I got my first rejection yesterday. The email came in when I was just coming out of the shop and I giddily opened it to flick through the long list of accepted stories.

Mines wasn’t there.

And that’s probably a good thing.

Obviously, if I’d made the cut that would have been incredible. I’d have been getting all up in everyone’s social media grill humble bragging about getting shortlisted for this competition. I’d have hopefully been self aware enough to know that there was a fair bit of luck went into choosing my piece; but there might have been a small voice that said ‘Wow, you are that good. Yeah, you DESERVED to be chosen.’ And did I really?

Probably not. I’m definitely writing a lot more nowadays thanks to this site; between 2,000 and 5,000 words per week I think. But I’m also conscious that I need to properly direct my writing. I’ve opened this floodgate of words which is great, wonderful even, but I need to improve my focus on what I’m writing; doing third and fourth and fifth drafts before moving on.

So I’m honestly not too disappointed. I’m working my ass off to finish a piece for this Friday and it mightn’t get accepted either.

But it might.

I’ve put up online the piece that didn’t get accepted so you can have a read of it yourself. It’s called ‘Point Two’. Some of you super keen beans may have read it before; it was temporarily on the site and then I switched it out for ‘Rules of Engagement‘.

You also have the joy this week of reading some work by another member of the writing club – Rebecca Douglas! Check out Rebecca’s profile on that link and her awesome, ass kicking short story snippet called ‘The Minn at Moon‘.

Thanks as always,

Ethan