Short Story Season is upon us once again and CompletelyNovel are running their own FREE TO ENTER competition to celebrate their public launch in October. The theme is apt: change, innovation and imagination. CN has teamed up with the Society of Young Publishers to find the best up and coming writers and the winners will be chosen by the rising stars of the publishing industry.

Many a fine writer has cut their teeth, or sharpened their pencil if you will, with the short story. For writers such as Raymond Carver the short story was their métier; being able to distil emotion into fewer than ten thousand poetic words. The word limit for this competition however is two and a half thousand so will prove all the more challenging – but a challenge is what motivates us right?

My work experience at CN has involved spreading the word of the competition throughout Facebook and MySpace and I’ve found so many groups dedicated to writing, not to mention all the writing sites in existence on the good old internet- thingy, that it’s quite bewildering for an aspiring writer to find an audience. I dabble now and then with short story writing and have never been sure where to start with putting it online as there’s never any guarantee that someone will read it, let alone find it.

So what better way to raise your profile than by entering CompletelyNovel’s Short Story Competition? The winners will be published in the CompletelyNovel Launch Anthology as well as receiving editorial advice from the SYP and a free copy of the anthology. The top five favourites will be offered a CompletelyNovel assisted-publishing package for any other original manuscript they have produced.

They say you have to be in it to win it.

Oh and the deadline is 1st September so not long to go! Check here for further information.