The Chalkface Challenge: The Results

There were 27 entires for the first Chalkface Challenge - the only writing competition judged entirely by children*. The judges were year 5 children from St. Edwards' Catholic Primary School, Swadinlcote, Derbyshire

The children, supported by their teacher, Celia Anderson, excelled themselves in their conscientious reading, their warm and helpful comments to the authors and their enthusiasm for new stories. Thank you!  You can see the children judging in this week's editorial.

I am  delighted to announce that the winner of the first Chalkface Challenge is Mike Pringle for the first 750 words of Autopet Farm.

Mike Pringle

The children said:

• "Funny, very good nothing to change and keep on going." 

• "I absolutely loved it nothing I would change. So funny too."

• "No words can describe but hilarious."

• "Amazing book nothing wrong with it at all"

• "I liked you don't actually expect them to shove a gun in your face"

• "You made my daylistening to that fabulous story. the humour makes it a better book. I'd love to read more. It's amazing. I wouldn't change anything. I loved it all."

There were four runners up, in no particular order:

Julie Fulton, Narrow Escape "I loved the warfare idea. It's great because of the scared people running away how you would do in real life. I wouldn't change anything it's great."
Jennifer Killick, Alex Sparrow and the Really Big Stink "Wow! This book is amazing; it's hilarious. I wanted to read on."
Elizabeth Dale, Help! I Think I'm An Alien! "I liked this book because it was really funny. And my favourite bit was when he was comparing what he liked to what his family liked. And I would not change anything about this book."
Jo Thomas, Betsy Beeble Has No Beard "I found this really funny and cool. It was amazing, funny funny funny."

Jo,  Elizabeth,  Jennifer,  Julie

Here's Mike's winning opening excerpt:

Chapter 1
Mutt Butt

Gundogs are usually things like Labradors, with floppy ears and a waggly tail. Or fluffy Golden Retrievers. Or Poodles. You don’t expect them to actually shove a gun in your face. Especially not a semi-automatic 7.62 calibre, Flexilite assault weapon.

     Of course as I was standing there dribbling, I didn’t know any of these technical details. All I knew was a dog the size of a small truck was coming at me with teeth like a tyrannosaurus. And he had a gun instead of a tail, and it was wagging at me. I did what any sensible person would do. I screamed like a big girl’s blouse, and ran as fast as my skinny legs would let me.

     As my life flashed through my mind I cursed my own little dog, Cedric, for wandering off and leading me to the farm the monster dog was guarding. I cursed Eddie too, my so-called uncle. In fact , the thought of him totally filled my head with swear words. Really bad ones. If he hadn’t had the brainwave to buy Cedric in the first place, I would’ve been peacefully tucked up in bed with my PlayStation instead of chasing the stupid mutt halfway across the country.

     But that’s Uncle Eddie for you. A complete moron who decides for no reason whatsoever that what every eleven year old boy needs more than anything else in the whole wide world is a dog. Not a state-of-the-art, fully pedigreed, oiled-up type of dog, of course. Not one that friends and neighbours drool over because of how handsome it is, or because of the way it does everything perfectly. Oh no. Just mangy little Cedric, covered in slobber and fleas and fitted with a dodgy Poo-matic 1.4. And in case you’ve been living under a rock and never come across a Poo-matic before, you should know that it’s the oldest, cheapest and definitely most useless internal poo-collecting device on the market. It’s made by AutoPet Inc., supposedly the world leaders in gadgets for improving animals, and uses a disposable cartridge system powered by two AAA batteries. I don’t need to tell you where the cartridge has to be inserted, and I don’t need to tell you what sort of mess a faulty 1.4 can make.

     And as for the smell...

     But I suppose it wasn’t really Cedric’s fault. Apart from the Poo-matic he was a perfectly normal little terrier, with wiry grey hair sticking out at all angles, even though I don’t think he’d had a wash since the day he’d been born. Just don’t ask me how he came to be called Cedric.

