One of my personal essays won seventh place in an international Writer’s Digest competition!
I’m honestly not totally sure what to make of this—the prize is a $25 gift card—but I understand them to be a reputable organization and there were over 3300 submissions to the competition.
This win came at a helpful moment, when I’ve been feeling a bit discouraged on my creative endeavors. My books are not selling. I haven’t gotten any bad feedback, but…I haven’t really gotten much of any feedback one way or the other. I feel like I’m shouting into a void. And I tend to fill in the blanks of silence with very negative stories. They’re not saying anything because they’re embarrassed for me. They’re not saying anything because it’s terrible.
The positive reviews I have received have mostly been from friends, or local media, or outlets like Reader Views that I’m able to mentally minimize the same way I minimize Writer’s Digest.
I see numbers on my dashboard that indicate a number of people regularly open this email, but I can usually minimize that as ‘they’re just being supportive because we’re friends.’
I talked to ChatGPT about this, and it accused me of orchestrating an unwinnable game. First I tell myself that no response = negative. Then when I get a positive response I tell myself that it doesn’t really count for ✨reasons✨.
It is literally impossible, it seems, for me to feel satisfied.
But the recent win did inspire me to re-open my spreadsheet of essays and submissions that has been languishing, unattended to since June.
It appears that I was counting silence from long-shot submissions as ‘the essay is rejected and clearly sucks.’ But the essay that won from Writer’s Digest had been rejected previously, so maybe it’s time to dust myself off and try again.
I’m going to re-attack these essays with fresh eyes, identify my five favorites, and try to get them placed somewhere. Now I can technically add “award winning essayist” to my author bio, so maybe that will help.
I don’t actually know if Writer’s Digest will be publishing the essay anywhere, or just publishing my name. If you want to read the essay, I’m putting it behind the paywall here.
It’s called “I Will Not Enjoy It While It Lasts” and is a scene-driven reflection on an experience I had while undergoing radiation. Bits of it have appeared in previous writing.
I am taking it out of submission purgatory and sharing it with you here, at the risk that losing its “publication virginity” in this manner will mean that it never finds a more reputable editorial home beyond this little Substack. But that’s okay, because it is an AWARD WINNING ESSAY!
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