Writing Against the Odds

I dreamed last night that I was competing in a beauty contest I couldn't possibly win.  Before you try to psychoanalyze such a symbol-potent dream as that one, I'll spare you some trouble.  I really did enter in a beauty pageant I couldn't win.

Miss Nude Tennessee.  A couple weeks ago.  And let me tell you something, I totally lost.  And, be it a good thing or a bad one, after the contest, when many of the other girls were wailing about how unfair the judges were, I was congratulating the girls who won.  Because they deserved to win.  They were beautiful.  They gave excellent performances.  They worked hard.

And so did I.  It just wasn't what the judges were looking for.  They were looking for a girl who looked like the quintessential Tennessee stripper.  They were not looking for someone who looks a little bit too much like a novelist that dons stripper shoes after dark to battle the dark forces of her own expanding waistline.

So, the dream might've been a very realistic replay of events that have already happened, or it might represent something that's been on my mind a little more.  The other contest I feel like I don't have a hope of winning.

Let's call this the Indie Writer Contest and it involves seeing some measure of success as a novelist at some point in the foreseeable future.  Honestly, I'd almost rather be going up onstage to compete against girls I know have already got me beat.

I have a very long-held, and probably irrational belief, that some people were born to be winners.  Some people were born to be the very best at something.  Some people have the talent, the determination, the connections and the sheer good luck to climb to the top.

And I am not one of those people.  I never have been.

If life has taught me anything, with all my repeated scraps and bumps, with falling down and getting up again and again, it's that I was not born to carry the first prize.  I should not-- and do not-- toil to become the very best there ever was.  Because I never will be.  I was never meant to be.

And yet, here I am, working my ass off.  Day after day, writing novels, trying to find new social media to sell my work through, ordering business cards with clever quips on them.  I try anything I can think of.  Somewhere down the road something has to work.  I keep telling myself that.  Even though reality functions more like this: somewhere down the road something might work.

So why try?  Why enter into a contest that I can't win?  Why try to be something so few people can successfully be?

Because I may never have been destined for first place, but that doesn't mean I have to be a loser.  Too many people assume that, if you aren't on top, you must be crawling in the dirt.  It doesn't work like that.  There's always a second prize, a third place, a fourth, a fifth.

There's always that one sorry rung above the losing place.  I've clung to that rung so many times, working desperately not to drop off and sink to the bottom.  (And sometimes I've still fallen, despite my best efforts.)

If I become the best pole dancer I can be, even though I'm not the best there is, I'm still pretty damn impressive.  If I become the best novelist I can be, I probably still won't gain any recognition for my work, but at least I'll produce a good story or two.  If I become all the many things I want to become, I will never be the best at any of them, but the combination of my skills will make me a unique and many-talented individual.

If I reach my old age, and I can look back and say that my life was not boring, I will consider it a success.

That's the prize I work for, the prize I'm quite certain I can win.  And, of all the prizes out there, isn't that one of the most rewarding?