search bar went ‘Chapter One Promotions’...
What a crushing blow that was. Aside from their own
pages, horror stories started spilling down my screen from several different
sources and with the grim resolve of somebody called in to identify the body of
a loved one I read them all. Tales of late, unflattering or nonexistent
payments to winners, anthologies that never made it to print and of poor
quality, bad communication and general unprofessionalism got me down, but more
worryingly with my own plan for the full release I desperately scrabbled to
find what rights I’d signed away in entering. They’d taken down the terms and
conditions for entry page and replaced it with ‘results coming soon’. I checked
the terms on other competitions from the same website but again, these are
replaced as soon as competitions close. There is a page available for rules to
the novel competition, and it gives me hope in that ‘The copyright of the work remains with the author who gives Chapter One Promotions permission to
display it on the website’ but I’m worried it’s different because the format of
the competition I entered in the writing is based on something they’ve provided
in the first paragraph, so it might alter what they’d consider ‘theirs’?
Especially as I plan to earn money from it. I tell you, it’s a weird feeling
after months of hope and anticipation in your maiden competition to sit there
wondering whether it might be better, and at this point slightly hoping, that
you don’t make the shortlist...
And typically,
I did! So mega happy on that front, but also slightly sickened, haha. I
finished in one of the runner up places which complicates things even more as
this is the first time they’ve run this particular competition and I don’t know
whether it’ll make it into an anthology as there are no previous results to
look at. I’m happy though, at this point in time I can boast 100% success rate
for short listing in competitions I’ve entered! And until I’ve entered two more
I shall continue to do so :p . (I shall boast so long as I’m above 50%.)
I’ve emailed
Chapter One enquiring about the rights of my story and complications about
selling my own full version in the future. As yet I’ve had no response. Two weeks
might not seem a long time on the face of it, after all this could be a busy
time for them, but I’m panicking more each day with regards to the future of
the full version. I’ve stopped work on it altogether fearing it might be a
waste of time. One of the reasons I’m concerned is that I contacted them before
when there was a problem with the entry and they got back to me on the same day
– quick to enough get into contact when it’s about giving them money...
So we’ll have
to wait and see. I’m loathe to post the story here until I get a response. Aside
from being really unprofessional I don’t want to risk being forced to retract
it and souring potential negotiations over the future of the full version of
the story.
Aside from short
listing in the competition there has been another positive outcome from all
this. Whilst trawling the horror stories as mentioned from earlier I came
across a writer called Dan Purdue. He was the outright winner of the
International Short Story Competition run by Chapter One in 2010 and blogged
about his experience dealing with the company. Whilst reading though I had a
look around on his site and was astonished to see a sort of future version of
myself in terms of writing. Not to sound creepy, but the way he’s mapped his
career is very similar to how I project mine heading; entering short story
competitions, short listing and winning, then bundling them into a collection
for sale - it’s like we’re reading from the same blueprint. Dan has an
impressive list of all his short story achievements to date and I think (if I’m
not going crazy) I read somewhere he’s now working on a longer project. You may
argue that it’s a blueprint shared by everyone in the game, but it’s the first
time I’ve seen it from a personal level so it hit me harder. The list of
credentials is also good for me in that I now have a preapproved list of
competitions to enter without much fear of reliving my current dilemma. Again,
it might sound creepy to follow in another person’s footsteps so closely but I see
it as a target now. I wonder if as my list builds I can provide the same, safe
competition list for someone else in the future? I might make it standard
practise now to only enter competitions that others I have a little familiarity
with have entered.
At this point I
would like to point out that the dubious results I found were dated a few years
back. Like with Dan, the rest of the ‘missing’ anthologies seem to have been
added to their bookstore and it all looks up to date. I don’t know if this is
just a case of them finally getting their act together after a bumpy start but
it does give me hope with my own situation.
Bit of a long
post this time as I actually had something to talk about! Obviously I’ll get
the story posted on here as soon as the situation is resolved - you’ve been
starved of fresh content from me for far too long already! Here’s hoping it
will be sorted soon! Until next time, buh-bye!
