Welcome to the first in this year's series of interviews with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology editors and Microfiction Competition judges! Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2023 and the next interview in this series will post in January 2023.
This week, Diane Simmons chats with Damhnait Monaghan, this year's Guest Editor for the 2023 National Flash Fiction Day Anthology, about time, prizes, editing and what she'd like to see in this year's anthology submissions....
DS: Together with Karen Jones, you are editing this year’s NFFD anthology on the theme of TIME. Do you have any advice for entrants? Is there anything in particular you’d like to see?
DM: There’s plenty of time (ahem) before submissions close, so my advice would be to get a first draft down, then set it aside for a period of time (ahem), before you go back in to edit. The editing process is where a piece can really be polished.
I would love to see some excellent humour pieces. They can be hard to pull off, but are a delight when done well. Make me smile, heck, make me laugh.
DS: Your novel New Girl in Little Cove (Harper Collins, 2021), recently won the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in the Romance category. How important do you think prizes are for writers?
DM: I was absolutely gobsmacked to win. Kobo organized an elaborate prank to notify the winners. I joined a Zoom, supposedly to record a quick promo video with my publisher HarperCollins Canada. I was quite confused when the President and CEO of Rakuten Kobo appeared on my screen, introduced himself and told me I’d won. I knew I’d been shortlisted, but the prank happened before the date the winners were to be announced. It was surreal and wonderful.
Winning a prize helps raise a writer’s profile and provides external validation, both of which can be a real boost to one’s self-confidence. Prizes can also drive sales. In my own case, my novel was published in March 2021, during lockdown, so it wasn’t on display in bookshops as they were all closed. Winning the Kobo prize, with the resultant publicity a year later, boosted sales in Canada for which I am extremely grateful.
DS: Do you have a favourite part of the writing process?
DM: I love laying down a first draft when I let my mind and my pen wander. I’m often surprised at where they take me. No plotting, no plan, just setting off on an adventure.
DS: You are a Canadian writer who has lived in the UK for over twenty years. How much does Canada and its people feature in your writing?
DM: When I’m writing flash fiction, my head seems to be mostly in the U.K. But my debut novel was set in Newfoundland & Labrador and my current WIP is set in Ontario, both Canadian provinces. It seems I write short in the UK, long in Canada. Maybe there’s a metaphor in there somewhere…
DS: Some writers like silence when they write, others like to listen to music or write in noisy cafes. Do you have a preference?
DM: I don’t need silence to write, background noise is fine. But I don’t generally listen to music when I’m writing. Maybe I should give it a whirl!
Damhnait Monaghan's flash fiction is widely published and has won or placed in various competitions. Her novella in flash The Neverlands (V Press) won best novella in the 2020 Saboteur Awards. Her debut novel New Girl in Little Cove (Harper Collins) won the 2022 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in the Romance category. A former editor and founding member of FlashBack Fiction, Damhnait has previously been a judge for the National Flash Fiction Day Anthology micro competition, the inaugural Retreat West novelette in flash competition and F(r)iction’s flash fiction competition.