Hello Creative-lings, I hope we are all feeling refreshed after the long weekend. Refreshed, and inspired and ready to write. The Creative team have been busy coming up with things for you to do, so without further ado, here's what you need to know this week ...

WRITER NEEDED

If you are interested in covering a Sydney Writer's Festival session for Creative at Vibewire.net, then we want to hear from you. Please email create@vibewire.net with your contact details and two samples of previous work (so we can get an idea of your style). The Managing Editor will be in touch with you with further details.

VIBEWIRE.NET CREATIVE WRITING COMPETITION STARTS THIS WEEK

Seeing as half way through this week, the month of May kicks off, then so does our Vibewire.net Creative Writing Competition. So, here's what you have to do.

Submission Criteria

This month's comp revolves around The Word of the Week. Your piece must contain the WOW or directly reference the WOW and it must be written in response to the WOW. The winning entries (one for Fiction, one for Poetry) will be decided upon by the Fiction Editor, Poetry Editor and Creative Managing Editor. Creativity, imagination, technique, originality and skills will all be taken into consideration. And frankly, we can't wait.

Word Limit

Please make your pieces no longer than 800 words.

Entries Open ...

May 1st (this Thursday). Submit your piece with 'Creative Competition Entry' in the title. Only submissions received on or after May 1st with the correct title will be considered. Please note, your submissions will be published as normal, but noted and listed by us as competition entries.

Prize

A winner from Fiction and a winner from Poetry will each receive an Allen & Unwin title. Stay tuned for what they'll be. Prizes will be posted to the winners.

Why You Should Enter

It will improve your writing skills, is a great competition to have in the portfolio, and proves your willingness as a writer to future publishers.

WORD OF THE WEEK

He's an important fellow this week, so please take note and blow the dust off your imagination (not that it should be dusty). Remember, first and foremost, the WOW is a trigger to get you writing, so don't be afraid to set the clock, grab a scrap piece of paper and just scrawl for ten minutes. You can then tidy it up, give it a polish and enter it into the comp.

ROUND UP

A new Round Up is on the way. Our Fiction Editor has been hard at work sourcing Australia wide workshops, seminars, classes, readings and competitions. Check it out in the Writing section - it has everything you need to know.

A HELPFUL WRITING HINT

This week's advice comes from the brilliant David Lodge, whose book The Art of Fiction is a wonderful companion for any writer. It should sit right next to your copy of Stern's Making Shapely Fiction.

This excerpt taken from Showing and Telling.

'Fictional discourse constantly alternates between showing us what happened and telling us what happened. The purest form of showing is the quoted speech of characters, in which language exactly mirrors the event (because the event is linguistic). The purest form of telling is authorial summary in which the conciseness and abstraction of the narrator's language effaces the particularity and individuality of the characters and their actions. A novel written almost entirely in the mode of summary would, for this reason, be almost unreadable. But summary has its uses: it can, for instance, accelerate the tempo of a narrative, hurrying us through events which would be uninteresting, or too interesting - therefore distracting if lingered over.'

Copyright David Lodge, The Art of Fiction, 1992