10 Tips From a Flash Fiction Judge

I’m a judge for the wonderful Mash Stories, a keyword-based flash fiction competition that focuses on showcasing new talent, and I love it. The ideas, the language, the brilliant pieces — I’m honoured to read our submissions, let alone help decide the winner. But it’s not all good news and happy faces. I’m a judge, and that

The Other Side of Rejection

Being on the receiving end of rejection sucks. It really, really sucks. I’m a wannabe novelist and I’ve had my mystery MS — my baby, my pride and joy, my masterpiece — rejected by over sixty agencies and countless more competition judges. I’ve been overlooked in Twitter contests. I barely scraped through the Pitch Wars agent round.

2015 — The Year I Failed

2015 will for ever be the year I tried — and failed — to get a literary agent. 2015 was a year of failure. It’s hard to write that. Not because I’m sad and it hurts, but because I generally like to be optimistic. Upbeat. I went into 2015 with a polished manuscript and a shiny

Homecoming Queen – My First Shortlisted Story

HOMECOMING QUEEN After six posts dedicated exclusively to writing advice, I was starting to feel like ‘Lucy Goacher’ had no place in ‘Lucy Goacher’s Blog’ – so I’m reclaiming it. I’ll still be posting my usual weekly/monthly advice guides with Scrabble piece headers, but with extra posts a couple of times a week to document my experiences, accomplishments,