When I entered this writing contest a couple of months ago, I figured it would be good practice, and a fun thing to do. Then on the weekend of the contest, I froze. I couldn't come up with anything that seemed to work. I wrote three failed beginnings of stories and nearly gave up in frustration, but didn't because oxen are probably less stubborn than I am. Finally in the last several hours of the writing period, I had an idea and dashed it out haphazardly, typing right up to the midnight deadline, and not even having enough time to edit for typos before sending it in.

I was happy to have finished it. I felt that I had won already just for getting it done. Even so, I was terrified to look at it again knowing that I wouldn't be able to change anything. When I got the pdf with all of the entries in it, I carefully avoided reading my own story for the first while. I started reading other stories, trying to choose three to vote for, and I remember very clearly reading roane's story (though at the time I had no idea she was the author) and thinking, "Well, that's it. If there are going to be stories as tight and polished as this one, yours will never stand a chance. You knew that already, though, and you finished, so just focus on that." And I did. I continued reading stories and being impressed by the quality of them, and I was privately grateful that at least no one would know which one was mine when it was all said and done so I could just pretend I'd never written it.

I sent in my votes last week, glad to be done with the judging, and mildly curious to see if any of my favorites would win, but other than that, completely out of contest mode. I had looked at the entries and seen that my story was definitely out of the running, and I had gotten over it and moved on. So, this morning when I checked my e-mail and found the results e-mail in my inbox, I didn't have any anxious flutterings when I opened it. I just clicked without hesitating and began to read.

Then I think my jaw dropped. I turned to Moss and said, "I... just won that writing contest..." and I think I grinned in disbelief, but I can't really remember. I've spent the whole day feeling very odd. I haven't really wanted to tell anyone, and I've felt rather dazed and less bouncy than I always assumed I would feel if something like this happened. I was so convinced that the story was crap, but enough people apparently thought the opposite that I tied with two others for first place and will actually get prizes in the mail. I won something for writing. This is... overwhelming and incomprehensible. I am afraid to look at the story again. I think tomorrow if I wake up and this is all still true, I will do whatever necessary to shake off the feeling that I don't deserve this and dance about with glee.

Then I will write more because clearly one must keep writing if one is to make progress and eventually get published by someone other than herself. I do think I have improved over the past couple of years since I started really focusing on writing. I've read dozens of books about writing, and I've done hundreds of practice exercises. I remember when I first started taking this seriously, I kept seeing things by famous authors that said you had to write a thousand pages of crap before anything worthwhile would come out. I smiled and nodded and secretly thought that my thousand pages of crap would actually be brilliant. Then a couple of weeks ago I was working on my big writing project meant for web publication, and I realized that it had something shimmering under the surface that other stories I'd written didn't, and that maybe I'd turned a corner in my development as a writer.

Now I can look at stories I was proud of writing a year ago and see why no one accepted them, and I can see that even though I still have lots of issues with my newer writing, even the things that I don't particularly like are often better than some of the things I wrote and thought were good in the past. I can see that my work is starting to pay off, and that's really good, because I can also see that I have a lot of work cut out for me if I am going to be good at this (and I really want to be good at this). There's a lot more that I could say about how writing is like marathon training and things, but I think this is more than enough for today.



The other thing I'd like to say is congratulations to daharyn and jonquil, and to roane and imnotandrei. All of you wrote great stories. Also, if the person who wrote "A WILL OF ITS OWN" is reading this, I just want you to know that I had a lot of fun reading your story, and hope that you will keep writing and not let the fact that you didn't win this contest get you down. To everyone else, I congratulate you for participating, and for finishing. It was terribly hard to pick just three stories. Keep at it and you may just find yourselves dazed and bewildered, writing an entry just like this one.

Finally, a big thank you to misia, the_red_shoes, and rgay for moderating this contest, which I was happy to have participated in even when I was sure I had lost.