Hi! I'm new at using this website and hoped that someone could help me with a few questions that I have:
Q1: Is a writer's work safe here? What prevents other people from taking your work and publishing it as their own? Or stealing your ideas to present them as their own?
Q2: When entering the competitions, does it matter if you don't live in an english speaking country, even if you have citizenship in a country that is part of the Commonwealth?
Dear Sandra,
We welcome competition entries from wherever you may be in the world!
Kind regards,
The Writers' & Artists' Team
Thank you both for your advice! I found it really helpful :)
Just an extra note to David: I actually am a native speaker, what I meant is that I am not living in England. Can you actually enter compitions from this website if you don't live in the UK?
On Q1... I only share exerts and they usually start part way into my writing and end in an incomplete form. Then, at the most, someone could only take an idea or an element from me. They would have to be pretty creative to use that "as is" and write a whole story round it. If they did there would probably be a distinct difference in style between their work and my part which would look very odd.
When I ask anyone I don't know very well to read some of may work - when they will take it away with them - I always omit an odd page or two... This has the secondary advantage that if they come back and tell me how utterly fantastic my writing is and they haven't noticed the missing pages I then know that I can ignore their enthusiasm.
I'm not cynical - I'm paranoid... :-) (Which doesn't mean that they are not out to get me... )
On Q2...
I would always recommend anyone to write in their own language first and then either translate to the best of their ability as a distinct copy before getting someone good to translate from the original version - or to get two independent translators to take on the original and then look for the best blend that you feel achieves what you want to say.
I hope this helps
David