A Personal Update

How To Lose Gracefully:

I have been humbled, as I knew I would be, by entering 3 writing contests and losing all three. Perhaps the only thing worse than a rejection letter is no rejection letter at all. Once the date has passed to contact winners, you sit at home knowing you were a loser. You may even have finished last. Gulp! Is it really possible, YOU, yes YOU, finished last? It's something you need to consider, however hard this may be on your ego.

Prompt Contest:

Although it was not the first contest I entered, my first loss---it wounds to say "my" and "loss" together---was a Writer's Digest prompt contest. There were 550 entries in the prompt contest. Writer's Digest narrowed those 550 down to 5 "best of" for Forum members to vote on.

Hopefully, while not allowing my ego to run amok, I concluded my story was better than some of the 5 we were to vote on. I soon realized, even if this were true, my writing would not be helped one bit by adhering to this belief. Better to see myself finishing number 550 out of 550. This tells me I have much improvement to make. This tells me to do my best to figure out what those Final Five did that I did not do. All of us were working with the same prompt.

Strangest of all, the one I voted for as the best, finished in a tie for second. The story I expected to win, finished almost at the bottom. In the end, I found myself agreeing with the winner, even though I felt it stepped outside the bounds of the prompt and failed in certain respects. However, I know why they voted for it. This told me a lot I needed to know. I learned a lot from the prompt contest. One day, I hope to return to post more fully about the prompt contest and what I learned. For now, the above will suffice.

Short Short Story Contest:

Writer's Digest, once again was the contest destination for my Short Short Story. To enter this contest, I had to trim a story of almost 2,500 words down to a maximum of 1,500 words. After glorying to myself about what a perfect story I had written, probably my best story ever, and I had written it so quickly after going for a short drive, I literally typed it into my computer, rather than write it by hand, as I usually do, I found myself easily slashing over a 1,000 words from the story. Virtually all those words never belonged in the first place, was my final horrified conclusion.

From there I realized I had given no name to my original character, so gave him one. Then I realized I had to put him in a better setting that worked better than the one I had him in. Have I said I didn't win this contest, either? I didn't.

Before I submit this loser to another contest or a potential fiction magazine publication, I must look to see if the story needs further rewriting---surely it must need that---and / or other changes in setting, character, or needs more of a winning attitude. Can a story have a winning attitude? Probably so! At least this time, I was up against a lot of quality, serious, probably published writers, and losing was to be expected. The great thing is I got in there and competed with them. Rare is the story that is published without being submitted first! I gave myself a chance. That was the goal. Write, rewrite, send, and hope for the best. That's a 100% better than what I have been doing over the years.

Poetry Contest:

The final contest I entered was the Writer's Digest Poetry Contest, which I can now safely say I lost almost one week ago. Thankfully, I don't see myself as a poet, but entered two of the best poems I have ever written. Both are far too short to garner any interest among judges of a poetry contest, although I may have small hope of finding a publication for these poems someday. A longer poem I also entered, had to be rewritten to prevent it from going over their maximum line count, but improved the poem, which I might have never done, if not for the poetry contest. Losing the poetry contest is the easiest loss for my ego to handle and accept.

Meeting Goals:

What I accomplished by entering these 3 Writer's Digest contests was to achieve a goal. Writers must have goals. One of the most important goals after writing itself, is to send off your work, to see if your work is worthy of publication, while beginning the process of convincing the world that YOU are worthy of publication.

I have achieved this first step. Now, I must learn to write every day, come up with a good plan for finding publications to send my works to, once I have polished each into as fine a work as possible. Then I must be resolute in my determination, not to quit until published. Who wants to quit once published? For then, one hopes, the juices really flow, so you achieve all the goals you have. If you have been like me, then write, rewrite, send, and don't stop. Don't give up. Don't accept anything less than being published time after time. NEVER GIVE UP!!!