Entering (and winning) The Merky Books New Writers' Prize

And what I'd do if I were doing it all over again

This blog series is collaboration between Monika Radojevic and the Merky Books New Writers’ Prize. The series will take readers through early stages of the competition as well as providing advice and guidance from a writer’s perspective. To read more of Monika’s fiction, non-fiction and poetry, subscribe to her substack for free.

In 2019, I became the inaugural co-winner of the Merky Books New Writers’ Prize alongside Hafsa Zayyan, securing literary representation and a publishing contract, catapulting myself much further ahead in my literary career than I dreamed possible - or felt prepared for. I was 23, and had won with a single poem (23 And Me, about the at-home DNA testing kit) that had poured out from me earlier in the year, at a time when I was struggling with my identity and ethnic heritage, trying to figure out who I was (original!).

shellshocked with Hafsa Zayyan and the icon himself

I found out I won the prize at roughly 10pm on a Berlin train station, standing next to my boyfriend and staring at an unknown number ringing my phone. I had forgotten that day was the day the winner(s) would be notified, and when I answered the call and was given the news, I thought it was a joke, or a horrible mistake. This conviction stayed with me right up until the moment I met Stormzy backstage at the London Palladium, as Hafsa and I were about to take the stage and be announced as the winners. When I tell people this, they assume I’m either incredibly laid back or irritatingly humble - but that’s not it! I swear! Truthfully, I hadn’t thought myself capable of winning. I also wasn't taking my writing particularly seriously. I let myself forget that I was talented, and that I loved writing more than anything else. It shouldn't have taken the external validation of winning to remind me of that, but it did. There’s another world out there where I did not win, where I did not answer that unknown number. That version of me is probably living a very different life, almost certainly not writing.

I’m writing this blog for her, as well as for anyone thinking about entering the competition. I can’t speak to the experiences or methods of the other prizewinners - I can only share with you the lessons I’ve learnt from winning, as well as the things I would have done differently.

1. Tell the truth.

   I say this a lot - you’ll doubtless hear it from me again. 23 And Me, at the core, was about longing and loss. Universal human experiences - nothing new or groundbreaking here. But it was the truth, and it was the truth told from my perspective - one that I had been carrying with me for years. Every line was a call for connection and guidance. Ultimately, people responded to that call - I hope because of how genuine it was, as well as the beauty of the writing.

   I believe that good, authentic writing tells the truth. In the context of fiction, that means really understanding the core message of the story that you are telling, as well as recognising why you are the one telling it. I’m not saying that you can’t, or shouldn't, write other people’s stories (a discussion for another time). I’m saying that this prize is looking for your story, that only you can write. What that means is for you to figure out - it could be the story you’ve always wanted to read, or the story you hope people like you will stumble across. Most likely, you will only understand a small part of the truth that you are trying to tell, and your writing will document the journey to understanding your/your characters’ experience. To be clear - I’m not saying that you have to be your characters, or vice versa. Autofiction is a wonderful genre but you don’t need to write about yourself to win a prize, unless you feel compelled to. But tell the truth - even if it makes you feel exposed and vulnerable. Humans know when art is truthful, versus when it is a depiction of something the artist thinks you want to see.

2. Don’t overthink, let your writer’s instinct kick in.

   The first editor I ever worked with gave me a simple but critical piece of advice. I was writing my poetry collection, teeth in the back of my neck, and my fears that people wouldn't understand the points I was trying to make made me weigh my poetry down with caveats and signposts. He told me to stop thinking about an audience, and simply write what I instinctively wanted to write. Thinking about the audience could come later - or not at all - but in starting to self-censor before even putting pen to paper, I was doing myself and my writing a disservice. Don’t let your inner critic, the one that is hyper aware of what people think of you, interrupt your creativity. I guess this is very similar to the point above - write the story you want to write, not the one you think other people want to read.

3. Having said that, do think about the purpose of your piece.

   If you don’t have a whole book written yet, and you’re submitting a handful of chapters, great! But have you thought about the rest of the book? Have you thought about the overall message, the story you want to tell, or how you’d explain it to someone in a single sentence? Have you sat down and thought through, chapter by chapter, the unfurling of the plot, the character growth, the ending? I hadn't, and I regret that because it put me on the back foot in the months to come (more on that in the next blog). You don’t have to do this to submit an incredible extract, and maybe you’re more of a figure-it-out-as-you-go-along kind of writer, but you should, at the very least, be able to understand and explain the vision you have for your submission. It’s an important skill to have for your future writing career.

4. Share it, re-read it, edit it - but with limits.

   Share your extract with someone you trust but who also understands the genre/topic. I didn’t do this and my poem, though it won, clearly needed a good edit - I look back at the first iteration and cringe a little. So, find the right person/people and see if their response helps strengthen your work. This can be helpful for spotting plot holes, better explaining the motivations of a character and tightening up pace or dialogue - but I suggest you only go through that process once or twice, at most. As the famous saying goes, too many cooks give inconsistent, potentially unhelpful advice that can erode a writer’s confidence in their piece. If you write for everyone, you’ll have written for no one.

   Read your work aloud after you have written it. Do it. Trust me. It’s a long, dull process but pretend you are reading it out loud to an audience and you will realise which sentences sound clunky, which words distract or confuse you, and which parts make you glow. When I have a particularly long piece I whack it into substack, publish it and let the auto-narrator read my own work back to me (I have a second shell account I use for this with 0 followers, so my work can stay private). It helps judge which parts are dull or unnecessary - BUT, maybe use an app like Speechify for your prize entry, to avoid inadvertently breaking any of the entry criteria.

   Once you have done all this, do a really thorough edit of your work. But again - limit yourself to doing this once or twice. You could spend a lifetime editing, but once you’re in that trench it can be hard to climb out again. Don’t trample over that lovely writer’s instinct, I beg.

5. See this competition as a path with many forks.

   At the shortlist event - which I will write about in part 2 of this series - I walked into a room of 30 shortlisted writers feeling like a complete imposter. There were people in there who had been writing for a decade, who had done degrees in creative writing, or who had entire books ready and waiting to be published. Of course, there were also people like me in that room too - my brain just filtered them out to convince me I didn't belong there. Someone introduced themselves and asked me what I write, and I said something vague about not being a ‘real’ writer, just a silly little poet. And they looked at me in confusion and said, “You write, so, you’re a writer.” To this day, I’m grateful to this stranger who took me seriously when I wasn't able to. But again, relying on external validation is a very risky game to play! What I mean to say by all of that, is: if you, like me, entered this competition on a whim, or if you, like I once did, see writing as something you’ll only ever be able to do in the distant future, then I urge you to think about this experience as one of the many twists and turns on a long, exciting literary road. Think and plan about what you will do next. What other competitions can you enter? Are there courses you can take? What’s next for your book? Do you know other writers? If not, befriend some!

   Regardless of the outcome of the prize, come up with writing plans for the future and keep a hold of them. If you win, then you know what to do next. If you don’t win, you've created other forks in the road for yourself. All that’s left to do is choose one to venture down.

Read part two of this series here and part three here.

You can purchase ‘teeth in the back of my neck’ here, and find out more about the Merky Book’s Prize here.

Merky is publishing my short story collection, ‘A Beautiful Lack of Consequence’, in March 2025. You can pre-order it here.