A few people have asked about when feedback and competition results will be available. Feedback will issued piecemeal in February and March - it's just a matter of chance if you get yours at the start or end of that period. Winners will be announces in early April. Good luck all!

Quick 5-minute writing spark:Your reflection in the mirror stops copying you. Instead, it starts telling you the one secret you've been hiding from everyone—even yourself. What does it say? Write the first line of dialogue (or the whole short exchange) below.

What’s the one thing stopping you from finishing your current WIP right now? Procrastination? Perfectionism? That endless research rabbit hole? We are have something - share yours below.

Just to let you know where we are with the contest. We don’t like reading on a screen, so we send the entries off to a printer and get them back in big ring-bound booklets. Then we annotate, produce feedback for those who have requested it and work out who will be commended or long-listed. Good luck all!

I’m kind of anti-realism. Imagine how boring police procedurals would be if they were full of actual police work. And I don’t have that much patience with people who are fine with fanciful depictions of every other profession but nitpick about ways in which fictional depictions of their world differ from reality. But things need to feel real. How do we achieve this?