Disappointed...
lost a big writing contest with a big prize. I really felt good about the story, too. I would consider it among my current best work. But now, I'm wondering if that's true, or if I just had fun writing it or something, as opposed to the dog story, where I'm struggling through a second draft.(Should I even bother with the dog-story contest? Maybe I'm just not...you know, a winner. Although, once in a while, in school, I got close, but that was at least three operating systems ago. And we were all stupid Arizona students with our heads up our asses so if one of us described the bouquet of ass sufficiently well, if we didn't look like geniuses, we at least seemed perceptive. Now--)
Every story isn't right for every publication, I know that. And maybe they didn't get my sense of humor, or maybe they've already gotten fifteen awful stories about internet communities this past month, so they read till my character got her first IM, said "Enough!" and threw up their hands.(as an editor, I've made similarly arbitrary decisions, but I didn't even get paid to read the junk I had to read...which eventually made me sort of ruthless.And with a big prize, every barista was out there, licking her chops.)
But maybe the chops that are my problem are mine, because my life is sad, and boring, yet at the same time, just protected enough to deny me...I don't know, some kind of Carveresque street cred. And, here, I thought it was good that we didn't lose the appeal and become homeless...maybe that would have turned my diddling into a career. If, say, I didn't die first, from want, neglect, or trying to sell my mother's thyroid pills as an illegal substance.
Even calling it "the appeal" makes it seem like there should be some kind of Grace Van Owen-style hearing drama, right? An explosive revelation, or something, instead of a bunch of overweight chuckleheads sitting in my living room misusing paperwork while the overweight chucklehead on "my side" mugs like she's on an exceedingly low-rent Southwest "The Office" or "Parks and Rec". I mean, we chewed our fingernails to the nubs, but it was much less "Twelve Angry Men" and much more Entertainment 720, once we got right down to it. So it's not even *material*, except for this(Although my man David Simon could probably make it into a meditation on the decline of the welfare state, and blah, blah...)
Every story isn't right for every publication, I know that. And maybe they didn't get my sense of humor, or maybe they've already gotten fifteen awful stories about internet communities this past month, so they read till my character got her first IM, said "Enough!" and threw up their hands.(as an editor, I've made similarly arbitrary decisions, but I didn't even get paid to read the junk I had to read...which eventually made me sort of ruthless.And with a big prize, every barista was out there, licking her chops.)
But maybe the chops that are my problem are mine, because my life is sad, and boring, yet at the same time, just protected enough to deny me...I don't know, some kind of Carveresque street cred. And, here, I thought it was good that we didn't lose the appeal and become homeless...maybe that would have turned my diddling into a career. If, say, I didn't die first, from want, neglect, or trying to sell my mother's thyroid pills as an illegal substance.
Even calling it "the appeal" makes it seem like there should be some kind of Grace Van Owen-style hearing drama, right? An explosive revelation, or something, instead of a bunch of overweight chuckleheads sitting in my living room misusing paperwork while the overweight chucklehead on "my side" mugs like she's on an exceedingly low-rent Southwest "The Office" or "Parks and Rec". I mean, we chewed our fingernails to the nubs, but it was much less "Twelve Angry Men" and much more Entertainment 720, once we got right down to it. So it's not even *material*, except for this(Although my man David Simon could probably make it into a meditation on the decline of the welfare state, and blah, blah...)