My Good News

I just got a phone call to inform me that my story "Anywhere at All" won first place in the St. Louis Writer's Guild annual short story contest. The monentary award was a percentage of the entry fees--over $500.

I realized that it's been over a decade since anyone paid me for my fiction. What a wonderful feeling.

Funny thing is, yesterday I had decided I'd made peace with not getting paid for my creative writing.

I wrote the story--about a teenage boy who gets kicked out of his church youth group and then gets suspended for skipping school--a few years ago. When I heard the contest judge give a lecture in October about loving your flawed characters, I thought of that story. It wasn't among the pieces I was trying to get published, but I dug it out and tinkered with it, adding some details (including a trendy reference to MySpace). I decided the $15 entry fee was a good risk.

I'm trying to ignore the fact that $500 is exactly the amount of our car insurance deductible for the fender-bender I caused in two weeks ago when I hit a friend's parked car. Instead, I'm hoping to reinvest the money in the "business" and use it to buy a laptop....

But for now, I'm just going to savor being paid for doing what I love.