This is me being presented with the £1000 prize for the Ghost Boy, winner of the Bath Short Story Award 2014.  I was nervous about going (just because I've never won a writing competition before!) but the writers who run and organise the prize are really lovely!  I also met Anne Corlett, who won the local prize with her wonderful story, The Language of Birds.

As an artist, I submit most of my paintings into various exhibitions, most of which have prizes and are judged in some way.  It's something I've forced myself to not take personally - which is often very difficult to do.  My wonderful sister-in-law sent me a great quote attributed to author Wayne Dyer, which goes something like this...

Friday arrived and I didn't have much to do (except housework and decorating and cleaning the guinea pig hutch but that could all wait!) so I set myself a target of writing a short story.  I'm not a planner, no matter how hard I try to force myself, so I just started with 'The man' and wrote freely, chasing the story until (2,000 words later) it came to its natural conclusion.  I say chased because it really felt that way.  Each paragraph was a surprise, each new character a revelation.  In short, I loved writing this way!  And I was so pleased with the story, I entered it the next day (on the closing date) into the Fish short story competition - www.fishpublishing.com