Your alarm clock goes off and you slap at the snooze button, groaning. Why is it going off so early, anyway? You just barely fell asleep, it feels like, since you stayed up into the wee hours of the morning trying to finish your FaithWriters’ weekly challenge story before the deadline.
The challenge! You bolt upright and stumble to the door.
Don’t get your hopes up. You’re not going to place. You know that.
"Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m not getting my hopes up. Though, you know, I did get a lot of really encouraging comments."
You reach the computer and wiggle the mouse, tapping your foot impatiently while the monitor wakes up. The FW homepage pops up and you zero in on the yellow link.
THE NEW TOPIC IS--what? That’s last week’s topic! Oh no, they had computer trouble again. You turn your attention to your emails, but it’s rather hard to concentrate on them when you have to refresh the FW page after every sentence. You head over to the message board to complain with the rest of the FWers.
Finally! The new topic flashes on the screen and you take just enough note of it to see that it’s an odd topic again, before clicking on “View past challenge winners entries.” You scan the list.
Only after the third scan are you convinced that you didn’t just miss your name.
It's not there.
You knew you wouldn’t win.
"Yeah, well, obviously the judges didn’t at all get the deeper message of the story. If they had, it would have been a shoo-in."
The “deeper message” was so obscure not even a nuclear scientist could have figured it out!
"At least this week’s story is strong. I mean, look at the ending! It’s a killer ending!"
The guy dies. That's not exactly the same thing.
Sighing, you flip back to your email, checking for any comment notifications. After all, it’s been ten minutes since the new articles appeared. That’s plenty of time for someone to have seen your eye-catching title and left a comment.
No comments.
You check the FW page just to make sure your article is actually there. Hey, it has 4 reads. Surely one of those people loved it and is even now writing a comment. You refresh the browser a few times. See, now it has 8 reads! You knew it was a good title. So...why hasn’t anyone commented yet? It has a great ending.
But what about the beginning? I mean, that second paragraph could use some help.
"Oh, I knew I should have changed that part. It’s awful! No wonder no one commented. They didn’t get past the second paragraph to see the great ending.
"At any rate, I don’t have time to enter this week."
Yeah, you never win anyway.
"That’s not why I’m not entering! I write because I enjoy it. And besides, there are people who are blessed by what I enter. I just don’t have time this week. I’ve got a bunch of other writing projects I need to do."
You check this week’s topic one more time (just to verify that it’s an odd topic) and wander off to the shower. Of course, random ideas for the topic you are not going to enter float through your head.
"See, I don’t have any good ideas anyway. That one’s stupid, that one half the other people will do, that one doesn’t have an ending, and that one--oh!"
That one is an awesome idea.
"But I don’t have time to enter this week."
Admit it. It’s a cool idea.
"Okay, okay, it’s a great idea. But I still don’t have time to enter."
God didn’t give you good ideas so you wouldn’t write them.
"He wouldn’t want me to ignore my other responsibilities just for a challenge story."
Well, if you wouldn’t spend so much time on the message boards, maybe you’d have time to write more. But you at least ought to write down that one perfect sentence before you forget it.
"It is a pretty cool thought. I guess just writing one sentence won’t hurt."
Yeah! Now, do you remember how you got to that sentence? You better write the first part down, or the one sentence won’t do you any good.
"Oh, yes, yes, it started right when..."
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