Gibraltar's short stories 2025

I've been slowly (very slowly) reading the winning entries in this year's Gibraltar Spring Festival short story competition. No excuses, I am busy, but I also like to take my time with these matters, savour the stories slowly, a good while after the publicity machine has lauded the writers, the judges, the event, the government and everyone else that played a part in it. Taking my time and above all, ignoring commentary and social media, means that I can make my own mind up about the stories I read.

As in other years, this year's batch of entries was numerous and that is a positive; it shows that there is an eagerness in the local community to write, to read and to take part in this initiative. After over a decade either taking part myself or generally just enjoying the fruits of others' story telling, I still think that it is a good thing that there is a local competition that arouses in the community the will to write down their stories, whatever those might be. It is still the case that there are few stories in the world that are Gibraltarian stories, by Gibraltarian authors. By this, I don't mean stories about, or set in Gibraltar, but those works of fiction or poetry that open a window to a place, a time, a zeitgeist. 

What is encouraging, however, is that this small number of works is growing year on year. Not just because of the short story competition - a short story competition is a small element in helping focus attention on literature as part of a community's culture - but because every year there seems to be another flurry of publishing by local authors and therefore a greater number of works available to build up that picture of a place. Whether a thriller by a Gibraltarian author is set locally or set in a far off country, in another time, or place or galaxy or dimension, that novel will still say something about the writer and their provenance, about the place where it was written, or the place that influenced the write. That is one of the joys of indulging in reading; the discovery of the other: the other place, the other perspective, the other world of imagination. 

Back to this year's batch of winning entries, which I very much enjoyed reading. The link to the Gibraltar Cultural Services website page is below and I would encourage everyone to drop by and read at least some of them. Firstly, they are worth those five or ten minutes each, perfect coffee break reads. Secondly, it is wonderful for writers to know that their work is being read. Sometimes it doesn't even matter if the reader doesn't like it - just the knowledge that someone has taken the time to read your work and respond to it is good enough. No-one is going to like everything anyway.

2025 Gibraltar Spring Festival Short Story Competition Winners.pdf      

I love that these days there is a Llanito category. It is a difficult language to write. Given that it is mainly oral, there is a tendency to need to 'hear' it and so the written version must somehow 'sound' true. That is a tough call and I am not entirely sure that this year's winners quite mastered this aspect of it. But they gave it a good go and in many ways, that is good enough for me, because it means that there is more Llanito out there written and published and therefore skills in writing it will only improve. No apologies for being critical - criticism is much needed in the literary sphere - and no apologies for not writing in Llanito myself. I speak it but writing it is just not my bag. At least, not for now.

I also loved the variety of themes and settings. Sometimes writing to a theme is a great discipline and perhaps the competition organisers might give that some thought for a future competition, or create a themed competition for a special event. It helps focus writers and it makes them hone their writing far more carefully than an open theme. What I do like about an open theme is the variety of stories that it produces. This means that this year's batch included work on mental health, on memory and migration, on desire and danger, on family and loss among other themes, some are set in Gibraltar, in the present, in the past, in Tangiers, in La Linea, in the upper town, at the border...you get my point.

My favourite...so hard to choose. The overall winner, I think, was a great story: The Rock in my Tea Cup by Daniel Francis Brancato. It caught me up in the first sentence and held me to the end. Loved it. I also really enjoyed Stephen Perera's Shining a Light on the 70s...I loved the humour and the language and it took me right back to familiar days of the 70s (el gordito siempre acababa de portero...bueno, y la gordita igual!). But all the stories are worth a read and they open a window on Gibraltar and its writers in 2025. 

A brief word about the entries by the school children. This is a category that I particularly enjoy because it gives us a glimpse into the future. I haven't done any research but I do wonder if any of the finalists of previous competitions have gone on to be writers. I think Louis Emmitt-Stern stands out; I remember him winning at least one poetry competition and he may well have won more - Louis, if you read this, let us know in the comments! I hope this year's entrants keep writing; there is talent lurking there.

If you haven't already read this year's short stories, please do. It is not enough just to read Instagram and Facebook and what these say about who won with what story. It is important to support local writing and the best way this is done is by reading local writers.

