Better Odds

In my recent post, Rejection’s Silver Lining, I whined a bit. Correction. I whined a lot. But can you blame me? I’d just received THREE rejections in one day. I felt like I was swimming against the current.

But my whining was fake news. In actuality, I’d only received TWO rejections. Rejection number three turned out to be a MISTAKE!

It’s time for me to eat some crow.

Here’s what happened:

As you may recall if you read Rejection’s Silver Lining, four days ago I received an email from the judges of a short story contest I’d entered. The subject line, “Contest Finalists!” kind of got my hopes up. But upon opening the link in the email, I discovered that I was NOT among the 100 contest “finalists.” I was surprised that there were that many finalists. And, as all writers with low self-esteem can understand, I convinced myself that there had been only 101 entries.

But, two days ago, I received another email from the contest judges. “New Finalists!” was the subject line this time. And the message began, “WE GOOFED!”

It turns out that there’d been a “technical glitch” and “several of the wonderful stories we selected as finalists did not properly post.” The new link opened up a list of only 30 finalists. My entry was among them.

So I hereby take back all of my previous whining about the contest. It is now my favorite contest, ever.

My odds of winning are only 1:30, but that’s a lot better than 0:100. And, speaking of math, the first prize is $1234, so I’m pretty excited. I just hope they didn’t have a technical glitch with the decimal point.

P.S. Even if I don’t win, the contest has given me something just as important: a topic to write about today. I really needed one, since I’m in the middle of NanoPoblano2018 (daily blog posting throughout November) and I’m already a day behind.