This Was My Best Fucking Piece (And It Still Lost)

There’s a particular kind of heartbreak that only writers know—

the moment you hit “submit,” whisper a shaky prayer to the literary gods, and then, days or weeks later, open an email that starts with the word “Unfortunately.”

Unfortunately.

A word soft enough to be polite, but sharp enough to skin you alive.

And there it is: your best fucking piece.

The one that shook something loose in you.

The one that felt like blood on the keyboard, bone on the page.

The one you thought—no, knew—carried the weight of something true.

Rejected.

Dismissed.

Lost.

Lost badly, even.

People talk about rejection like it’s some badge of honor, some rite of passage, some charming part of the writer’s journey.

But no one tells you how humiliating it feels to lose to work you wouldn’t pin to the inside of a bathroom stall.

No one tells you how you’ll stare at the winning entry and mutter, “Really? Really? This?”

And then immediately feel guilty, because envy is an ugly emotion, but you’re a writer, not a saint.

There’s a moment after the loss where your ego steps outside your body, looks at the email again, and says,

“Kid, you sure you wanna keep doing this?”

Because writing is the only art where you can spend tens, hundreds, thousands of hours birthing a story that might get beaten by something a judge skimmed between mouthfuls of cereal.

But we do keep doing this.

And the question is—why?

Why keep entering contests, submitting to journals, hoping for a miracle, sending your favorite “kids” out into the world only to watch them get shoved into lockers by editors who didn’t “vibe with the tone”?

Why care so damn much?

Because here’s the truth writers rarely say aloud:

Our pieces are not just words.

They are the children we fashioned out of memory, rage, longing, and too many cups of caffeine.

Each paragraph is a fingerprint.

Each metaphor a heartbeat.

Each scene a bruise finally allowed to breathe.

And when these pieces lose, it feels personal.

It feels like someone looked at your child and shrugged.

But losing—losing badly—is part of the apprenticeship.

Every rejection chisels you sharper.

Every “no” strips away the illusion that anyone out there owes you appreciation.

Every failed attempt is an invitation to get better—or get bitter.

And you get to choose which one.

Writers love to pretend we don’t care what anyone thinks.

But we do.

We care too much.

We care to the point of obsession.

We care enough to rewrite a sentence twenty times until it sighs in relief.

We care enough to worry about commas the way surgeons worry about arteries.

We care enough to lose sleep, lose confidence, lose contests—

and then turn around and open a blank page anyway.

That is the true madness of the craft.

Here’s the secret, though—the part no rejection email will ever tell you:

Losing doesn’t mean the piece wasn’t good.

It doesn’t mean the judge had better taste.

It doesn’t mean you failed.

It simply means your piece hasn’t found its real home yet.

Some of the best work in the world was rejected, ignored, dismissed, laughed at.

But writers kept going because the work mattered more than the applause.

Your job is not to win.

Your job is to write the thing that refuses to let you sleep.

Your job is to care deeply—even when caring hurts.

Your job is to release your “kids” into the wild again and again, trusting that somewhere, someday, someone will see them for the miracles they are.

And when that day comes, when the piece that once got rejected finally lands in the hands of a reader who whispers, “Oh my God… this,”

the loss will not matter.

None of the losses will matter.

Because writing is not competition.

It is communication.

A bridge built out of bruised words and stubborn hope.

So yes—this was your best fucking piece.

And yes—it still lost.

But you?

You didn’t.

You’re still here.

You’re still writing.

And that is the only victory that actually counts.