Escaping reality through fiction

The Arts helping to get through lockdown

If there's one thing that having to stay at home for most of the day every day during the coronavirus pandemic seems to be achieving is a resurgence of popular interest in the arts. While we are all avidly using technology to  substitute our usual habits of socialising, it is the arts that so many of us have turned to. Whether we have tuned in to streaming of music concerts, theatrical performances, the ballet, or virtual tours of museums and galleries, it is the arts that are offering some form of solace, that are helping us to reach inside ourselves as individuals and find ways of both escapism and explanation. 

We need to include literature and writing in this. There has been a surge in book sales across the world as one country after another went into lockdown, with stores reporting a sudden increase in the numbers of sales of physical books while shops remained open. After the lockdown, booksellers that are able to deliver or post books are doing so at a surprisingly high rate, while it is expected that the sale of e-books will also surge. The more intrepid book clubs have set up Zoom meetings so that book lovers can continue their exchanges on their 'book of the month'. Literature is one of the arts that is helping people get through this.

The joy of reading

Reading, of course, is a great way of keeping the mind active and distracted from the worries of what is an extremely difficult situation, one where we are each united with the rest of the world in our anxieties about sickness, survival, our families, our personal finances, the unsettling nature of change and not knowing when all this will end. 

That list goes nowhere to scratch the surface of those whose personal situations are extremely difficult: those with mental illnesses who cannot access easily their usual support systems; those in abusive relationships; those who simply have not got the money to feed their families; those with mobility difficulties who cannot get about their own home without help...the list could go on and on. What about those in war situations? What about those in refugee camps? What about those who live in poverty with no access to washing facilities - so much for those 20 seconds humming 'happy birthday'! And those who live in overcrowded conditions - no social distancing for them even if sick with the virus! 

Anxiety is rife, and reading is one way of freeing the mind from its grip, if only for short periods. Reading allows the mind to roam widely and freely - across the world, across time and space. Reading also keeps us away from the virtual reality that is social media with all its pressures, doom, gloom and 'fake news'.

In particular, reading fiction helps us to withdraw from the prison that our four walls have become and, where we are surrounded at close quarters by the rest of the family, gives as an opportunity for solitary thinking, a break where we can recharge our mental batteries. Equally, if we live alone, fiction introduces us and brings us into intimate contact with others in the safe space that is the mind. We can select books that take us to places we are unlikely ever to visit - outer space, for example, or 20,000 leagues under the sea - or that are light and bright and can transport us to a happier place than perhaps we find ourselves in at the moment. 

Writing in lockdown

So what about writing? It's not as if overnight any of us is going to write that novel that speaks of the themes of the deadly coronavirus, quarantine, isolation, death and suffering in all the various incarnations of these. Writing a novel takes time and, hopefully, we will long be out of this situation by the time our novels are ready to head for the printing press. If any of us writes one.

I guess that is why I have taken to short stories. Not that these are particularly easy to write - a good short story is its own literary masterpiece, and I am nowhere near skilled enough to write one of those. But at least with a short story I get a chance to delve into the world of a fictional character that I have created. I can let out whatever anxiety is lurking about at the time. I can let my mind work out sticky problems by relating these to fictional characters. I can exercise my imagination and simply ask, what if? The short story, like the poem, can take one theme, one person, add the question 'what if' and create a brief moment of escape for my readers. 

For me, it allows me to escape my own reality for a while, and then leaves me a sense of satisfaction that I think you only get when you've created something new, something that has never existed before, but because it is written, has a greater degree of permanence than any of us mere  humans might have. And if I get it right, with any luck, it connects with others. 

There are many themes that are arising for us during this lockdown. Isolation is one. Imprisonment is another. Loss of control of our lives is a third. Unexpected change is yet another. I am coming to really understand just how important a role in helping prisoners tap into their feelings and their creativity that writing has, and how great a contribution creative writing classes in prisons can make to help prisoners avoid re-offending in future. I think this is a theme I might come back to in another post.

Simply Stories

Today's Simply Stories contribution came from me asking the usual 'what if' and applying it to trying to see life from someone else's perspective. What if you loved music but because of a life-changing event, you were disengaged from making music and thought you'd never ever be yourself because you could not make music again? What if someone unexpected turned up and changed your mind? Quite a simple idea and a useful exercise in drafting a story. Find the link on the right hand side to 'All that Jazz' and see what you think. Then, have a go, write your own lockdown story and please, share it here by sending it through to me at my email address: 

jackiegirl@hotmail.co.uk

Why write at all?

