2024 Discoveries winner Niamh Connolly shares her advice for those thinking of entering the programme. Read to discover the 5 reasons why you should apply to Discoveries this year – but be quick! The deadline is 13th January 2025.

Perfection does not exist in creative works

It is impossible for you to write the perfect submission, so let yourself off the hook. Eliminate that pressure and expectation. And don’t say: I’ll hold off and submit in 2026 when it’s ‘perfect’. That day isn’t coming. Enter Discoveries knowing your submission will inevitably have flaws, and that’s okay.

I submitted my writing to Discoveries twice

In the first year, I didn’t make it to the longlist stage. And then on my second attempt (submitting a different project), I won. So, if you’ve previously submitted but didn’t make it to the longlist stage, don’t let that stop you from submitting again. If you’re serious about being a writer, you are going to have to persevere again and again. The Discoveries team does not have a catalogue of blacklisted past submissions, and you’re not being judged on your past submissions.

The Discoveries initiative was not launched to prove how many bad female writers are out there

In fact, it was the opposite. The reader who opens your submission is not doing so with a red pen eagerly looking for flaws, instead they are opening it with optimism and enthusiasm in the hope that they’re just about to discover an exciting new female voice. Remember: the Discoveries team are already rooting for you to win.

Don’t be discouraged if you’re struggling with the synopsis

It’s widely accepted that synopses are hard to write. I didn’t know how my novel would end when I submitted to Discoveries, so don’t worry if you’re in the same boat. What the team are looking for is to see if you’ve thought about your reader’s journey. A wise writer once told me: there’s a difference between a good writer and a good novelist. Not every good writer can take their reader on a sustained and entertaining journey for a few hundred pages, so think about how you might do that, and that will form the guts of your synopsis.

Don’t underestimate fresh and raw writing

There’s an energy to new writing that can sometimes be squashed by overediting. If you haven’t started your 10K words, there’s still time. The great thing about fiction writing is it comes from your own mind, so you already have the key resource. And it is possible to write 10K words in a week. Yes, they won’t be polished, or perfect. But they’ll never be perfect (revert to no. 1 above).