Authors need ‘write’ stuff and the right support to take work to the next level

The Next Chapter Award can provide springboard to success, explains Marc Lambert

Finding the time to write can be one of the most challenging episodes for many aspiring authors. With a great idea and the talent to create stories that spellbind and surprise, it can be frustrating and demoralising when the responsibilities and demands of everyday life intrude.

Part of Scottish Book Trust’s charitable mission is to support Scotland’s writing talent.

We understand this the pressures aspiring authors face and it is one of the reasons we established the Next Chapter Award, now in its fourth year. Open to unpublished authors aged over 40, the Award aims to help an emerging talent develop a specific piece of work to a professional standard, providing help and support on the road to publication.

Balancing family, caring duties and career can make it almost impossible to push on with a project, and these demands on time are often more intense for people in their forties and above. The Award gives financial and practical help at a crucial time, to support someone the awardee towards their goal of publication.

The writer who receives the Next Chapter Award will be offered nine months of professional mentoring, a £2000 bursary and a two-week retreat at Moniack Mhor, Scotland’s Creative Writing Centre in Inverness, to focus on their writing.

Applications for the Next Chapter Award 2018 have just opened and we are excited to hear from the many talented writers who think they are ready to take their work to