Can you tell us about these competitions, why you decided to start entering and how they've helped you to develop your writing and hopefully help to build that confidence to get that book out there?

Yeah, definitely.

I think short stories are a great form of writing for developing your craft.

A short story needs everything that a longer form story needs.

So you've still got to have your characters, location, hook.

So all those ingredients make a good story, whether you're going to do a short one or you're going to do a longer one.

And then you need the work ethic alongside that.

And we are putting a lot of work at the moment into our self-publishing guide in print and on our website, writersonline.com. because at the moment self-publishing is such an exciting part of the publishing industry would you be able to talk us through your decision to go down the self-publishing route and if you could offer our listeners any advice that would be great or maybe even some like pitfalls to avoid