And, as the follow up question might be? Does anyone actually read these days?

Well perhaps these days we might be forgiven for thinking that YouTube and TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram and all those other platforms based on visual content may have sounded the death knell for reading anything longer than a hashtag. But this is not at all so.

Reading still rules...

In 2019, the UK book industry alone was worth some £6 billion. While sales of print books fell somewhat, sales of digital and audiobooks increased. Let's not forget that books are not the only form of reading material. Much of what we read includes news and opinion reports - and stories, creative fiction, creative non-fiction and more - in newspapers and magazines, both in print and online. Whether it's from paper or from their  phone or tablets or computer screens, people read and they read a lot. 

When you add to that the fact that to make a film or documentary, or video report, there often has to be a script first (social media and TikTok dancing excepted!), the need for writing, and good writing in particular, is clearly as important as ever.

Human beings also have an innate drive to communicate with each other, and this has never been more starkly highlighted than in this period of almost global 'lockdown', where we have been forced by the spread of this deadly contagion to isolate ourselves from each other. Many of us will be spending our lockdown periods within small family units and many others will be completely alone.

Being alone for long periods is not a natural human state. We may like to enjoy periods of solitude for reflection or simply 'me' time, but prolonged periods immersed in an enforced solitary state can be detrimental to our mental health. Simply put, we get lonely.

...But technology can help

Technology has opened up a way for us to get through periods of isolation in a way many of us had simply not given thought to: WhatsApp group video chats, Zoom online board meetings, group musical collaborations, the streaming of live theatre productions for those who can't attend. I even have a friend who is continuing to give dance classes on Zoom in a way which means all her 'couples' can continue to practise their steps every week to their favourite music and still feel they are doing it as  a group! And technology enables us to research, find inspiration, learn, practise our craft and continue to write our stories for an ever-growing audience.

During this particular intense time of crisis, our senses tend to be heightened; we are acutely aware of danger and yet we are obliged to stay calm. We have to do exactly the opposite of what our 'fight or flight' instincts are screaming at us to do and stay still, stay home. The internal conflict this arouses in us can cause us problems, that is true, but it can also be the source of tremendous creativity. 

The short story is an ideal medium for expressing that creativity. You can blurt out what you want to say in a short space of time, polish it up, make sure that the plot is coherent and the characters believable and there you have it. Or almost. A good short story will have to be revised and polished until it communicates what the writer wants to say as effectively as possible in beautiful words, and leave the reader with the sense of having uncovered a universal truth.

If you love writing, as I said in a previous post, this is the ideal time to just do it, especially as there are a tremendous amount of online resources to help. Just Google 'How to write a short story' and you'll pull up thousands of articles devoted to give you ideas.

For my part, I can't say I have suddenly taken to penning my magnum opus during this period. Besides having to dedicate some time to working from home, I simply haven't been able to focus for very long at a time. It's a common response to times of crisis apparently.

But again, technology has come to my rescue as a writer. I have been co-writing a non-fiction book and technology has been perfect for sharing research notes and working together on the manuscript, and in these past few weeks we have come to almost finish the first draft.

I have also finally begun proper work on a collection of short stories. It suits me to write these now. Time seems to have both lengthened and compressed at the same time. I get up in the morning wondering if lockdown will be extended or called off. Uncertainty as to health or whether there will be any work or any money to be earned when the pandemic recedes means it is difficult to plan ahead. Short stories can be dreamed up and drafted in a relatively short space of time while novels can occupy you for years. And once again, technology has helped me find inspiration, ideas and sources of learning.

Here are links to some sites I found useful recently, to help motivate  me and keep me writing:

Margaret Atwood's writing tips

Ray Bradbury's writing advice

Stephen King on writing short stories

John Dufresne on writing a short story

Google Docs for Writers

Travel Writers read for Inspiration when on lockdown

There are so many resources online, but there are also many sources of inspiration even just leaning out of your window to observe the calm that has suddenly descended on us. It is when it is quiet that you start to really notice the world immediately about you. It is by noticing those everyday things that normally you overlook, that you start to find the stories on your very doorstep.