     ‘Sort the dog out, Berthold,’ Uncle Eddie shouted earlier that evening, when we heard a bleeping coming from the kitchen. Don’t ask me how I got my name either.
   
     Dear Uncle Eddie has to shout everything. He doesn’t do normal talking like the rest of the human race. I must have been all of a metre away from him as he sat there picking his nose and yelling. He rolled his fat body to one side, lifted a white flabby thigh and let rip a monster fart. I swear his boxer shorts fluttered like a flag in the breeze.

     I was more than happy to get out of there.

     Cedric was sitting in the kitchen wagging his tail. He might have been looking guilty. It was hard to tell through all that scraggy grey fur. More than likely it was just a haven’t got a clue what’s going on look.

     His Poo-matic alarm was still beeping. I clicked the switch on his collar and got a mild electric shock from the shonky wiring. I sighed, and watched the cartridge fly out of Cedric’s rear end, followed by everything that should have been inside it.

     ‘Grief, Cedric,’ I said. ‘Did you have to eat that curry last night?’

     Of course this wasn’t really fair on Cedric. The dried up chicken balti and half an onion bhaji were left over after one of Eddie’s drunken nights out. Maybe he thought Indian takeaway made a nice treat for a dog. Even if it didn’t have any lubricating oil additives.

     I gathered up a ton of kitchen roll and knelt down. Cedric slobbered in my ear. The poo cartridge was on the floor. As usual. The poo was on the floor too, but not in the poo cartridge. As usual.

---

Mike Pringle,
Chalkface Challenge Winner

Mike has spent most of his adult life creating, writing, designing and illustrating for children. He has produced material for He-Man, Transformers, Puddle Lane and Thomas the Tank Engine; worked on a wide selection of non-fiction books for publishers such as Collins, the BBC and Usborne (including Starting Point Science, winner of the Young Science Book of the Year Award); and, more recently, designed computer systems to help young people explore information over the Internet.

At fourteen, Mike learned to drive a tank and over the years has practised a number of activity sports, including parascending, abseiling, shooting, running and motor-biking. Mike also has a black belt in Karate. He illustrated and co-authored Foulsham’s Junior Guide to Karate, and wrote tongue-in-cheek articles about the world’s highest graded martial artist, Kevin Kickbutt.

Mike currently lives in Swindon with his wife Claire and their dog, Peb, who is half Labrador, half Poodle and half lunatic. Mike recently added to Swindon’s skyline by turning the walls of an office block into a road, complete with roundabouts, zebra crossing, and two full sized Mini cars!

Congratulations Mike!

There will be a new Chalkface Challenge, for a different age group,  in the Autumn.

Coping With Rejection

By Elizabeth Dale

You’ve done it! You’ve written your book, you’ve edited it over and over, you’ve given it to friends and fellow wise SCBWI members to read and then – ta-ra! - you’ve emailed it to a lucky publisher or agent. What do you do now?

Put out the flags, guzzle champagne, collapse in an exhausted heap, even maybe start talking to family and friends again. All those things. And something else, too – when you’ve had a breather and finally rejoined the human race, there’s something you really need to do. You start something else.

While you write this something else, of course you check your emails. Again. And again. And then just when you think you can’t possibly wait any longer it comes. The pin that bursts your bubble of happiness. The rejection email.

While your book is out on submission, start something new.

 

Welcome to the club...

