Wednesday, November 15, 2006

No contest?

Over at Competizione they recently had a writing contest on the topic of
"a contest experience."

I could have submitted this story:
Here's a story of a contest I won, but can't talk about. It was a writing contest, and my winning entry was about a woman I'd met years ago when I was a journalism student.

I'd encountered her at journalism banquet at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan. She was there to accept an award for a two-year feature series for a major New York daily paper; I was there to receive a scholarship. As it turned out, I had been utterly unprepared for a night on the town with the New York media glitterati. Among the clues to my cluelessness was my outfit: an emerald green polyester dress my well-intentioned mom had made me for the occasion.

When the story of the night at the Waldorf won the online competition, I wanted to tell everybody. Then I realized I was in the awkward position of being unable to write about it in either of my blogs.

You see, one blog is anonymous (you might say, mysterious) and the online announcement of the contest results contained my identifying information.

The other blog is my professional blog, and you would think that would be the place to crow about my success. Unfortunately, my mother is a faithful reader of that professional blog.

I shared my quandary with a friend, who suggested my mom might not mind the references to the dress after all these years. But I'm not going to risk it. As I recall, she liked the dress so much that she made me another one, in bright magenta, it being "a classic style" (mom-speak for "dorky").

So, though it must remain under wraps, winning the contest was encouraging. It encouraged me to work on my novel -- there's safety in fiction!

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