Gold, Silver or Bronze
Did you notice the happiest people
at the last Olympic Games? Besides
the parents of the athletes, I mean.
Winners of the Gold and the Bronze medals celebrated their victories. Winners of the Silver; not so
much.
Judging by their facial
expressions, I would guess although many of them felt proud and happy, others felt
disappointed and angry at themselves for falling just short. I can identify. I was one of five
finalists for a 2012 Derringer. I lost.
My feelings were soothed because the story that won was exceptional. I don’t
disagree with the voters. I also can’t say it didn’t sting a little bit to
lose.
I decided I wanted to win the
monthly Mysterious Photograph
contest by Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. So I sent in a story every month
for the better part of a year. I got an “honorable mention” months before I
wore the judges down enough that I actually won the contest. I didn’t like the
winning entry as much as I liked entries that didn’t get any mention. I don’t know if the stories were
sub-par that one month I won or if the judges just had an off day. Either way I
accepted the honor.
With my novel HEARTLAND, I was one
of five finalists out of nearly 1,000 writers in
2010 Young Adult Discovery Contest sponsored by Gotham Writers Workshop. I received some excellent feedback from
the judges and a call from agent, Regina Brooks. She was really helpful. With
their help, I ended up with a much better book. I self-published it on Kindle and then it was picked up a small
print publisher. I was tremendously pleased with the final result. And not
winning was disappointing.
Although
I’ve won a number of awards for my writing, I have won only one national
contest. I plan to continue
entering contests.
If I
were to guess, I would say coming in second in the Olympics probably felt
better after time passed. I doubt
any athlete quit his or her sport because he or she finished in second place
against the best competitors in the world. I don’t think anyone took his or her javelin or discus and
went home to mope.
The
best athletes have the ability to dismiss failure in the middle of a game from
their memories and immediately focus on the next play or time at bat. Even at
the end of a contest, exceptional athletes usually don’t dwell on a loss but
try to learn from it for the future.
The Olympic finals or championship games are, no doubt harder to slough
off. But the most successful
writers and athletes, like Timex watches, “Take a lickin’ and keep on tickin.”
Do
you have a story of persistence?
p.s. I will be out of time when this runs. I will read the comments when I get home.
Thanks for the stories, Warren, and congratulations on your success. It has been years since I last thought of this experience:
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a freshman in high school I had the opportunity to go travel cross-country with scouts from my area and then spend two weeks hiking and camping at Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico. However, to be accepted you had to show your camping chops including a 10-mile (I think - this is a lot of years ago) hike with full pack.
Normally that would have been a bagatelle for me, but for the occasion my parents bought me a new pack with an internal frame and new hiking boots. The boots I broke in, the pack I did not and it was flawed.
The internal frame broke early in the hike and for hours I had to endure walking with a piece of metal scraping my back. I said nothing, but when I finished my shirt was blood soaked from the hole I had worn in my back.
I did earn my spot on the trip.
~ Jim
You've done well, Warren, and should feel good about your writing.
ReplyDeleteI haven't entered a lot of contests with my stories except for the Al Blanchard contest every year for about 5 years now without success, but they get a lot of entries so I'm not upset about that. I did win first place in the only Love is Murder short story contest for "Cheating on Your Wife Can Get You Killed" in 2011, and that was awesome. I do better with my poetry. I was so happy to get 2nd place in a poetry contest that had over 100 entries not only from around the country, but from the UK and Canada, too, last year. So in this case the Silver had me smiling. Maybe I should start sending stories to Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen on a regular basis like you did instead of only twice.