by Phyllis King
She was a striking figure; statuesque with long, wavy, bottle-blonde hair and scarlet-rimmed glasses that matched her scarlet suit and scarlet shoes. Over smoked chicken and pasta salad and coffee, she’d told me she was 55 and retiring from teaching at the end of the academic year. She taught VCE mathematics.
‘Time for a new career,’ she’d said brightly. ‘I’ve always wanted to write, but work and life have got in the way. What about you?’
What about me? Well, I was nearly 40 and both my kids were now at school - Esme in Year 5 and Heath in Preps - and I’d found my role as full-time mum was suddenly at an end. I’d found myself a part-time job in a second-hand bookshop but, like Edwina, I’d always wanted to write and life had got in the way.
‘I’ve finally got a few hours to myself,’ I told Edwina. ‘Now’s the time to start.’
We’d then discovered we were relatively near neighbours in central Victoria, Edwina living in Kyneton, while I lived in Gisborne. Edwina suggested we meet up on a monthly basis to support and encourage each other’s writing efforts.
So for nine months now we’d met for coffee and cake in a trendy cafe-cum-bookshop in Woodend, where we swapped manuscripts and discussed our literary progress. Or, in my case, the lack of it.
Edwina had begun her endeavours by writing short stories, and had already enjoyed some success in competitions. I had started by trying to write a novel but, while I had (I thought) credible characters and a good plot, I was struggling with word count. I’d reached the denouement with a grand total of 30,000 words - at least 30,000 short of a publishable novel. A couple of meetings ago, I’d been on the point of giving up, and Edwina had suggested that, given my taut writing style, I might be more suited to the short story genre. So I’d cut out unnecessary characters and scenes, and turned my wannabe novel into a short story. Edwina had read it, liked it, and suggested I enter it in a competition.
And now she’d brought me some contest details. I took another slug of latte and wondered whether I really dared enter the story in anything. Edwina was bound to do well in the contests and I’d feel useless by comparison if mine didn’t even rate a mention. At the same time though, I knew I’d feel horribly guilty if I didn’t enter after she’d taken the time and trouble to print out the details.
Dear Leah Crenshaw,
We are delighted to inform you that your short story, ‘The Murmuring Surge’, has been highly commended in our recent Winter Short Story Contest. You certainly sent your story to THE WRITE PLACE to get noticed!
Although you didn‘t win a money-prize this time, your entry — and those of the other highly commended entrants -came very close to taking one of the top three places.
We hope this will encourage you to carry on writing and have attached to this email an entry form for our upcoming Spring contest. We also attach a PDF of a flyer detailing our manuscript assessment courses. We can help YOU turn almost-there stories into winners!
Congratulations on being highly commended, and we look forward to seeing another story from you in our next contest.
Kind regards,
Peter Williamson,
Director, THE WRITE PLACE
PS For a full list of winners in our Winter contest, click HERE
I clicked. There was my name on the Write Place website; with six highly commended writers. Edwina’s name appeared below mine, among 15 commended writers. I was ecstatic; my first-ever short story was highly commended in a national contest.
And I’d beaten Edwina. Which, as I confessed to my husband John, felt good given I’d had to listen to months of her boasting about her competition successes!
More upbeat about my writing than I had been for months, I started writing the first chapter of a new novel, a sort-of mature age chick lit in which a woman walked out on her husband on her 40th birthday and set off on a solo tour around the world.
About a week later, I met Edwina at the cafe for our monthly meeting. She was already waiting inside, clad in green this time - green dress, green jacket, green-rimmed glasses. Green seemed appropriate given her open jealousy of my success. Not only had my story finished ahead of hers in the Write Place Winter Contest, but she’d failed to make the shortlist in the Maxton Harrison Short Story Prize that she’d been so confident of winning.
‘I don’t understand it,’ she said, after congratulating me, frostily, on being highly commended. ‘The story I entered in the Write Place contest was also commended in the City of Kalinda Literary Contest, and I’d have thought the standard was higher in that one. It should have done much better in the Write Place one.’
‘Well, it’s all subjective,’ I reminded her, pretending to be oblivious to her put-down. ‘Different judges, different likes and dislikes. I never liked The Shipping News, for example, and look how many awards that won.’
‘That’s my point,’ she said belligerently. ‘It won lots of awards, all with different judges. Awards and contests are supposed to be consistent.’
‘Well, you could say that having the same story commended in two different competitions is consistent,’ I pointed out.
Edwina scowled, ‘I googled that fellow who won it and he doesn’t appear on any lists of finalists in any other short story competition on the internet,’ she said.
‘Now, that’s unusual. Take the City of Kalinda winner, David Montague — his name appears regularly on other contest results lists over the past five years. The Write Place have picked someone no other judges have rated.’
‘It might be the first contest he’s ever entered,’ I argued.
