To the Flame!
I entered a writing competition. I didn't win. I don't normally enter writing competitions. I don't think they're particularly useful. If you lose, and there's only one winner, you don't know why you lose, so you learn nothing from the experience. Generally speaking you don't know what the judge is looking for, there's no brief, so you're just hoping that what you think is great is going to chime with what they think is great and, on this occasion, we did not click. This was speed dating on a wet Wednesday after a bad day at work. Also, the story was about a crushed snail and, typing that, I can sort of see why they didn't go for it. It just sounds unpleasant. But maybe the judge likes unpleasant. Maybe that's their bag. That's the risk. Perhaps it wasn't unpleasant enough. No, it was the right amount of unpleasant. It was delicately calibrated that way. Other reasons not to enter are: it costs money, so this venture like the re...
