Wednesday was not a good day. At least, it wasn’t up until 12.28pm.
Until then, I’d had whinging children constantly in my ear and I wasn’t feeling the best emotionally:
Will the BOOK be a FAILURE? Or a ROUSING SUCCESS?
Does it matter?
Of course it matters!
Well, it depends on how you define ‘success’
Shut up, brain.
So for some peace I turned on a DVD for the kids and retreated here for ten minutes solitude.
Then the phone rang. “Hello it’s C from the council,” she said and I immediately thought, “Have we forgotten to pay our rates?”
Then she said, “I’m calling to say you’ve won the local division of the Alan Marshall Short Story Award. Congratulations!”
This was after my heart stopped for a moment when she checked that in fact I hadn’t won the open division. No, I was short-listed there.
So I began jumping around. I even blubbered a bit. Then I rang everyone in my acquaintance four people to share the lovely news.
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And yes, those of you who follow the link will see I win a tidy sum. But it all will go back into the book fund, I’m afraid. No shoe shopping for me, although I’d love to go on a spree with Kelley one day.
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So I have a presentation ceremony to go to. Which means two things:
- The stress over what to wear has already begun.
- In order to wear my nicer clothes means a few trips to the gym is in order because…well…I wasn’t kidding at the end of yesterday’s post.
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After all the excitement died down, the following occurred to me:
- Cate Kennedy, one of Australia’s best known short story writers has read my story. What’s more, it seems she liked it. Crikey.
- Maybe I’m not a total hack after all.
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Sometimes.
