Squee – Writers of the Future Contest

Sharon Joss Writes

Well, well.

I don’t know what to say. Except, um, yay! For me!

I wrote a story and submitted it to  the Writers of the Future contest.  It didn’t win.

And then I did it again.  It didn’t win again.

And again.  And, well, you know.  It didn’t win.

And then I did that three more times.

And I won. Here’s the link to the press release, in case you don’t believe me.  Don’t worry, I won’t feel bad if you don’t believe it, I can hardly believe it myself.

I’ve never won anything.  Well, except for that Kodak Instamatic camera I won when I was a cashier at Woolworths in 1974 for selling more pillows in one day than anyone else (9).   That was a pretty big deal then, but I already had a camera.  I gave the camera to Ryan, my best friend’s boyfriend’s brother.

This is a much bigger deal.  It’s a validation that I’m a writer,  It’s a synchronicity from the universe that I’m on the right path.  It’s getting paid for something I wrote!

I’d never heard of Writers of the Future (much less their contest for apprentice writers) until I went to a writers workshop and two of the people in the class (you know who you are, Tina and Kary) told me about it.  There’s a new contest every quarter, and while I didn’t enter every quarter,  I kept working on my craft and submitted the best story I could, whenever I had one ready. The first year, like I said, it was all rejections,  The second year, I earned an Honorable Mention. This year, I entered only 3 quarters, and earned an Honorable Mention, a (very quick) Rejection, and then, well, I won.

Here’s my 3-step secret to winning: Read a lot. Write a lot. Submit a lot.  Aaand repeat.

I submitted my first story (the first short story I ever wrote) in 2012.  A million words later, I won.

You can do it too.

 

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