I learned today that I won my 10th honorable mention in the Writers of the Future Contest. It’s very frustrating on the one hand, because I have never placed into the semi-finals.
But they say that of the thousands of entries, honorable mentions go to the top 10%. I always seem to be in the last group eliminated. Whether that has any significance, I don’t know. Writer Kevin J. Anderson, who collected a great number of them back when they were still called quarter-finalist, told me to be proud of the achievement because “despite what you think, those things aren’t easy to come by.”
So, there is something to be said for consistency, I guess. Eligibility for the contest is no more than 3 professional fiction sales. I have one to Intergalactic Medicine Show and one to Flash Fiction Online that count against that total. I have one sale to a now-defunct online magazine called Darker Matter that may or may not count against that total. I suspect it will. That means the next sale to a major market disqualifies me.
There will come a day when I either win the contest or I disqualify myself. But a lot of good writers have failed to win the contest and have gone on to have brilliant writing careers. Still, it is a bit frustrating.
