I BREAK MY OWN RULE,

DO WHAT I SAID I WOULDN'T, AND ENTER A CONTEST

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Last week I broke my own rule and entered a writing contest. I don't know when I started hating these types of contests, but it probably was after not winning several of them. I know, how childish! But this last week, I decided I would enter the Amy Awards, which is a contest for writing a 2,000 word essay/memoir.

It is the brainchild of my first mentor, Canadian writer, Alison Wearing. You can find out about the contest here, although it is now closed for this year.

www.alisonwearing.com/amy-awards

The Amy Awards were set up by Alison to honour the memory of a student who went on one her writing retreats: a talented young writer called Amy MacRae, who died young of ovarian cancer. She made a huge impact on Alison, and in the process of grieving for her student, she decided to do something special and ongoing to keep her memory alive.

The following is the quote from the website:

“The contest was created in celebration of the life of the wondrous Amy MacRae and in support of her living legacy to improve the outcomes of women with ovarian cancer.”

So, here I am, along with 400 other entries. All I need is for 399 of them to have done something to disqualify themselves, and I'm in!

To be honest, I'm not sure why I entered. For the fame? For the money? For the (slim) chance of this essay, which steals mercilessly from my original memoir, getting out into the world? Out where people can read it.

Probably all of the above. Plus the entry fee goes to Ovarian Cancer Research, so it's a good cause, and even if I don't win, there's a hope that the money will do some good somewhere.

I stole the essay in bits and pieces from my memoir, so it wasn't an overly taxing job to just cobble it together into less than 2,000 words.

I called it MY LIFE IN FOOD BITES, WITH HUSBANDS. The entry is the story of how food has shaped my life, and in particular, food-related stories as to what happened with my two husbands.

I presume it might have a chance of standing out if it is the only food story. But maybe not. Even if it is a somewhat unusual entry, that doesn't mean that the judges will be won over. I just hope they like food!

Alison Wearing always tells us (her former students) that it is a good thing to enter contests, because, even if you don't win, you will have developed a good piece of writing, which you could possibly use elsewhere. No writing is ever wasted, they say, and so, the act of writing is the ultimate in recycling.

To be honest, I hate the let-down of not winning so much that it puts me off entering contests in general. You never know what will hit the judge's sweet spot.

But, this time I seem to have lost my senses, and entered. Maybe it was the fact that my entry fee helps ovarian cancer research. Maybe I just wanted to “back up and take another run” at the topic of my memoir. I'm not sure why I did it.

I'll find out what happened later this year.

If you are interested in finding out more about Alison Wearing and the memoir courses she runs, you can find her website at www. alisonwearing.com.

How about you? What do you feel about writing contests? Do you enter them?

Please re-stack if you want. And comments are always so, so welcome.

Until next Monday,

Rose