Edwina shrugged and asked me how the rest of my writing had been going. I told her about my new novel, she told me about the latest short story she was working on, and we parted with the usual arrangement to meet again same place next month. And she stalked off back to her car, still simmering over the fact I’d finished ahead of her in my writing-contest debut.
A few days later, I once again found myself running out of words for my new novel. My heroine had walked out on her husband, bought the plane ticket, had adventures in Europe, even more adventures in Africa, had finally come out as a lesbian and had met the woman of her dreams, and the happy ending was on the horizon at 37,000 words.
What was my problem, I wondered, dispirited. There were plenty of 100,000-word bestsellers with absolutely nothing in them other than inane dialogue. So why couldn’t I write less succinctly? Here was another novel that, by culling unnecessary scenes, I could probably turn into a short story. Did this mean, then, that I was a short-story writer rather than a novelist? Did other writers of short stories find it difficult to turn their hand to the novel? Curious, I went online to find out.
I first googled the name David Montague, as Edwina had mentioned that he placed regularly in writing contests. And indeed there he was, some 10 placements to his credit in various contests; but no novel - not yet, anyway.
What about other winners, I wondered, going to the Write Place website. Edwina had said the Winter winner didn’t merit a mention elsewhere, but what about previous winners? I went to the results page and googled the name of the winner of the Autumn contest. Nothing. I tried the winner of the Summer contest, then the Spring winner. Nothing, nothing.
‘Weird,’ I muttered. I tried all the names that had finished second in Write Place competitions over the past 12 months: nothing. I tried those who had finished third: again, nothing. And then I tried Googling the money-winners from the previous 12 months and found the same thing.
But, when I googled those people who’d been highly commended or commended, several names showed up elsewhere.
I called John over to show him. ‘That’s odd,’ he said. ‘I wonder if it’s some kind of scam?’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Well, if the money-winners don’t show up on other writing competition sites and those who don’t win money prizes do, then perhaps the money-winners don’t actually exist,’ he suggested. ‘Whoever is running the contest just makes up the a
uthor names and story titles for the winners and pockets all the money.’
‘While people like me pay $25 and just get given commendations to make us feel good and have another go?’
‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘There are scams in all walks of life, Leah. Why shouldn’t there be publishing ones?’
I started to feel angry - I’d been so thrilled about my first-ever short story being highly commended and now it was possible that no-one had actually even read it. My name had just been put down on a list to encourage me to enter the contest again and part with more money.
‘If we’re right, there must be someone we can complain to, get our money back,’ I said. ‘The police or an Ombudsman or trading standards or something.’
John shrugged his shoulders. ‘The police have got better things to do than worry about you losing $25 in a bogus writing contest. And trading standards -I don’t know whether they’d do anything about it or not. You’d need proof that the contest’s not genuine, for a start.’
‘The results of all my Google searches look like pretty concrete proof to me.’
‘I doubt if anyone from trading standards would want to look at all the searches. You’d probably sound like a would-be writer miffed because you’re not among the prize-winners. You’ve only lost 25 bucks. Cut your losses and move on. Try one of the other contests.’
But I didn’t want to. Being highly commended in the Write Place contest had been the only thing that had kept me writing. All I had to show for my efforts were two failed novels and a ‘no-money prize’ in what now appeared to be a spurious contest. I sighed. All my life I’d had this idea that one day I’d be a writer. But apparently it wasn’t to be.
For some reason, I couldn’t get the apparent writing contest scam out of my mind. There were, I kept thinking, lots of people out there parting with $100 a year to enter the Write Place competitions. If 100 people entered each one, that was $10,000 a year the Write Place was making from exploiting people’s dreams. And their manuscript assessment service was probably shonky as well.
I told Edwina about it the next time we met up.
‘I knew it was dodgy,’ she said, triumphantly. ‘By rights the last story I entered should have been a winner. No wonder it only got a commendation; they hadn’t even read it.’ She bit into her fruit flan, chewed, swallowed and said, ‘We should report them - making money out of us in that way.’
I nodded agreement. ‘But John reckons we’d need proof for trading standards to take it seriously.’
‘He’s right,’ Edwina said. ‘I think we should try to prove this contest is a con.’
‘And how do you propose we do that?’
‘Well, we know that the director’s name is Peter Williamson. And we know the Write Place has a PO Box address somewhere called Wattle Bark Bay.’
‘It’s in Gippsland,’ I said. ‘It’s a two-horse place not far away from the Prom.’
John and I had bought fish and chips there one night when we were camping at the Prom last summer. It consisted of a handful of shops and a pub, surrounded by weatherboard houses on big, barren blocks. On the positive side, it was close to the beach.
‘Well, why don’t we go over to Wattle Bark Bay for a few days and find out where Peter Williamson lives? We could try to find some evidence that his contest is bogus.’
