Buying tickets to win or to forget?

“If you want to win you need to at least consider buying a ticket.”

This local saying suggests that in order to get the results we dream about we must take those little but essential baby steps. Or to be short to give it a go. Try.

Participating in a short story contest is like buying thousands of tickets and not winning. Every aspiring author tasted this sore medicine. You apply with your short story or an essay to find yourself in the ocean of the applications. Thousands of stories are sent via email address to the unknown judges who will supposedly read these stories during the course of months. It means months of waiting for something that you know will be drawn in that ocean. Maybe a 0.001 chance that it will work out. Maybe no chance at all. You are indulged in sending these stories to various local and international competitions.

You will never know why judges picked a certain winner. Based on what? It is not mathematics for crying out loud. It is literature. Any formula is a formula in literature. These judges are gatekeepers and stories like the salmon that need to migrate to the upper hills. They will be eaten by the grizzly bears (editors and publicists). Only a few stories will survive and take their place on the pedestal.

Why bother buying these tickets then?

I deeply believe that reason is hidden in the stories themselves. They make us all so compelled to write and share them. Some are so private and vulnerable that we prefer to keep them away from the crowd. We prefer 5–7 unknown judges to take a look. To be honest we do not even care about judges or places. We care for the fact that the story is done. We are done with it and email is the point of escape.

This means we buy all these tickets to escape from the stories that made these stories to be written.

I recently wrote one about my childhood which haunted me for years. I felt such a drive to finish and get rid of it. It felt so good when I let the keyboard rest after the last stroke.

This was one of the best tickets I have ever bought.