What now? You tell yourself that publishers turned their noses up at Harry Potter at least 12 times and Watership Down 26 times, while Gone with the Wind suffered 33 rejections – this article could be filled with examples of best-sellers rejected. Amongst fellow scoobies, it took our own wonderful 2011 Crystal Kite Award winner Candy Gourlay 16 years to get published, (although she often says nine, if she doesn't count picture books) and the inspiring 2012 Crystal Kite Award winner, Sara Grant had to keep going for 17 years between the first attempt at writing a book and the long-awaited acceptance letter. So, you remind yourself that rejection is normal, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, it’s something to move forward from – and even that agents and editors can be fallible. And eventually you manage to bring yourself to look again at the rejection email. If it’s a standard one line ‘sorry this isn’t for us, others may feel differently’ then test it out. Maybe they’re right – in that anyway! Tell yourself the secret mantra – ‘Rejection is an opportunity to resubmit’ and re-submit! Hey, there are plenty of other agents/publishers out there!

Rejection is normal, it's nothing to be ashamed of, it's something to move forward from.

But what if the rejection email is more than one line? What if it says nice things about your writing? What if it criticises your precious text?? Maybe both? Whatever the feedback, give yourself a great big HUGE pat on the back! That snowed-under editor has actually taken time in her hectic day to tell you what she thinks. Why? Because you’re worth it. She has seen nuggets of gold in your writing, she can see a way you can make it even better - such help from an expert in the business is invaluable. Whatever the criticism have another look at your text. And maybe edit some more. And then send it off again.

What now? No matter how many times you get rejected, each time it hurts. You had hopes and they were dashed. It’s hard to motivate yourself to do anything except glare at the cat and eat chocolate. You certainly can’t bring yourself to start something new...

Which is why you started something new when you were full of hope and dreams. You’re already in the middle of your next project. Go back to it. Lose yourself in that wonderful make-believe world of your characters where you don’t have to think about rejection – and keep writing. And guess what, when you’ve finished it, you’ll have something else to send out, too. Double the chance of rejection – and acceptance!

Rejections will come. I have to be honest, unless you are absolutely brilliant and lucky, the odds are that you’re going to get rejected, possibly a lot. And each time it still hurts - a lot. But with each little tit-bit of feedback each rejection letter holds, you’re going to learn something new about your writing. And you’re going to get better at it. And when the brilliant day comes that you get that incredibly amazing acceptance email, it is so fantastically wonderful that it more than makes up for pain of rejection twenty times over.

How do I know this? I’ve been writing for a LONG time. I’ve had more rejections than you can probably imagine in your worst nightmares. BUT I hung on in there and I have had those wonderful acceptance emails, too. I could so easily have given up, but I didn’t. One of my lowest points was when I was accidentally sent a reader’s real thoughts on a magazine story I had written. Oh, they were scathing! But after licking my wounds I realised that was what I needed. So from that time on I always asked for honest feedback, and where I got it, I learned from it. And I persevered.

Persevere!

So keep on persevering, keep on writing and keep on learning from feedback. But most of all, keep on sending your work out! It’s a mad, crazy business we’re all involved in – but the best in the world!

---

@LizDaleAuthor

Elizabeth Dale was rejected countless times for many years before her first short story and then her first children's book was accepted. She still gets loads of rejections, but in between them all, over the years, she has had over a thousand short stories and twenty-seven children's books published. Perseverance should have been her middle name! Her most recent books are Off to Market! The Carrot Cake Catastrophe and My Secret Alien. Elizabeth lives in a village in Sussex. 

Elizabeth Dale adds to her pile of 25 published books!

Elizabeth  Dale

Elizabeth Dale dreamed of being a writer but somehow got side-tracked into doing a physics degree and managing the NHS. When her daughters were born she returned to her dream, writing thousands of short stories for magazines all over the world. But she enjoyed reading children’s books to her daughters so much, she decided to try writing them and found it such fun. 

She’s had an amazing twenty-five books published, from picture-books to age 11, other recent books are - When Betsy Came to Babysit (Tamarind), The Carrot Cake Catastrophe (Gullane) and three Igloo story collections. Elizabeth lives in a village in Sussex and is a stalwart member of Chi SCBWI.

Off to Market was published  by Frances Lincoln on 3rd January 2013

My Secret Alien was published by Egmont for their  Green Banana imprint on 4^th March