This week, in my series 'Simply Stories' I have shared a story kindly contributed by young actress and writer, Carmen Anderson. "Berry Bliss for Breakfast" won her a prize in the Gibraltar Short Story Competition in 2018. It is a shot read with big impact. Check out the link in the right hand bar. I know you'll enjoy it!

Do you plan before you write - or just write?

Always a subject of debate among writers: do you plan out your work first? Do you lay out a structure so you have a road map, a route to your destination? Or are you more impulsive, let your fingers move over the keyboard and let them take your story to wherever it is meant to go?

I find a bit of planning helps me out. If nothing else, since I tend to write in short spurts as and when I get time to and in a race before deadlines, just to jot down a few bullet points at the start of a piece helps me to focus my thoughts. It helps to outline the angle of entry, the pathway through the theme, the sequence of events and drives me towards the conclusion, which, if all goes well, is a natural summing up of what went before in non-fiction and a tying of loose ends, a resolution, in fiction.

The extent of planning is influenced in part by how complex the piece you are trying to produce. A thoroughly researched piece of political history, a detailed biography of a famous figure, a complex crime thriller are each likely to need a thorough road map much more than a short story with a small cast of characters and a single theme plot. Then again, preferring to plan or not plan, and the extent of details in your plans can be influenced just as much by your personality as by the requirements of what you are trying to write.

I am, in collaboration with another writer, very slowly working my way through a non-fiction book. We began our work with some basic reading around the subject and then discussed an outline of what we wanted the book to be about. From this, we put together a basic plan. This has been reviewed a number of times, reworked and refocused as the research threw up information that we wanted to integrate, and identified irrelevant details that we decided to throw out. As we write, the plan is modified, but essentially it has helped us to focus and to organise what is a vast amount of information that we could have got lost in for years without ever typing a word.

For me, this approach works quite well with non-fiction. Even when I write short articles for magazines, a very basic plan helps me to organise my thinking. 

It works quite well with creative writing too. I remember from decades ago, our English teacher recommending writing a rough plan in pencil at the start of each of our answers before taking the plunge. It's the writing equivalent of warm up exercises before a rugby match to make sure you get the best performance from your muscles: in a writer's case, the mind muscle. What I found used to help the most, was a kind of release of creativity that seems to come when you force your thoughts down the nib of a pencil (you can do it electronically, but pencil works best for me). 

A rough plan doesn't restrict your work, it just helps to shape it. Many a time I've planned out a story to find that as I write, characters suddenly seem to take a life of their own, carve out their own path. Sometimes, it feels that I am writing what they are doing, rather than orchestrating their actions from my writing. It's a weird mental space that writers inhabit!

Which is where non-planning and writing on the wing comes in. Once the creative flow starts, writing seems to happen through you rather than by you. It's as if once you have found the "real" story - that mystical story that exists in the Platonic world of ideas rather then springing from the grey matter between your ears, that story that was just lurking in the ether waiting to be caught and fastened to paper (or translated into digital form) - the story simply materialises. So, I might be sounding a bit metaphysical here, but that's how it feels. 

What actually happens is that by writing freely, with only a vague suggestion about what you want to write, you release the creativity in your brain and it will create the story as you go along. It's quite a liberating way to write, a little exciting, and even a touch disturbing if you are one of those writers who likes complete control over their work.

Whether you plan your work first or not, whether you follow your plan or let yourself get carried along by the power of the story, all writing needs to be revised and polished so that it makes some kind of sense to the reader. Stories without meaning are not stories at all, just a collection of phrases. But revision is a whole other ball game. I'm off to plan a story in the hope I'll actually write one worth submitting to a competition or for publication somewhere. For what is the point of writing if no-one is going to be able to read and understand your work?

Dare to Publish

The Dark Closes In: a book of spooky stories for those long winter evenings

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1502725304

Well, the deed is done.  I went and pressed the "Publish" button on Amazon Createspace and there it is, my book, available on Kindle and in paperback across the globe. Wow.  For a writer, I'm remarkably lost for words.

Not that it was an easy thing, publishing my own book, and I have yet to experience the full force of public feedback - of which I hope to get loads and all positive, of course.  I had to write it for a start, and then proof-read it over and over and over to make sure it was as perfect as can be.  Then there was the whole wrestling with the layout thing, which actually was not anywhere near as hard as I expected and there is a good deal of guidance online on how to do it.  And Createspace does make it all pretty easy.

