Writing for the win!

So the other day when I was feeling sickish and lazy, literary agent Janet Reid opened a writing contest on her blog, www.jetreidliterary.blogspot.com/. The contest was based on the Alot monster from this post: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html

I thought about the contest for a bit, had a couple beers, and came up with the idea of a "dumbass" factory that makes grammar and usage and spelling bad. I had 100 words or fewer to work with. I wrote a poem. It's a poem a third grader might write if third graders swore and drank.

The next day I felt sick and blah and the amount of work my crappy poem needed was way too much to consider on a sick stomach. But after a day of ignoring household obligations by way of napping and reading, guilt began creeping in. So I finished the poem and hit submit.

I immediately regretted it.

It felt so, I don't know. Goofy. But I kind of liked it. I hoped it might get a laugh out of Janet, but I was sure I bombed the contest. I thought about deleting it at one point. Would anybody get my drunken, potty-mouthed, third-grade humor? Did I make a grammar mistake somebody would point out? But whatever. I stand by my words. It was from the heart, dammit! And actually, I'm totally not a grammar nerd and I normally don't pick on the grammar/usage/spelling impaired. Aloud, anyway.

So this morning I opened up the blog to the results. As I scrolled down, my heart sank. I didn't even get a mention, like a "Not a story, but kind of funny in a bad third grade poetry way." I read through the finalists, mentally congratulating them on doing real writing. They were all very, very good. And then the winner.

Wait. What? What the fuck? My...my little crappy poem about words blowing up the bad grammar factory...won?

Which means a few things, which is what the whole point of this post is about.

1. There are people out there who have the same sense of humor as me. This is terrifying, to be honest.

2. No matter what, NO MATTER WHAT: write. If you're sick or tired or don't feel like it, just sit yo' ass down and WRITE. Another nap sounded great, hell, throwing up sounded great, but I hacked away at my entry instead.

3. Submit stuff. Because you never know who might love it. I really thought I flopped. Sometimes, (most of the time), I think my novel is going to flop, but I'm still going to submit the beast. You never know who will like your stuff. I almost didn't enter this contest and once I did I almost deleted it. Winning was a humongous confidence boost. Big bad shark agent read a tiny piece of my writing and liked it enough to declare it a winner. It's enough to fuel me for awhile, keep me going. Every word counts. Every word makes us better as writers.

I heart writing.