This Isn't the End

I hate cold. Any temperatures below fifty Fahrenheit and I want to either hibernate or fly south for the winter. It’s not surprising then that I’m not a fan of snow—it has to be cold to snow. Plus, in Cincinnati even a few snowflakes can mess up traffic so bad that it can take me two hours for the twenty-three miles from work to home. Let’s not forget that for the past three days my neighborhood’s roads have been covered in some kind of ice-snow amalgam that makes me slide at least once per trip. Sure, sliding’s fun the first two or three times, but after that it’s not so fun anymore.

This isn’t to say that I only have bad things to say about snow. Snow’s pretty when I can stay inside by our fire and cuddle up with a good book. It was also amazing a few summers ago to hike to the snowline on Mt. Rainier. Overall though, I wish snow were something that happened at warmer temperatures.

If I’m not fond of cold, winter, and snow, you’d think I’d be all for summer sun. You’re partly right—I do love when it’s warm out. There’s nothing more satisfying on a summer’s night than to sit on our desk and watch the sun set or to go to a Reds game and not have to worry about how many layers I should take. Still, my relationship with the sun is tenuous. I’m fair-skinned so I burn easily. One time in Ireland, when I was on the Aran Islands and it was sunny, I smeared on some stick sunblock. Turns out, I didn’t rub it in right, so I ended up looking like a red and white zebra. Embarrassing at best. I hated the sun for a week.

Yes, I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m ranting about sun and snow. Truth is, I found out this morning that I didn’t make it into Michelle Hauck and Amy Trueblood’s Sun vs. Snow contest. I’d like to blame it on the fact that I’m not overly fond of sun or snow—but we all know that had nothing to do with it. My MS just wasn’t right for them or the contest. It’s subjective, I know, but that doesn’t make me feel much better. I want to ask why they didn’t pick me. I want to know what’s wrong with what I wrote. The answer could be there’s nothing wrong—it just wasn’t what they wanted. Still, it’s getting hard to believe that. It doesn’t help to see the success of writer friends. (See my post from last December called The Hard Stuff for more on this.) All I keep thinking is lyrics to Bon Iver’s Holocene, which I had on repeat this morning. I was not magnificent.

There’s an upside to Holocene, however. I can’t begin to tell you what the song might actually mean—poetry and me, we don’t get along so well—but other lyrics are I could see for miles, miles, miles. I feel a positive connotation when he sings these words. That helps keep the hope alive.

Hope is so important for me in this process. I renamed my blog a few weeks ago to include the words hope and grit because I don’t think I could make it through this without them. Hope is what keeps me entering contests and thinking that someday my dream will happen. Grit is my determination to keep moving forward, to learn from everything I experience, and to never give up, not until I get a book published. After all, a girl’s gotta have a goal, even if it’s a longshot at best.

Right, so, what now? I ask myself this after every contest. What currently helps with my hope is an email I got on Tuesday. It made my day—though that’s all the details you’re getting unless you’re one of my CPs. What helps with my grit is that losing this contest isn’t the end. I haven’t begun to query my MS, but I’m thinking it’s about time for that, or at least time to stop with contests and start serious preparations for querying.

So I’m thinking I’ll start Lent a little early this year and give up contests. I’ll cheer on my writer friends who made these recent ones and hope for their success. I’ll hunker down and keep at it, just not through contests, not for now.