Both the submissions I was so proud about on November 27 have come in as losses. Which I knew was, you know, the likeliest outcome. There are a lot of writers, and if changing your life was easy, every schmuck could do it. The longer I hadn't heard, though, I did start to hope a little more, if not starting to spend the prize money in my head and all those types of things that are fun when you do them, but bittersweet when you think back.
I wish I hadn't used so much "I'll show you," just, you know, getting out of high school and stuff. Because I know that's what conventional wisdom would say I should do...take one of the rejected fragments and keep shopping it. But I have some I've submitted many times, so I'm not sure that that's the best way forward. Or, I can act like my brain's a big idea tree and try to pick something else.(Which I guess is closest to what I'm doing this morning, but I can't say it's rolling off my back enough that I think that one, currently just one paragraph with a splash of promise, is, I don't know, the REAL winner and stuff. I wish, but I'm not sure right now.)
A lot of these people that win end up teaching freshman writing and stuff while I sit here for another year, not getting a creative-writing degree. Which I know a lot of great writers never had anyway...I could be a big deal if I had the time and energy to personally befriend every editor in America[befriend not being a euphemism, I hasten to add} just that people who've met me personally tend to like my work more, too.
It's not so much that I need either of these contests, but I need *something*
Sometimes I wish I could afford the creative writing degree, but if I had thousands more dollars, would I do that with them?
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