THE JUDGES HAVE SPOKEN….

IT HAS BEEN A HUGE TASK to choose the three best megasagas (over 18s), one of which will be chosen as the winner of the £100 prize in four days time.

If YOU are not amongst the WINNERS, you are still a champion. It takes such courage to enter a competition! Repeat after me: ‘I am a wonderful writer and I’m going to show Jon Elkon and the judges of the 2022 competition how good I am.’ How? By continually working on your craft; by improving with everything you write; by reading good writers and being inspired by them. By always observing our fellow humans and using original words to make them live on paper. By making our world into words. By dreaming, and telling us your dreams.

The Judges are both readers and writers. Joie Davidow and Laura Sebastian are successful novelists, and KBE and CB are dear friends who read voraciously and critically.

The Judges say ‘I was impressed by the quality of the submissions! So much talent and imagination!’ (Joie Davidow)  ‘…there is so much to commend in all the entries it’s almost impossible to pick the top three’ (Laura Sebastian) ‘I so enjoyed this process! I forgot how short they are – amazing to get so much into only a hundred words’ (KBE) ‘I can’t actually choose only three. All the stories on your short shortlist have something to commend them’ (CB)

The FINALISTS are presented not in order of preference!

I
 
I am magnificent.  It is dusk and there are no frolickers disturbing my waves. 
A woman watches me.  Wait – is she admiring me, or the mediocre horizon? I am far more beautiful, much more worthy of her mesmerized gaze!

I send giggling ripples to tease her ankles.   Yes! It works…she walks into my depths until my sand no longer feels her feet. My swells gently carry her beauty away from the beach. I am delighted because I want to keep her. I have many creatures but I have never had such a pretty one, all dressed in white.

BEULAH HARRIS

The judges were all impressed by the way this writer commands words and images. She has the ability to toy playfully with the reader’s expectations, and then deliver her final blow in a devastating last sentence. This is a very confident, assured piece of writing in which every word has its place, there is never any wastage.   ‘It ….was consistently coherent from the first word to the last, and I loved that he chose to tell his tale from the point of view of the sea.’

Mimicked Me

Perched upon my windowsill, underneath a serene dawn, glimpses of my tombstones peek at me through Willow trees. Each one bares my name. Underneath? Everyone I used to be. Below the gated area lay my emotions, no tombstones, I intricately stitched together masks that resembled these instead. My best work. Startled by my alarm clock, I remember this special day, it requires I smile. The voices within me begin to weep “dig up joy!” they cry. I scream and they fade. To my left, all my perfectly mounted masks and I whisper “The mimicked me, it will be.” 

LORNA MALAN

Here there are some wonderful images, and a tangle of metaphors which work extremely well to convey atmosphere. Personally, I’m allergic to any short story which ends with ‘it was just a dream.’ However, we realise that we have been in a dreamscape in the middle of the story, which allows the substance to unravel, ending with a tease. I stumbled on the spelling of “bare’ in the second line. Then I realised that in that context, “bare” as in “naked” is a poetic image which works well. ‘ ‘I was struck by the image of a graveyard full of older versions of oneself. Brilliant and astonishing for one so young’

GOING HOME

“I have come here to die,” she tells me, smiling sadly. 
At 81, she feels as invincible as she was the day she turned 21. 
But she’s been made to leave her home, husband and pets for this cold town. 
She loves good cheese and Egypt. 
She feels deeply misunderstood. 
I listen in silence as she tells me of her full life, of all she’s accomplished and still wishes to do. 
I wish I had an answer for her, I wish I could take her loneliness away. 
But all I can do is smile and nod. 

CAITLIN HUXHAM

This story is very affecting. ‘Phrases like “she loves good cheese and Egypt” really work for me, in the contrast between cheese and Egypt! We’ve all felt like this when we meet a beloved older person. If only we could hear all their stories! ‘Frankly, it just made me tear up. It’s the simplicity of the images that gets to me’

WHAT DO YOU THINK? Your comments are welcomed! Look at the shortlist – http://jonelkon.com/the-shortlist-senior/did the Judges choose the right stories?

THE WINNER WILL BE ANNOUNCED LATEST ON THURSDAY