Photo, "Books Key" by renjith krishnan, courtesy of www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The cover gave me a little more trouble, and while it is perfectly possible to pay for a professional cover design which is probably worth while the expense, I wanted to use one of my daughter's photographs which I felt fit the theme perfectly.  With a bit of tinkering on the computer and a good deal of trial and error, the cover was prepared and loaded.

Photo of Carmen Anderson taken by Jessica Richardson of Little Lenses Photography

Then came proofing the product.  That was a test of endurance if ever there was one.  It took me weeks and weeks to get the look and layout right, and iron out as many mistakes as I could find, such as the page numbering which went awry at one stage, and the page breaks.  I ordered proof copies, waited to receive them, took an editing pencil to them and then had to make changes.  Right up to the moment I pressed the button to publish, I had doubts.

Now to market the book.  I still have doubts.  Will readers like it?  Will anyone be tempted to buy it?  Will people laugh at my audacity to publish a selection of short stories?  Will they mock because they are not of the literary standards of Somerset Maugham or Ernest Hemingway?  They are stories mainly written for youngsters, and tested out on my teenage daughter's friends.  Their feedback was good, so I kept going.  That voice of doubt always nagging at me keeps whispering that of course they said they liked the stories because they didn't want to offend me.  Perhaps I'll rope them into the social media marketing of it and make them stand by their words!

Photo by KROMKRATHOG courtesy of www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Self doubt, I suppose, is an occupational hazard for the writer, and when there are few opportunities to network with other writers and gain feedback for your work, you can never be quite sure that you are good enough.  That's why I strongly advocate joining a writer's group.  A good, well-run writer's group can provide so much support and reassurance to writers, and can help local writers go from scribbling on an old notebook to seeing their work in print - or performed if they are playwrights.

I have blogged on this subject before, and probably will again.  I still have an ambition to be part of a writer's group in Gibraltar, a group where the local talent - and there is a good deal of it - pools it resources and encourages the craft to grow.  I was once a member of the Medway Mermaids writers' group and they helped my confidence as a writer grow.  I've added a link to their website in the panel to the right of this page and below:

Medway Mermaids

Attending their sessions was invaluable to my development as a writer.  Without that confidence I would never have entered my poems into competitions, and I would never have pressed that "publish" button.  Now I have, so it's publish and be damned, or publish and enjoy.  Time will tell.

Photo by Stuart Miles courtesy of www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Smallest of Things

The glories of new technology, that a simple photograph can be turned into the cover of a short story, and that a short story can be turned into a marketable ebook in under an hour.

Short story now on Kindle!

Having been a writer for some years but never really venturing into putting my scribbling out there into the big wide world, I have arrived at the frontiers of my first half-century determined to be able to see myself as a published writer.  And to do so, I figured I would experiment with the whole Kindle thing and signed up with Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing.

"The Smallest of Things" is a short story, a romance, that lets the reader into Sam's thoughts as they ponder over the three most significant women in his life, and how it was a simple kiss that made such a difference to him.

I had written it years ago, and while recovering from gall bladder surgery over the past couple of weeks, I decided to look into what you have to do to get your manuscript onto a kindle.  I'm not great with technology.  I get impatient with the jargon and have a tendency to need instructions written in monosyllables, with short sentences and preferably an illustrated flow-chart.  But once I got going on  it - my current mantra is "To do is to learn" - it was not that hard at all.

One of the most important things I have learnt is about editing - I checked, revised, redrafted and checked again numerous times - but, and here I raise my hat with reverence to all editors out there - it is tough, you get blinded by the words, spellcheck programmes aren't totally reliable, you have to know your grammar and your spellings, and how you best use language.  And yes, I will probably find an error and need to update the story.  Next time I will be even more careful.  Editing is a tremendous skill, and one I have yet to acquire.

But the whole process was very rewarding.  On the heels of having won the first prize for my poetry at Gibraltar's Autumn Festival last year, I am beginning to feel that I can genuinely call myself a writer now.

I put another short story on Kindle too.  "The Promise" which speaks of the simplicity and the complexity of love also in a short story.  Find them on Kindle and let me know what you think!