Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner

How do you grow as a writer when you don’t have the time or money to take classes?

You enter writing contests.

I considered this idea over the summer, but the contests I saw, with their rules and entry fees, seemed so….professional, even the ones limited to authors who had never been published.  I was overwhelmed.  And stuck.

Then I saw the post in our village’s performing arts Facebook group last fall.  An arts commission in a neighboring town was seeking entries for their annual short story contest.  Each year they picked a theme, and this one was “Weather.”

It was fate.  In sixth grade, The Weather Channel was added to our cable system.  I was hooked, watching hour after hour of forecasts from around the world.  The weather became such an obsession that until my senior year in college, I wanted to become a meteorologist.  Plus, the contest was local, community-based, and fairly open in terms of rules, perfect for a beginner just trying to get her feet wet.  I had to enter.

Perhaps even win some prize money.

Writing is best when the focus is on the process of creating, rather than the end result, so I put the idea of prizes and winning out of my head and got to work.   Besides, if I didn’t win a prize, I could always publish my entry on my blog.  I felt like I couldn’t lose as I started to brainstorm about times when my life was affected by the weather.  I remembered an encounter I had during my days as a road warrior consultant, and started to think, “what if…”  The story flew out of me, and I spent the next three weeks writing and revising, honing my craft.

The night before the deadline, I read through the final draft and was proud of my efforts.  I filled out the paperwork and submitted my very first writing contest entry.

I ended up winning first place.

Award Winning!  With the prize and publication.

Not bad for my first short story contest.

It won’t be my last, either.

Here’s the link so you can read my story, “Truck Stop.”

 

The Deer Hunter

Nigel stared at the woman walking along the path.  He needed to cross the path to get to some good eats for lunch, but there was a human in the way.

His mother had taught him to be afraid of humans, that they carried the booming rods that killed many of his family, but this woman was taking forever, meandering along, staring at the thing she was holding, not even noticing him.  So many people on the path were like this woman, oblivious to these things in their hands.  Sometimes the humans talked to the things.  Sometimes the things made noises.  Sometimes the humans held them up to the sky and then put them back in their hand.

Nigel was hungry, and getting angry as the woman took forever to cross his path.  He decided it was time to push her along.  He charged, and as he got to her, she looked up, saw the deer, and started to run away, like he had done so many times when he had been surprised by a human.  He smiled and charged.

Her two legs were no match for his four, so it only took a couple of pushes of his huge rack of antlers until she collapsed, dead.  As he returned to his mission for lunch, a wave of power surged over him, the power of someone who had no fear.  He was determined to rule over the humans, and excitedly thought about his next kill.

The trail made for easy targets.  Nobody suspected the buck in the brush, watching and plotting for his next victim.  Never groups, never ones on those speeding by on those machines with the two circles, and never anyone bigger than him.  Usually, it was women, walking by themselves, the slower the better. 

While the bodies piled up, the humans were stumped.  Women, walking alone on the trail, killed by being beaten to death in the middle of the day.  There were none of the usual clues or patterns the humans needed to solve the mystery, and soon, the killings became routine.

Nigel would spot his victim and charge until they were on the ground, lifeless, then would go about his business.  When the body would be discovered by another human, Nigel would flee, pretending to be afraid of the flashing lights, the sirens, the flow of people in and out, the yellow streamers. 

Sometimes he would go over to where the big boxes with trees on top were parked, listening to the humans chatter into sticks while facing other humans with boxes on their shoulders and snaking cords everywhere.  They would gab on about the “Millennium Trail Killer,” whose motive remained a mystery as the victims grew.

Eventually, it became harder for Nigel to find victims as the humans stopped walking the trail alone.  His bloodlust unsatiated, he wandered around until he found another great trail to catch victims, even if it meant crossing those big, hard paths with the fast-moving boxes that sometimes killed deer.  Bah, he was Nigel, the Millennium Trail Killer.  Nothing could stop him…. 

One afternoon, he spotted the perfect human, and charged him to death.  High on the thrill, Nigel started the long journey home, not realizing how late it had gotten.

*****

“Another body on a new trail.  The Millennium Trail Killer must have moved.”  Jane said to Mark, her cameraman.  They were headed up to the newest crime scene for the evening news.

“Or a copycat.”  Mark replied. 

“A copycat of the perfect crime?” Jane looked at Mark as he drove.  “Doubtful.”

They rounded a curve and felt the unmistakable thud of hitting something.  Mark pulled over, getting out of the news truck to investigate.  He shouted to Jane.

“Ugh, I have to call it in.  We hit a deer.”

The Encouraging Blogger Award

I was so honored to be nominated for the Encouraging Blogger Award by Headphonesthoughts.  Every week, Deborah posts a “Thought of the Week” that always inspires me to do my best.  If you want to be encouraged, Headphonesthoughts is one of the best places to start.  The Encouraging Blogger Award was created by Lisa Mitchell of Fluxing Well with the ‘purpose to recognize bloggers who bring encouragement’ with their blogs.

