Not a Winner

I've been submitting on and off to Vocal challenges for over a year. During that time, I've been thankful and humbled to have garnered a few recognitions along the way. However, that's not why I started writing on Vocal and not the reason why I'll continue to be here, hopefully for many years to come.

Like many writers, I do what I do for the love of it. But that doesn't really describe the whole process. I've been writing since I was four - yep, my first story was fully written and illustrated by me at that age and was about the monster in my closet. I have to say the critics were VERY complimentary about my debut work (only my family read that one, so it was a pretty small audience).

And I've been writing ever since. I started sending out submissions in my teens/twenties and got rejected quite a lot. Perhaps it was because I hadn't yet found my voice or perhaps it was because I hadn't lived enough to have a compelling story to tell. While I quit submitting for a while, I continued to write, thinking I would eventually send out my work again.

Then shit happened. I underwent a traumatic relationship and DID stop writing for a while. I threw myself into work, friends, finding love, kids, and all the myriad events that make a life well-lived.

But, like a dead body, the muse came floating back to the surface after a few years. Something had been missing from my life, and it was the words.

So, I started to write again. And write. And write. There were suddenly more ideas than I knew what to do with, and the slightest conversation or event at work or even eating a tuna fish sandwich could spark a story, a poem, an essay, a novel.

This flood of writing had to go somewhere, so I sent my work out to be read. And, lo and behold, there were finally publishers who liked it! I was thrilled, and the dribble of words became a flood. More and more of my work got picked up in magazines and journals. Eventually, I made a special place on my bookshelf for all of my published works.

But - and this is NOT a sob story at all, I'll admit - then I became a victim of my own success. I got a job as a freelance editor, so the words I tend to nurture these days don't belong to me. While I love what I do, I read for work, not generally for fun anymore.

That's when a terrible thing happened. The stories I was writing started to dry up. I went from 10-30 publications a year to practically none. My time was devoted to helping others, not myself.

But creativity, once awakened, doesn't die. And I wanted to find a place where I could write freely again, as well as share my words with others. And I found a pretty good platform that lets me do both (yep, shameless plug for Vocal here).

Vocal is one of those places that isn't just a blog and isn't just shouting into the void. It's where writers and readers can connect. I can read fantastic new writers, and they can read me, and we can have a genuine conversation about writing itself - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

More than that, working toward a deadline has become my own personal impetus for putting words on the page, especially since I don't have a lot of personal time to use my voice anymore. When I first found Vocal challenges, I became hooked and started submitting to them.

Perhaps I went a little overboard at times. There are no limits to how many times you can submit to the challenges, and I think I subbed 10 poems to a haiku challenge one time (my sincerest apologies to the Vocal judges who had to wade through all of them). But it got me writing new work and doing so on a regular basis.

However, I got sucked back into the work black hole and stopped submitting to challenges in the middle of last year. I was in a bit of funk because I wasn't writing anymore. Until two things changed.

One, I moved from the US to Canada. Here I was, starting over in my forties in a brand new town after living in the same place for 11+ years. And I didn't know anyone at all, so I started a local writing group at the library where we write together twice a month from prompts. That got me to writing again - when you're on the spot as the leader of a writing group, you can't be the only one whose pen isn't moving.

Two, I came back to Vocal. Only in the past few months have I started subbing to the challenges again, and I'm always happy to have done so. Win or lose, it's not the contests that matter - it's being able to write again.

So, that's a long-winded way of getting to my goal for this year regarding Vocal. I want to keep my momentum going in 2024, so my resolution this year is to submit to every single Vocal challenge - not just one or two. But every single one.

I'm especially looking forward to the challenges that will bring me out of my writing "comfort zone" and will force me to explore a new topic, a new genre, or a new prompt. (Like the Vocal "2024 aspirations" challenge, which this essay is for.) Never in a million years would I have been tempted to write about my Vocal New Year's challenge resolution - mainly because of the fear of failure, which is omnipresent behind every writer's success.

If I don't tell people what I plan to do, it might never happen. By putting it down into words, I've set it in stone. I have to do it now. My reputation as an author is on the line if I don't.

Or... that's what I keep telling myself, in order to keep getting the words out. Perhaps no no one will read a single thing I write except me (and the Vocal judges, again with my apologies for all the submissions about to be lobbed your way).

And that's okay, too. It's not about winning, being read, or the topics tackled. It's not about becoming a lauded success or a quiet and uncelebrated contributor. In the end, there's only one thing that really matters, and that is the writing itself.

So, my advice to all the new and old writers out there is to be true to yourself in 2024. Find your authentic voice and shout it from the rooftops. And, most importantly... keep writing.