The ‘Aha!’ moment of the reader is also the instant the writer is liberated. To get there, write as if experiencing something for the first time.

Use humour on the page – especially in situations that aren’t at all funny…

Move into close detail – of both inner and outer experience…

The guided writing ‘experiment’ for this winter season…

Once, in millennium not long before this one, I lived in a Forest…

Martha’s story began, in the way of many, as a glimmer in the back of my mind…

Winter Solstice Competition Runner-up: Hannah Ray, with You Were Born in a Pandemic