Now I understand...

It was the night before the deadline for the Mslexia short story competition.
I thought I'd grown tired of entering stories for awards (a month or so in...). Then I got some encouraging news, but more of that later.
So I sat up late, going over some scribblings, making those all-important final adjustments.
I always seem to leave it until the last minute. It's the way I work. I get a perverse pleasure from seeing the clock reach almost midnight before pressing send. I used to be a journalist, and we are known for liking our deadlines. Competitions tend to close at midnight, I'm finding, and there's definitely a Cinderella element to it all.
I do indeed have a ball when I'm polishing my final draft...and then there's the sudden bump back to reality once it's all over.
I return to my normal, drab self. I pour myself a glass of port and have a long bath. Final revisions where competitions are concerned can be quite exhausting, but I enjoy the discipline. This week I cut a 1,500 word story down to under 1,000 words just to see if it would still work. I think it's better. So I sent it off to The Word Hut.
And then my attention turned to Mslexia and Start Flash Fiction.
It's always a good idea to see what you are up against. Reading widely is, of course, a prerequisite for good writing. But knowing what works for a particular judging panel or the publication attached to it perhaps involves a little fine tuning. You can't always second-guess what people are looking for, but often you can assess whether your style is a good fit for a particular award.
So, having recently got into Mslexia (they produce a great magazine for women writers) I looked at last year's winning short story at their site. It's called 'What Goes Around' and it's by Tamsin Cottis. It made me cry, if truth be told...
And now I understand.
I understand what I am up against. Tamsin captures a seldom heard voice and offers a searing and vivid glimpse into a hidden away world. Her story is hauntingly beautiful and disturbing in equal measure and she wrenches your heart with her depiction of Pauline, a woman with learning difficulties who cannot speak.
I read that story and understood what it is to pack a punch, to sock it to the reader, to write with passion and conviction about your subject, and to inhabit the world of your character.
Pauline is complete. She is perfectly realised. And so is the world she lives in, right down to the sensory impressions that leave their mark on your mind.
So yes, duly impressed and full of admiration I had a good long soak, and a good long think about what I want my short stories to achieve.
What do I want to write about and why? These questions are being answered the more stories I produce. I feel I know what I want to achieve on that front. But it's only when you read something as good as Tamsin's work that you realise how you'd potentially like to connect with your readers. To leave people thinking, to write something profound that communicates human experience in a way that resonates far beyond the first reading...well it doesn't get much better than that, surely?
Do read Tamsin's story.
Not all short stories have to make us cry of course. But they do need to provoke a strong response and leave the reader with a sense of having experienced a brief immersion in another world.