The Pen Wrangler

I'm not doing well in the writing competition scene. I don't mean to be dramatic but how many failures is a judgement? I don't m...

I have sadly fallen out of another competition. I know the competition was fierce because the feedback I received was hugely positive. I...

...you can't figure out how to finish your story for a competition and the deadline is looming!

A group of writers of which I am a member on Facebook does a 30 word story every Thursday. It's an interesting way to try flexing your w...

Here's where things start to go wrong: At the start!  I haven't written crime fiction before.  I want to expand my skillset though, ...

I discovered via an acquaintance that there is a crime writing competition being run for crime stories set in Scotland and it is far too te...

This is another story that didn't get me through the first round. It's not a bad story but I'll admit I needed more room to inve...

It's that time of year when pumpkin spice latte is all the rage and people who hate Christmas are getting overly excited about Halloween...

Another story went in at the weekend. It felt good to be back on the wagon after a messy summer. I did submit stories over the holidays. I j...

Sad to say, I'm out of the 250 Word Microfiction Challenge. I was disappointed, because I was very proud of Litany (see below). I honest...

I couldn't really hold off anymore, so the story is submitted. I hope it does ok, but I won't hold my breath. In truth, I'm not ...

A bad pun of a title, but it leads directly into what I want to talk about. Normally when I start writing a story I get a title and an outli...

This... ... is ... ... sooo ... ... embarassing.  I wrote my story and submitted it and the next morning I realised that I had uploaded the ...

My only New Year's Resolution this year was to enter one writing competition every month. I have some money to spare each month, so it...