Like any other writer exposure is important to success. Now I am one of those people that get weirdly motivated for no reason at all. A part of it has to do with self-doubt. I am only eighteen, I am a child. I feel as though I am not where I should be in my career as a writer. That is simply retarded. But I am adamant about making a name for myself in some respect, even though I don’t think I’ve ever actually put my real name on anything…

By the time I graduate college, I should have sooooome sort of credentials. I should have a couple of things published. This is highly improbable. Most writers are old and only meet success when they are old. This angers me. The obvious way to build a resume is to win contests. My senior year of high school I won the Random House Creative Writing Competition for NYC Public Schools Best in Borough award or some bullshit like that. The story I wrote then was horrible. Like, I mean, it was really, really fucking stupid. But I won $1000. I just didn’t know how to “technically,” write a good story then.

And no, the standards were not lower because it was a high school competition, I realize this now. In looking for new contests to enter and looking back at the old winners of these contests, the stories are all really, really bad too. They are not special and they are really cliche, this is the trouble I had with writer’s in my writing class. All the same regurgitated stories about the same silly goose McGee bullshit, I GIVE NO FUCKS, how does anyone else?

Everyone in that class hated me because my response was always the same, “this seems really familiar…” and after a while I would just come right out and say it was unoriginal and cliche. Everyone hated my stories because they were not cliche, I don’t mean this in a cocky way or that I am even saying that I was the most original writer in the class (even though I was). Being original is only part of being a good writer. Writer’s like Chuck Palahnuik get away with being semi-shitty writers because they write in a way that is interesting– that makes you want to know more. I give him credit for that, but only that…

Anyway, I am a weirdo. I like gross things by nature. I was raised on horror movies and have become completely desensitized to violence. I am interested in writing about other weirdos that have been molded by their circumstances into weirdos.

Everyone in my writing class is absolutely disgusted by my writing. However, in private my professor told me that, this story, that some said they had to stop eating because it was sooooo gross and that I should not rely on shock value and blah blah blah, my professor said it was the best one submitted all year.

Now the point of all of this is that, when I was reading the past winners of story competitions and looking at the story I had written they are all extremely boring and take much effort to get through. When I wrote the story for the competition I was doing just that, I was writing for the competition. One thing I learned is that when applying for anything or trying to win anything you have to give them what they are looking for not necessarily what is right.

I don’t want to spend all my effort trying to write boring stories about pregnant ladies and farms or whatever the fuck it is that all these competitions seem to be looking for. That would only detract from the time I spend on the stories I want to write. I dunno, I guess I expected the writing world to be less stupid. But I realized that all the people in my class whose stories are terrible will go onto sell thousands of books. And me, I’ll be a great writer and I’ll have all my integrity, and that’s all I’ll have. Damn that fucking psychic! How do I get got by a psychic witch?

But that isn’t the end. There are other ways to make a name for myself. Why do I gotta enter these bullshit competitions? (By the way, I haven’t actually entered any competitions and lost, so don’t think I am bitter just yet, I just know I am not what anyone is looking for…)

Well, I guess I’ll have to enter and try to prove myself wrong…/shrug

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