I got an email the other day from the Low Country RWA (South Carolina) telling me that I was a finalist in the Jasmine Contest. It’s a pretty plush contest, so I was happy to hear it. But as I checked my email and went online, I discovered that the Georgia Romance Writers were also announcing the Maggie awards. Instead of basking in the glow of the Jasmine final, I jumped every time the phone rang, and when it wasn’t ever Georgia, I felt a twinge of disappointment.
How awful is that?
But then, last night, the phone rang and it *was* Georgia. And when the woman finally convinced me that she wasn’t a prank caller, and was in fact deadly serious about my finalist status, I hit the ceiling and haven’t come down yet. Jasmine. Maggie. Jasmine. Maggie. The words are rushing through my head at the speed of light. Any excitement I failed to feel after the Jasmine notification was caught up and multiplied by news of the Maggies. My stomach is tight, my head is light, and I hope I can calm down before Nationals next week. I hope I can calm down enough to finish revisions on the manuscripts in question.
But I hate that I had that moment of doubt – that moment where I wasn’t as excited as I should have been about the Jasmine because I hadn’t finalled in the Maggies as well. I want to excise that part of me, lest it become me not being as excited about a sale because it isn’t a two book contract. Of course I’m not going to final in every contest. Since 2002, I’ve entered eleven contests, with 25 entries, and finalled seven times. That’s only a 28% success rate… hardly bolstering.
But, as Benjamin Disraeli said, there are three types of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics. So since I’m obviously not fit for writing anything at all today, and have spent most of the morning looking at my outfits for Nationals and doodling the names of two particular southern flowers on different notepads, indulge me for a moment. Let’s play around a bit, shall we, and see if I can make that sound better: eleven contests, finalled in four of them… 36% success. Slightly better. Even better to say entered eleven contests, finalled seven times, which projects the idea of a 63% success rate. Inaccurate, to be sure, but it sounds damn good.
More accurate would be the truth. With the first five contests and ten contest entries, I never finalled at all. Then I finalled thrice in one contest I’d entered five times, with a 60% success rate of my own entries. I entered two more contests in the next 10 months, with one entry each, and finalled with neither. Then, in the next three contests I entered, I finalled four times, twice in one of them, with a finals:entry ratio of 4:7 or 57%. I can also say that since my first finalist ranking, I’ve finalled in four out of the six contests I’ve entered (67%) or with seven out of fourteen entries (50%). I can also say that, in 2004, I have finalled with 4/8 (50%) of my entries, in 3/4 (75%) of the contests that I’ve entered.
I think I like that last statistic the best. Of course, you can make the argument that statistics are meaningless because someone else could be entering every fly-by-night contest out there and come up with the same results. So instead I add a cutesy little signature line at the bottom of my emails that looks like this:
________________________
2004 Maggie Finalist
2004 Jasmine Finalist
2004 Molly Semi-Finalist
2004 Molly Semi-Finalist
_________________________
Isn’t that unbearable? My boyfriend saw it and told me to remove it immediately or he’d laugh me out of the house. Sigh. It’s the little things we love, chico, the little things we need. Like the several dozen emails I’ve gotten in the past two days congratulating my success on the contest circuit. These are big contests. Big. It’s an honor to final. And I’m so so happy about it. can’t I just skip around for a few days, plaster that grin on my face, bask in the hope that though I’m not wearing a pink ribbon *this* July, I’m on the right track?
I think so…. So forgive the self-indulgence, folks…. I’m a bit giddy today. 🙂
