I Didn’t Win The Writing Prize
I was shortlisted for a writing prize in September, and in October I did not win it. As soon as I found out I was shortlisted I felt strongly that I would not win. Not an imposter thing, just felt it. And yet. I RSVPed to the ceremony just in case. The night before I thought of a few words I would say, just in case. Running late at the station I grabbed a McDonald’s and won two free burgers on the Monopoly and thought “perhaps this is the start…”.
But I did not win the prize. The winner’s name came up in the closed captions before it was announced, a softer blow that wasn’t a surprise but was sad all the same. I arranged my face, reduced my heart rate, did what I hope was smile for the photos, but as people came round to tell us all that the winning didn’t matter I was ready to go. On the long train home, I debated how I felt. I rolled the feeling around in my mouth like a gobstopper, tasting for the flavour of disappointment I wanted.
This starts with a bitterness I’m not proud of. A litany of reasons why the winner didn’t deserve to win, exactly the same way I had reasoned that Laura hadn’t deserved the lead in the school play in year 4. The childish (perhaps only-childish) reaction to someone having something that I don’t: to assert that they shouldn’t have it either. 24 years on from that school play though I am quicker at catching this part of myself, about reminding myself I have no idea how much someone does or doesn’t need the money, and frankly it’s not my business whether they do – they still deserved to win.
The next flavour I toy with is the “that’s it, I’m giving it all up”. The “I’ll show you how badly you messed up by ruining my own life”. Another historic coping mechanism from my late teens which really relies on me being the centre of the universe to work (spoiler: it never has). My disappointment tries to make out that I should give up and not bother, but unfortunately I already know that to be shortlisted is a big enough deal, a big enough step forward, and besides – I want it too much now.
Then there’s the overcorrect. The “I’ll show you how badly you messed up by being WILDLY successful”. I start to Google more competitions to enter, think about how many thousands of people I should get to sign up to my Substack, start scrolling through the list of ideas on my phone to start writing a masterpiece right now on the train. Only it’s 10.30pm and I’ve done a full day’s work and travelled for three hours and don’t really have the energy for a masterpiece. And actually, it’s exhausting to think of all those things I now have to be wildly good at to prove a point to people who have made it clear all evening that there is no point to prove. And maybe, I want to be done with proving.
Where I land is somewhere in the middle of the concentric circles. All these feelings had rippled out, increasingly removed from the actual fact of what happened. I didn’t win the prize, and maybe that doesn’t have to mean anything. Maybe I didn’t have to force myself into an immediate reaction, maybe it wasn’t dramatic, maybe I didn’t have need to be able to clarify exactly what I thought and felt about it. Maybe there didn’t need to be a new plan. Maybe I could just allow the train to rock me as I opened my book and maybe the next day I would carry on as I am.
