Well, well.
I don’t know what to say. Except, um, yay! For me!
I wrote a story and submitted it to the Writers of the Future contest. It didn’t win.
And then I did it again. It didn’t win again.
And again. And, well, you know. It didn’t win.
And then I did that three more times.
And I won. Here’s the link to the press release, in case you don’t believe me. Don’t worry, I won’t feel bad if you don’t believe it, I can hardly believe it myself.
I’ve never won anything. Well, except for that Kodak Instamatic camera I won when I was a cashier at Woolworths in 1974 for selling more pillows in one day than anyone else (9). That was a pretty big deal then, but I already had a camera. I gave the camera to Ryan, my best friend’s boyfriend’s brother.
This is a much bigger deal. It’s a validation that I’m a writer, It’s a synchronicity from the universe that I’m on the right path. It’s getting paid for something I wrote!
I’d never heard of Writers of the Future (much less their contest for apprentice writers) until I went to a writers workshop and two of the people in the class (you know who you are, Tina and Kary) told me about it. There’s a new contest every quarter, and while I didn’t enter every quarter, I kept working on my craft and submitted the best story I could, whenever I had one ready. The first year, like I said, it was all rejections, The second year, I earned an Honorable Mention. This year, I entered only 3 quarters, and earned an Honorable Mention, a (very quick) Rejection, and then, well, I won.
Here’s my 3-step secret to winning: Read a lot. Write a lot. Submit a lot. Aaand repeat.
I submitted my first story (the first short story I ever wrote) in 2012. A million words later, I won.
You can do it too.