The Rules

The Encouraging Blogger Award was created to recognize any blogger who encourages others with his or her posts. Bloggers may encourage others to travel, try new things, have a positive mindset, or overcome adversity, for example. An encouraging blog may encourage other bloggers or give business tips. Many blogs are encouraging and we don’t even realize it. Bloggers nominate fellow bloggers for this award, and nominees write a post answering a few questions. After that, the nominee nominates other bloggers.

• When and why did you start blogging?

I started blogging on MySpace about 15 years ago, when I was a traveling consultant spending 75% of the year on the road.  It was a way to pass the time.  My current iteration started when I decided to run the six major marathons in 10 years, hence “6 in 10.”

• What is your blog about?

My blog started as a running blog to keep me accountable on my marathon training, but has morphed into surviving a global pandemic while coping with Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder.  Writing became my therapy, my connection to the outside world.  I believe the power of our own uniqueness, and I’m trying to use my blog to encourage others to embrace theirs.  There is too much of a demand for conformity, especially in a country founded on freedom and choice.

• What is one piece of advice you would give to encourage new bloggers?

Find your own voice, what makes you exceptional.  It will make you stand out in the endless myriad of blogs.

• Which is your favorite time-saving blogging tip or scheduling tool?

Use your Notes feature on your phone to jot down ideas if you aren’t in a position to write.  I’ve always got a half-dozen or so ideas floating through my mind, so I always have something to write about.

• What are your future goals for your blog?

It’s not a blog goal, per se, but to restructure my life so I have more time to create.  I’m just juggling too many things right now to post the amount of content I have amassing in my head.  It would also be nice to grow in readership and see my posts make the world a better place.

I nominate…

Tangela Williams-Spann

The Winter of My Discontent

Unwanted Life

Ruthiee Loves Glamour

Lose Weight With Ang

 

My Thank You Letter to my Body

 After reading Lose Weight with Ang’s beautiful thank you note to her body, I felt compelled to write one of my own.  It has been a rough year, and my body has taken a back seat to my mind, a theme that needs to change as my 50^th birthday looms in the near future.  I hope you appreciate, and I hope you are inspired to write a thank you note to your body!

Enjoy!

PR Performance! October, 2018

Dear body,

Thank you for being so strong and healthy. 

It didn’t start that way.  The danger of the umbilical cord wrapped around my neck made my birth scary for a first-time mother and landed me in the high-risk nursery for the first week of my life.  That week was the last time I spent the night in the hospital, thanks to your strength and health.

I would need that strength and health of body, because my mind was often too broken to properly take care of you.  A mind that refused to eat at an age when food was needed to grow.  A mind driven to submit to hour after hour of training in order to excel in running and figure skating, despite having no natural talent or gifts.  A mind that insists on endless showers and hand washings.  A mind needing to be beaten into submission as the outside world triggered it into chaos.

You have been my rock, my pillar.  No matter what damage I inflicted upon you, you kept getting up, kept living, kept surviving.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been a year and a half since you put on a show, negative splitting the last five miles of the New York Marathon and finishing under five hours.  I was a lean, mean, running machine, and the future loomed bright.  There were so many things I could do for you to make you even stronger, even faster, even more beautiful.

But my mind was still healing from another breakdown, one that ended my job and my relationship that year.  Marathon training had to be put on hold as I struggled to stay ahead of the bills.

Again, you rose to the occasion, allowing me to take on several physically intensive jobs that required being in top shape.  As a global pandemic of an unknown virus shut down the world, your immune system kept me from succumbing to disease, allowing me to shuffle and adapt as furloughs loomed.

It was a glance in the mirror on a warm July afternoon that I noticed the damage I had inflicted upon you.  My face, always a source of pride, looked crooked.  My angled jaw was now rounded and chubby.  I looked at my body, the lithe sinew that traveled across the five boroughs of New York City, atrophied into a fluffy marshmallow.

My mind broke again, fearing everything from a possible stroke to a horrible disease.  It was in this fear that I realized how much I had taken your strength and health for granted, how many times I had skipped the basic checkups and maintenance, the things I had done to hurt you instead of care for you.  Inside of a world that could not return to normal and hours of isolation, my mind went into a tailspin, sliding down a spiral of self-pity and self-abuse instead of giving you the love and caring you deserved.

By the time I finally made it to the dentist and the doctor, I learned that once again, you had risen to the occasion.  No cavities, no major health issues, and no serious illnesses.  You gave me the gift of being able to heal my mental illnesses without having to battle physical ones as well.  I cannot thank you enough for that.

It is why I end this letter with a promise.  I promise to care for you, to treat you with love, to do everything in my power to nourish the strength and health you have given me all these years so that we can have many, many more years to come.

With Love,

Erin