I'll Take The Ninth

This isn't government of which I speak. It's the NYC Midnight short-story contest. "Flash fiction" is another term used in the contest, though I've come to discover I don't much like it. It makes me think of floods. A flood of words. Eh.

Back to my point. For the last couple of months I have involved myself in a long and grueling short-story-writing contest. In the contest, I have written three 1,000-word short stories, each in a 48-hour span of time that have adhered to genre, setting and object stipulations. Okay, so maybe it wasn't so grueling, but those three two-day periods I was all stressed out.

My effort in this last round was one that didn't score very highly, which didn't surprise, as I didn't much like the story after I had let it set in my head for a few days. And this was after I submitted it. So it was with little surprise yesterday that I found out I would not be advancing to the next round. I would have had to finish in the top five out of 20.

The time came to check my results, but it came as an afterthought. So I clicked here and there. And it wasn't until the click after "there" when I started to prepare myself for a 20th-place finish. How would I feel? I knew the story wasn't great, but I mean, that bad? I had begun even to believe that I had finished last. Well, at least I had the spark of my 2nd-place round two finish.

And finally, I reached the page and there were the top 5. Alas, my name was not on the list. Oh please may I not have finished last. And, wouldn't you know it, I finished 9th. Ninth place out of 20. That's pretty awesome.

I have also received e-mails from the NaNoWriMo folks this week. I'm tempted to participate again. Dammit.