ABOUT MASH STORIES
Are you one those people who have to align a tilted
frame on the wall? Have you ever found yourself folding
a piece of paper to stick it under a wobbly table?
If so, you’d know the instinct – and the pleasure – of
correcting things that are desperate to be corrected.
And Mash Stories is born exactly from this instinct.
I remember the day I looked into the short story
which listed competitions: The Grinder. At the time, there
were over 2,300 competitions listed on The Grinder, and
28,638 submissions had already been made. I felt like a
kid who had been taken to an astonishing playground
with the queue of an airport security check.
months – the number of submissions on The Grinder
website has nearly doubled – 42,668 as of 9th April 2014.
The number of competitions left me not knowing where
to start from, and the number of submissions made
me anxious about the vast amount of competitors out
there. I wasn’t ready to race against writers who had
already won awards, while I simply had no publishing
experience.
formatting; that paid me reasonably, rather than
charging me fees; that gave me free feedback and
helped me to promote my work, rather than demanding
exclusive rights to limit it.
I had assumed short story competitions would allow
me to get my voice heard, gather a circle of readers,
and earn small amounts now and then to support my
writing. But to start with, I was asked to pay to submit my
work. And when a magazine accepted to publish a story
At Mash Stories, we keep the rules to a minimum and
award the winning story a professional rate. We turn
all shortlisted stories into a podcast, and provide free
feedback for the rejected ones so that they can improve.
for the ‘exclusive’ rights to my work. I thought there was
a typo there, but apparently there wasn’t.
to get their voices heard. And I hope you will help us to
set up a model competition, which will create a change
in many writers’ lives.
That was when I decided to fold a piece of paper to stick
it under the wobbly market of story competitions. I knew
I couldn’t write to more than 7,000 competitions listed
in the endless waters of the Internet and tell them my
point, but I could set up a competition which would
stand straight no matter how tilted the others were.
Please support us by donating to us or by giving us a
hand with editorial matters.
Thank you for your interest and support.
That’s how Mash Stories was born. I dreamt of a
competition that evaluated my story, instead of its
S.E. SEVER
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