‘Edwina,’ I replied patiently, ‘the cost of driving to Gippsland and staying in a motel or a bed and breakfast would cost us a hell of a lot more than the combined $75 we’ve forked out for his scam - if it is one.’ I sighed. ‘John’s right. It’s probably easier just to cut our losses.’
‘Look,’ said Edwina persuasively. ‘If we can prove these contests are a con, it’ll get our names in the papers and suddenly we’ll be a lot more marketable. I’ve written a few crime stories,’ she continued brightly, ‘and it’ll be a lot easier for me to interest an agent in them if I’ve cracked a real-life crime.’
‘God, this is tedious,’ said Edwina.
It was the first week of October. September 30 had been the deadline for the Write Place’s Spring contest - and Edwina and I were on the first of three days of sleuthing at Wattle Park Bay.
We’d driven there in Edwina’s car the previous evening and had hired a cottage near the beach. We’d panicked at first when an exploration of Wattle Bark Bay’s small strip of shops had yielded a general store, a fish and chip shop, a hardware store and a grog shop - but no post office. But then, after driving around the small township, we’d discovered a stand-alone set of private post office boxes out on one of the dirt roads. That, we figured, couldn’t be better. We could park near it without drawing attention to ourselves, which wouldn’t have happened had the private boxes been in the main shopping strip.
In the end it hadn’t been Edwina’s suggestion of increased marketability that had brought me over to Wattle Bark Bay. It had been John’s parents offering to look after the kids for the second week of the school holidays down at their place in Apollo Bay. Esme and Heath had liked the idea of a week at the beach with Granny and Pa. Then John had learned he was to go on one of those team-building exercises with his firm for a couple of days during the second week of the school holidays.
All that left me with the prospect of being at home alone for a couple of days and, as they weren’t my days at the bookshop, being at a loose end. So the idea of a few days in Gippsland seemed a lot more inviting.
And now, perhaps because I loved watching whodunits like Midsomer Murders on television, I found myself enjoying the roadside stake-out.
But Edwina was already bored.
‘Be patient,’ I said, glancing at the clock on the dashboard. ‘It’s only just midday.’
We’d been there since 9 am and planned to stay till 5.
‘He might not come at all,’ said Edwina. ‘He might not even pick up the entries.’
‘He has to. So he knows who’s entered and who to give commendations to. Not to mention bank the cheques. Plus there’ll be bills and letters to collect. See? Someone’s coming.’
A green four-wheel-drive pulled up beside the PO boxes and a woman got out. She opened a box above the one we’d identified as belonging to the Write Place.
Edwina sighed heavily. ‘He might even be on holiday.’
‘Come on, what’s happened to all your cheerful optimism?’ I said. The four-wheel-drive headed off down the road, sending up a cloud of dust. ‘Look - here comes someone else.’
This time a Commodore pulled up beside the private boxes and a dark-haired man in jeans and sweater got out. He looked to be in his 30s. He didn’t even glance across at us as he went over to the boxes and unlocked...
‘Yes, this is it!’ Edwina said excitedly. She switched on the ignition, and made a big deal of readjusting her mirrors while the man took out his mail, locked up the box and got back into his car.
When he drove off, Edwina followed him. Fortunately he didn’t live very far away - we drove for just a few minutes along the road we’d been parked on, then turned sharply into a side street. The man lived a few houses along there, on a large bush block. Edwina pulled up outside the next house. I looked out of the back window and saw the man climb the steps up to his deck, unlock his front door and go into the house.
‘So what is this street?’ asked Edwina.
‘The sign said Lillypilly Road. And he’s at,’ I craned my neck to see the number on the letter box, ‘number 3.’
‘What now?’ asked Edwina.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘we could creep up to the house, look through the windows, try to see what he’s doing with the entries. Maybe record it if we can,’ I added, pointing to the DVD camera.
‘We’d be spotted!’ Edwina protested, horrified.
‘Well, you would be,’ I responded with a grin.
Today Edwina was a vision in blue - blue dress and jacket, blue shoes and, inevitably, blue-rimmed glasses.
As I was sensibly inconspicuous in jeans and long-sleeved black T-shirt, I grabbed the D
VD camera from the back seat, slung it around my shoulder and crept up to the house. I felt like a TV show PI; and hoped Peter Williamson didn’t have a dog.
I couldn’t see anyone through the front windows - one of which looked into an untidy living room, the other into an equally messy bedroom - so I made my way quietly round the side of the house and found myself gazing into a kitchen.
Peter Williamson was sitting at the cluttered kitchen bench, his back towards me, opening his mail. I crept a little closer, and put the DVD camera to my eye.
I watched and recorded as the ‘Director of the Write Place’ opened three envelopes, detached the first page - upon which, the competition rules stated, writers had to give their contact details - and the cheque from each story.
