Not Winning a Contest Doesnt Mean Your Writing is No Good

Not Winning a Contest Doesnt Mean Your Writing is No Good Not Winning a Contest Doesnt Mean Your Writing is No Good Not Winning a Contest Doesnt Mean Your Writing is No Good By Maeve Maddox The votes are in and the winners announced for the Second DWT Short Story Competition. Congratulations to winner Violet Toler and runner-up Easton Miller. Your stories pleased many readers. Contests are rough on writers. If we enter and dont win, its very hard to shake the feeling that our writing isnt any good. Possibly it isnt. But another possibility is that it just didnt appeal to the judgesin this case, 667 DWT readers from every walk of life and from many different countries and cultures. Hey, you cant please everybody! I didnt read all 97 entries, but I did read the eleven that made the final cut. And I read the tabulation of the votes with interest. The two entries I liked best came nowhere near the top in the voting. My picks were Crazy Fay by Sherry Roth and 2 AM and Counting by Katrina Mohr. Crazy Fay by Sherry Roth In this story, set during a Florida hurricane, a middle-class woman glimpses a homeless woman in a coffee shop. The images are striking and the language fresh. I especially like the detail of the raindrop earrings: Several people stood in line ahead of me, including one woman who had matted, wet salt-and-pepper hair, with rainwater droplets bizarrely hanging from her earlobes like a poor excuse for earrings. I tried not to stare, but those little droplets had me mesmerized. For her part, she didn’t seem to notice them. Roths descriptions and the inner dialogue of the narrator work together towards a poignant climax in which the narrators good intentions, belatedly conceived, come to nothing. Now thats true to life. 2 AM and Counting by Katrina Mohr I cant say I liked Katrina Mohrs story about the drug addict, but I certainly admire her skill in taking me inside the head of a junkie waiting to rob a liquor store. From the first sentence I know that hes a man who thinks about consequences and contingencies: The car window was crank-powered, not electric, but he preferred it that way. He never warmed up to the idea of being entombed in his car should it refuse to start. The author chooses words and descriptions to appeal to all the senses: the silver Zippo hissed he watched the smoke rise with his breath in the cold air The ashtray was full, spilling butts and gray-white powder Bruises along the underside of his arm throbbed impatiently and he felt like he was about to puke again. Congratulations to Daniel for generating so much participation in his second DWT writing competition. I look forward to the next one. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Fiction Writing category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:50 Handy Expressions About Hands50 Nautical Terms in General UsePhrasal Verbs and Phrasal Nouns